Soil salinity is emerging as a major threat to the sustainability of
modern agricultural production systems and, historically, land and water
degradation due to salinity has defeated civilisations whenever the cost
of remediation exceeded the benefits. This work discusses the complexity
inherent in working with salinity, and the opportunities where salt
damaged land and water is viewed as a resource. It takes a wider look at
land and waterscapes, seeing them as systems that link damage and repair
across time and space to bridge the divide between the main
beneficiaries of ecosystem services and the main actors, farmers, and
land managers. We first discuss the mechanistic basis of crop reduction
by salinity and evolution of ideas about how to shape the
plant-soil-water nexus. We then discuss the needs of farmers and other
land users required for adequate planning and land management within the
constraints of existing policy. Lastly, an approach that provides a new
technical and economic tool for the remediation of land in several land
use categories is presented. We conclude that a more concerted effort is
required to turn payments for ecosystem services into a true market,
accepted as such by the land managers, whose agency is essential so the
‘knowledge of what can be done can be transformed into benefits’.
Achieving this will require a transformation in the paradigm of how
natural resources are managed.
Vulnerability of Rehabilitated Agricultural Production Systems to Invasion by Nontarget Plant Species
