Sea Change for Salinity

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A Under the flat ground of Australia, there are hidden valleys and old riverbeds. These act as traps for deadly salt that is slowly killing the land. Now, scientists are using new weapons to fight this salt problem. They are using high-tech tools, which were originally used to find gold, to find where the salt is hiding underground and predict where it will go. B Dr. Neil Phillips warns that planting trees on the surface is not enough. If we don't understand what is happening underground, the salt can still rise to the top through hidden rivers. Scientists use special scanners on airplanes to find the salt. This technology has become much better in the last two years. Like a radar in a war, it helps scientists track the salt and guess its movements. C Angus Howell is a farmer in Australia. He first saw salt on his farm in 1948. Over the years, the salt patches spread and destroyed almost 100 hectares of his land. In the 1970s, he and other farmers started a group to save their farms. But even with a lot of help from scientists and the government, the salt continued to spread and ruin the soil. Small successes were often followed by larger problems. D "We still don't have the right solutions," Howell says. "How can we change farming methods when people still need to make money?" Salt is tricky because it can suddenly appear in new and unexpected places. Only recently have scientists started to discover its secret underground paths. E We need to solve this problem quickly. Salt has already ruined six million hectares of good farming land. By 2050, it could completely destroy 17 million hectares. Also, Australia's Murray River will become too salty to drink safely. Fixing this problem might take hundreds of years. F Scientists use special surveys to see where the salt is. Some tools measure electricity in the soil to find salt. Other tools measure magnets in the earth to draw maps of old, buried rivers. These hidden rivers show scientists where the underground water is and which way it is moving. This helps them guess where the salt will go next. G Scientists also measure natural radiation in rocks to understand the land better. This helps farmers know the best places to plant crops to stop the salt. By studying the Murray River area, scientists found old underground channels. Surprisingly, the salt in these deep channels can move in a completely different direction than the water on the surface. H The biggest improvement is that scientists now use all these tools together. Before, one tool only gave a little information. Now, by combining them, they get a very clear picture of what is deep underground. Airplane scanners can take pictures of the earth at different depths. This helps researchers see exactly where the salt is stored and how it moves over time. With this information, scientists can predict where the salt will go and find the best ways to protect the land.