Area roughly the size of Manhattan destroyed by salt each week
Courtesy: Flickr/Alex
Digital Reporter
Tuesday, November 11, 2014, 5:13 PM - Roughly 2,000 hectares of land are destroyed every day due to the use of salt, a new study by the U.N. has found. Weekly -- that averages out to an area almost the size of Manhattan.
In total, 25 million hectares of fertile land have been lost to salt degradation, up from 18 million hectares twenty years ago.
Areas of dry, irrigated land with no natural drainage are at the greatest risk.
"Salt-induced land degradation occurs in arid and semi-arid regions where rainfall is too low to maintain regular percolation of rainwater through the soil and where irrigation is practiced without a natural or artificial drainage system," The U.N. says.
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"Irrigation practices without drainage management trigger the accumulation of salts in the root zone, affecting several soil properties and reducing productivity."
Experts suggest planting more trees and salt-tolerant crops. Digging drainage in at-risk areas may also help.
Seventy-five countries are affected by salt degradation, with the most at-risk areas being:
- Aral Sea Basin, Central Asia
- Indo-Gangetic Basin, India
- Indus Basin, Pakistan
- Yellow River Basin, China
- Euphrates Basin, Syria and Iraq
- Murray-Darling Basin, Australia
- San Joaquin Valley, United States
This is already having an impact on farmers, with damaged land negatively impacting food crops.
"To feed the world's anticipated nine billion people by 2050, and with little new productive land available, it's a case of all lands needed on deck," lead author Manzoor Qadir from the UN University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health told reporters.
"We can't afford not to restore the productivity of salt-affected lands."
In Canada, road salts are used to de-ice roads in the winter and to suppress dust in the summer.
A five-year study by Environment Canada found that salt in "sufficient concentrations" put animals, plants and aquatic ecosystems at risk.
The complete study by the U.N. can be found at the U.N. Journal Natural Resources Forum.
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