September 16, 2007

Where Did Salinity Go in Queensland: A Note from Peter Wylie

Salinity is a significant land management problem in Western Australia but not in Queensland. In 2000 the extent of dryland salinity in Queensland was reported to be 48,000 hectares and rapidly increasing to a level where 3 million hectares were likely to be affected by 2050. It was widely believed that tree clearing had to be halted to stop the onslaught of salinity.

Since then it has been confirmed that salinity is not such a big problem in Queensland and the secret that tree clearing is not responsible for salinity has been let out of the bag.

A more detailed review of the extent of dryland salinity in the Murray-Darling Basin of southern Queensland now indicates there is a total of 9428 ha of salt affected land. This was reported in 2003 to be a 400% increase on a previous study in 1991, supporting the concept of a rapidly increasing problem.

However, in the fine print of this report we find that the bulk of this salt affected land, almost 7000 hectares, was contained in two areas where natural salinity has been observed since mankind first explored Queensland.

The biggest of these is referred to as the Yelarbon desert, where hard setting saline soils have been degraded by grazing. It is certainly not a pretty area, but has always been salty and the report admits it is ‘primary’ salinity rather than ‘secondary’ salinity, which is induced by farming.

This official estimate now indicates that salinity ‘development’ in the Queensland part of the Murray Darling Basin is confined to 2459 hectares, somewhat less than the prediction that it was likely to affect 628,000 hectares of land in this area. It currently comprises 192 salt expressions, with an average size of 13 hectares, affecting one hectare in 10,000.

Now, I am the first person to admit that salinity deserves attention, but the point I am making here is that the salinity problem in Queensland is not large and it is not escalating.

In fact there has been some good results with salinity control and the area affected has declined in recent years. An example of this is on one of the largest outbreaks to the north of Oakey. The ground water at this site is not too salty to use on pastures, and pumping for irrigation has lowered the water table and produced a good profit at the same time. As the water table has dropped, salt levels in the soil have retreated and gradually the productivity of the salt affected land is being regained.

A lot of emphasis was put on the need to halt tree clearing in Queensland to prevent the development of salinity. Not only has the salinity problem been exaggerated, the commonly accepted theory that salinity is caused by tree clearing, has been scrutinized and found wanting.

One of the most intensely researched areas of salinity is in the Liverpool Plains region of NSW. Careful monitoring, backed up by computer modeling has found the clearing of vegetation on the upper slopes to be a relatively minor contributor to ground water and the salinity problem. Small amounts of drainage over large areas of cultivation and runoff pooling on the valley floor have been found to be the important contributors to salinity.

Tree clearing on the hills of the Darling Downs, has been blamed for salinity. But the soils on these hills are shallow and do not hold a lot of moisture. If there is significant rainfall, it does not make any difference whether the vegetation is trees or grass, the soil cannot hold much water and some escapes to drainage.

Drainage which could cause rising water tables is very limited on clay soils as we go westwards. Research and modeling by rangeland ecologists suggest tree clearing has almost no impact on deep soil drainage on clay soils where the rainfall is less than 500 mm.

This means that in the western areas where most of the tree clearing was being conducted in Queensland, there is almost no impact of tree clearing on salinity.

Salinity hazard maps drawn up for Queensland were a big furphy. Large areas of Queensland were coloured in red, indicating a high salinity hazard. However, the reason for this classification in many areas, was that the soil contained a significant amount of salt in the subsoil. The ‘Catch 22’ here is that the salt has built up at depth in these soils over thousands of years, because they have very little drainage. If there is very little drainage, there is very little risk of salinity.

Where there is a problem, salinity deserves attention. Like many of our land degradation issues there are
ways to change farming practices which not only reduce the problem, but which can increase farm profit at the same time.

However some of the answers to salinity, such as agroforestry, salt tolerant pastures and more productive farming systems are having impacts in other ways. Forests planted in parts of Western Australia have reduced runoff into urban water storages. Last time I was out in the Western Australian wheat belt looking at salinity, the comment was made that if effective strategies for salinity control were widely implemented in the catchment to the west of Perth, it would stop the water flow in the Swan River.

The irony of salinity is that it is a problem caused by an excess of water in a dry country. Attention is now switching from salinity being a major curse, to how we can make use of the surplus water, even if it is salty. In Southern states, salt tolerant grass species are being used to utilize more of the water and restart production on saline areas.

One of the most productive ways to use salty water in the future will be to grow algae in ponds and harvest it for conversion to biodiesel. Algae is the most productive plant we can use to convert sunlight into energy and these plants can tolerate salt in a watery environment.

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First published in the Courier Mail on 25th August and republished here with permission from the author.

