Salinity In The Grassland

Salinity – 170 word – supposed to write 165
Salinity has an impact to the productivity of the Temperate Grassland biome in the Murray Darling Basin and kills shallow rooted plants; shallow rooted plants can’t keep the water table sable as they aren’t native. Salinity impacts farms, rivers, drinking water, buildings and roads, vegetation etc. The Murray Darling Basin is a major source for civilization as 3 million people use the Murray Darling Basin for house-hold needs. Salinity is the amount of salt present in the land’s surface, or dissolved in water in rivers or ground water. Salinity is caused by the water table rising which causes the salt to rise to the surface. Two impacts due to salinity are; the impact on water quality for animals

One major way to improve this is to plant more deep-rooted plants to stop the water table from rising. Crops need different amount of water otherwise they might not grow but over watering the plant can cause the excess water to sweep into the soil and raise the ground water which will raise the chances of salinity occurring in that area. Every year a large space in the Murray Darling Basin loses a large area of farming land to salinity because of over-watering plants. There is a way to see when salinity may occur in farming fields as the plants height, the number of leaves and shoots all decrease; generally, plants response to salinity. If salinity as occurred in that area, wilted plant and leaf burn would be shown on the plant/s salinity affected. Another factor to consider is finding clovers within crops as if they are affected by salinity the pasture quality and quantity will decrease. When plant seems stressed mixing saline water with channelled water is a factor which might help the plant continue growing and spreading. Figure 5 shows what plants are salt tolerant from 0 – 5.00 dS/m; to which clovers are very weak and salt bushes are one of the strongest. Using salt bushes to feed the cattle will help the salinity problem as salt bush suck out all the salt in the ground and other crops used to feed the cattle may not be needed therefore having more space to grow other crops. Figure 5 shows us where every plant is ranked which could help show which plants to plant when salinity is taking up large areas of