EVENT: Salinity Research in Retrospect, and Some Prospects

In the late 1960s the WA Government was advised that there was no evidence that agricultural developments in the southwest induced increasing soil and stream salinity. To produce such evidence, the Australian Water Resources Council provided basic funding for instrumentation of 5 small catchments in initially forested areas of the Collie River catchment. One of the experimental catchments was totally cleared and subjected to normal agricultural development; two other catchments were partly cleared. The project involved close collaboration between CSIRO and several agencies of the WA Government.

The talk will outline aspects of management of this project, research methodology and results, and some unresolved questions relating to land and stream salinity management.