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June 13, 2006

Doublethink on Groundwater (Part 2)

Water is meant to be a really precious commodity in Australia, particularly in the Murray Darling Basin. Yet the Murray Darling Basin Commission recently announced, and with some pride, that the 'National Salinity Prize' had been awarded to Pyramid Creek Salt Interception and Harvesting Scheme, a scheme that evaporates precious water to sell subsidizes salt using old technology.

The project was explained on Television, on Channel Nine's Sunday Program:

"ROSS COULTHART: Courtesy of this month’s Budget, the Murray Darling Basin Commission has another half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money to spend. Much of it will be going on expensive schemes to stop salt reaching the rivers similar to this one in northern Victoria near Pyramid Hill. This is Pyramid Salt a private company funded with $13 million dollars of taxpayers’ money. Here they pump saline water from underground and harvest the salt it contains, for sale.

Does it make you laugh that people in Sydney are paying six bucks for a 250g box of salt that you blokes are desperate to throw away in this part of the world?

GAVIN PRIVETT, project manager, Pyramid Salt: No it doesn’t make me laugh. Actually, it makes me cry because the in-between guy is getting all the money.

ROSS COULTHART: But it’s only here at all because of an environmental blunder years ago, when attempts to lower the watertable under here ended up poisoning the Murray River.

GAVIN PRIVETT: Initially, what they looked at, they started putting drainage systems and then the problem was they realised they were transferring the problem from one place to another. They put in drainage systems. The next thing it was going into the Murray.

WENDY CRAIK: That’s true and I think that’s a fact of life, that science moves on, that people learn more about systems, learn more about what they should and shouldn’t do.

ROSS COULTHART: So it’s a multi-million dollar patch-up for a past mistake and it’s not a long-term solution for salinity.

GAVIN PRIVETT: You can’t put projects like this all over the place. One, people don’t eat enough salt. It’s a low value commodity. It’s not the answer to the problem. What we’re doing is we’re just intervening and I believe it’s probably as a short-term fix which we’re probably looking to buy some time."

Its not only a "multi-million dollar patch-up", the salt interception scheme is using groundwater, extracting groundwater, to evaporate the salt.

I explained in my last blog post with reference to a recent report titled 'Risks to the shared water resources of the Murray-Darling Basin' written by the CSIRO and published by the Murray Darling Basin Commission, in particular the section titled 'Groundwater Extraction', that groundwater stores are declining at alarming rates and that there is a high level of groundwater extraction in the Shepparton-Katunga region from the salt interception schemes.

The Pyramid Creek Salt Interception Scheme is in this region.

But this is the spin that the Murray Darling Basin Commission put on it in the media release announcing the prize:

"National Prize highlights continuing fight against salinity

A joint public-private salt harvesting scheme that each year diverts 22,000 tonnes of salt from the Murray River today won the prestigious Engineers’ Australia National Salinity Prize.

The prize for new technology and other practical outcomes tackling salinity was awarded to Pyramid Creek Salt Interception and Harvesting Scheme by the Governor-General, Major General Michael Jeffery, AC, CVO, MC at Parliament House Canberra.

The first stage of the $13 million Pyramid Creek Salt Interception Scheme near Kerang, Victoria, was opened in April this year and is funded by the Victorian, South Australian, New South Wales and Australian Governments through the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC).

Goulburn-Murray Water (GMW) has overseen construction and now manages the scheme on behalf of the MDBC’s partner governments, while Pyramid Salt run the commercial salt harvesting facility.

MDBC Chief Executive Dr Wendy Craik said MDBC co-sponsor the award as it serves to highlight the ongoing battle against salinity across Australia.

Dr Craik said the consensus of scientific knowledge underpinned the commitment Basin governments have consistently shown by investing in such schemes. “This prize will further encourage the important ongoing debate about the salinity challenges faced by the nation”.

“This prize also acknowledges the positive effects such projects have on communities, the environment and the local economy.

“One of a network of engineering works, schemes like Pyramid Creek make immediate gains against salinity Basin-wide and form part of the $60 million Basin Salinity Management Strategy supported by all Basin governments,” Dr Craik said.

“More than 1,000 tonnes of salt would enter the Murray River system every day were it not for the operation of these schemes at strategic points along the river”.

Pyramid Creek, like several other salt interception schemes, is a large-scale groundwater pumping and drainage project that intercepts water flows and disposes of them, generally by evaporation. The salt is then harvested for commercial purposes."

What's the relative value of the water to the salt?

What about a prize for a technology that gets rid of the salt without evaporating the water?

Posted by jennifer at 09:27 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 31, 2006

More on Salt: Badly Wrong Public Science

Since last Sunday's feature story 'Australia's Salinity Crisis, What Crisis?', I've pondered whether Wendy Craik's claim on the program that decisions in the past were based on the best available information really hold's up to scrutiny.

