Why does irrigation cause salinity?
When we decided to move to irrigation, not only did we take the deep-rooted trees and shrubs out we, also allowed more water to leak below the root zone. No matter how well and how skilfully we irrigate it’s very hard to stop water moving past the root zone of our irrigated crops – whether they are fruit trees or rice paddies. Under irrigation we have increased it not 10 fold but sometimes 100 fold, and thus we have all the driving force for irrigated salinisation.
