Saline soils worldwide: Identifying the most promising areas for saline agriculture

Katarzyna Negacz; Žiga Malek; Arjen de Vos; Pier Vellinga

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2022.104775

Saline soils worldwide: Identifying the most promising areas for saline agriculture

Katarzyna Negacz^*, Žiga Malek, Arjen de Vos, Pier Vellinga

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Salinization poses a major challenge for modern agriculture with considerable areas being salt-affected worldwide. However, these lands can be cultivated by applying saline agriculture, involving soil, water and salt-tolerant crop management methods. The agricultural use of saline soils helps in addressing food security in times of population growth and climate change. Therefore, there is a need to map saline soils and examine conditions under which saline agriculture can be implemented. The aim of this study is to identify locations and surface area of saline soils. The potential areas for saline agricultural production are mapped using the QGIS software with a focus on the most promising lands for saline agriculture. To identify these most promising areas, we apply criteria of soil salinity, soil fertility, soil pH, water availability, presence of irrigation equipment, as well as depleted water basins. Our results show that the total area of salt-affected soils equals 17 million km², but the largest potential for saline agriculture lays in saline soils above 4 dS/m EC_e in non-depleted water basins totalling to 2 million km². We conclude that further socio-economic analysis is needed to fully determine countries which should be prioritized in exploring the future potential for sustainable food production.

Original language	English
Article number	104775
Pages (from-to)	1-9
Number of pages	9
Journal	Journal of Arid Environments
Volume	203
Early online date	11 May 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2022.104775
Publication status	Published - Aug 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Wadden Academy, Leeuwarden as a contribution to the European Union Interreg VB North Sea Region SalFar project.

Funding Information:
This research project was carried out as a thesis for the Master Environment and Resource Management at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with support of the Wadden Academy, Leeuwarden as a contribution to the European Union Interreg VB North Sea Region SalFar project, co-funded by the North Sea Region Programme 2014–2020. This study was conducted in cooperation with Salt Farm Texel and the University of Lincoln. We want to extend our thanks to Bas Bruning for his comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. The datasets of the maps presented in this paper are available from https://dataverse.nl/dataverse/BETA.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors

Funding

This work was supported by the Wadden Academy, Leeuwarden as a contribution to the European Union Interreg VB North Sea Region SalFar project. This research project was carried out as a thesis for the Master Environment and Resource Management at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with support of the Wadden Academy, Leeuwarden as a contribution to the European Union Interreg VB North Sea Region SalFar project, co-funded by the North Sea Region Programme 2014–2020. This study was conducted in cooperation with Salt Farm Texel and the University of Lincoln. We want to extend our thanks to Bas Bruning for his comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. The datasets of the maps presented in this paper are available from https://dataverse.nl/dataverse/BETA.

Keywords

Revitalisation
Saline agriculture
Saline soils
Salt-tolerant crops

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.jaridenv.2022.104775Licence: CC BY

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Cite this

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title = "Saline soils worldwide: Identifying the most promising areas for saline agriculture",

abstract = "Salinization poses a major challenge for modern agriculture with considerable areas being salt-affected worldwide. However, these lands can be cultivated by applying saline agriculture, involving soil, water and salt-tolerant crop management methods. The agricultural use of saline soils helps in addressing food security in times of population growth and climate change. Therefore, there is a need to map saline soils and examine conditions under which saline agriculture can be implemented. The aim of this study is to identify locations and surface area of saline soils. The potential areas for saline agricultural production are mapped using the QGIS software with a focus on the most promising lands for saline agriculture. To identify these most promising areas, we apply criteria of soil salinity, soil fertility, soil pH, water availability, presence of irrigation equipment, as well as depleted water basins. Our results show that the total area of salt-affected soils equals 17 million km2, but the largest potential for saline agriculture lays in saline soils above 4 dS/m ECe in non-depleted water basins totalling to 2 million km2. We conclude that further socio-economic analysis is needed to fully determine countries which should be prioritized in exploring the future potential for sustainable food production.",

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AU - de Vos, Arjen

AU - Vellinga, Pier

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KW - Salt-tolerant crops

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Saline soils worldwide: Identifying the most promising areas for saline agriculture

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

Access to Document

Persistent URL (handle)

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Cite this