{"id":59304,"date":"2021-09-12T19:01:43","date_gmt":"2021-09-13T00:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59304"},"modified":"2021-09-12T19:01:43","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T00:01:43","slug":"soil-salinity-and-erosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59304","title":{"rendered":"Soil salinity and erosion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soil salinity and erosion<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

Preface<\/strong>.\u00a0 Civilizations fail when their soils are ruined or eroded.\u00a0 One way conquerors made sure that those they enslaved during wars was to salt their land and burn their homes so they had nowhere to escape to. Erosion is an even larger nation killer, since not all soils are prone to salinity.\u00a0 These issues are also discussed in my post \u201cPeak Soil\u201d.<\/p>\n

Farm Journal Editors (2020)\u00a0Conservation Practices Reduce \u2018Rings Of Death\u2019<\/a>. Agweb.com<\/strong><\/p>\n

Farming requires a high tolerance for dancing with nature. That\u2019s especially true for North Dakota producers where 15% of cropland has reduced productivity due to soil salinity and sodicity issues. This makes soil layers dense, slow down soil water movement, limit root penetration and, ultimately, hurts yield.<\/p>\n

Why Salt Shows Up<\/strong>. Salts and sodium generally make their way into soil from parent material (what soil is formed from) and groundwater discharge.\u00a0 When a soil has too much sodium and overall salt content, the soil\u2019s clay particles repel each other and the ground becomes so hard it is difficult for plant roots to penetrate, and this lowers crop production. They\u2019re hard to drive on when wet and very hard when dry.\u00a0 The solution? Gypsum, which improves soil structure, pore space and water infiltration.\u00a0 In this case it will come from a nonrenewable byproduct of coal-fired plants<\/p>\n

Jonathan Watts. September 12, 2017.\u00a0Third of Earth\u2019s soil is acutely degraded due to agriculture. Fertile soil is being lost at rate of 24bn tonnes a year through intensive farming as demand for food increases, says UN-backed study<\/a><\/em>. The Guardian.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The alarming decline, which is forecast to continue as demand for food and productive land increases, will add to the risks of conflicts such as those seen in Sudan and Chad.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soil salinity and erosion Preface.\u00a0 Civilizations fail when their soils are ruined or eroded.\u00a0 One way conquerors made sure that those they enslaved during wars was to salt their land and burn their homes so they had nowhere to escape to. Erosion is an even larger nation killer, since not all soils are prone to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[11836,11859,16634,1912,697,14221,31761,1091,31762],"class_list":["post-59304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-alice-friedemann","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-erosion","tag-food-production","tag-salt","tag-societal-collapse","tag-sodium","tag-soil","tag-soil-salinity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59305,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59304\/revisions\/59305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}