If funding is secured on the basis of the best available information, even if it is subsequently shown to be wrong, then there is no case for deceit or fraud. However, if an organisation or individual secures public money on the perception that salt levels are rising, that dryland salinity is spreading, or that an area is at risk of salinity, while withholding information that shows the opposite to be true, then there is a case for fraud. And I would suggest the culprits be treated no differently to the former Enron executives.

Professor David Pannell, University of Western Australia, made the following comments at John Quiggin's blog in response to a question about how the scientists managed to be so wrong on salinity::

"I’ve spoken to people who know exactly how it happened. It was a mixture of several things: failure to anticipate the dire political consequences of defining salinity hazard in the broad way they did (although they were warned); succumbing to pressure to provide results despite a lack of data; and in at least one state, yes, a shameless determination to ride the political wave right to the money-laden beach."

It is not a well kept secret that senior Queensland bureacrats generated maps that falsely suggested large areas were at risk of dryland salinity simply to secure money from the federal government under the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. If the same individuals were heading corporations, there would probably be more interest from the Australian media and other bloggers.

That's not to say there aren't some companies that have pocketed money from the same "political wave", to quote from one email received yesterday:

"The bad guys are not limited to the public sector either. Some of the worst abuses I've seen have been by private consulting firms shamelessly providing the answer that they perceived a state government wanted."

But the amount these companies have received is probably minuscule relative to what state governments have pocketed.

Last Sunday on Channel Nine, Nick Farrow and Ross Colthart went further than anyone has ever gone in exposing the politics of salinity in Australia. They began the program by suggesting that:

"Things are going badly wrong in public science."

Perhaps the next step is a judicial inquiry.

Posted by jennifer at 10:32 AM | Comments (39) | TrackBack

More on Salt: What is the 'Rising Ground Water' Theory?

Since last Sunday's feature story 'Australia's Salinity Crisis, What Crisis?', I've received comment that it is difficult to understand the different models and theories explaining dryland salinity. The dominant theory has been the rising ground water theory which Dr Brian Tunstall suggested was complete "bunkum" on Sunday.

In my opinion the model has some application, but lets start with a basic description of the theory:

If you dig a hole in the sand at the beach, or a bore in your backyard, chances are you will strike water at some depth. This water is often referred to as 'ground water'.

The 'rising ground water' theory is essentially based on the idea that if you remove lots of trees from an area or irrigate an area, then more water will percolate down than would occur naturally and the ground water will eventually rise. If there is a lot of salt in the landscape the rising groundwater will be salty.

The theory is applicable to many irrigation areas and I have previously written about how Murray Irrigation Ltd, in the NSW Riverina, has dramatically reduced the area at risk of salinity working from this model (click here for that blog post).

I have also acknowledged the value of salt interception schemes along the Murray River (click here for an article recently published by Online Opinion). These schemes are based on the idea that if the rising ground water is intercepted, and the water evaporated and salt collected, the amount of salt entering the Murray River will be reduced and salt levels will fall.

But a potential problem with salt interception schemes is that they can draw groundwater from a distance away, and in this way potentially suck the soil profile dry of water.

It really depends on whether the groundwater is confined or whether the ground water covers a much larger area and may be flowing underground along, for example, old river beds.

A fellow called Geoff emailed the following comment yesterday:

"As I see it and please correct me if I am wrong, there has been a blanket campaign to lower water tables to combat salinity. In reality, some areas need to lower their water tables while others have no water table problems. In fact these areas need to increase the water infiltration to leach the root zone salt down the profile.

Chisel plowing, stubble retention, avoiding excessive grazing are all well established and accepted ways of increasing this water infiltration by increasing the organic matter and bacterial activity in the soil. And, dare I say it; clearing trees followed by careful soil husbandry would be the preferred option in many areas."

It is worth remembering that many people in rural and regional Australian rely on groundwater for 'stock and domestic' as well as irrigation and that groundwater is not necessarily salty. Groundwater is mostly a very valuable resource and while the National Land and Water Audit gave the impression it is everywhere increasing in abundance, the reality is quite the opposite (click here for a Land column I wrote on this issue).

In summary the rising ground water model has some application, but I don't believe it has general application outside of irrigation areas in eastern Australia. I am less familiar with the situation in Western Australia. The model probably has limited application through most of Queensland and NSW and yet it has been applied inappropriately across this landscape including through the National Land and Water Audit, and specifically at places like Dick Creek (click here for BrianTunstall's explanation as to why Dick's Creek is a soil heath rather than rising ground water issue).

Professor Pannell, from Western Australia, has a different view. He has posted comment at his website defending the rising groundwater model and suggesting it has general application including in eastern Australia. He also supports Wendy Craik's view that the drought has lowered water tables. But hang on, which drought? Despite all the hype, the rainfall record for the Murray Darling Basin as recorded by the Australian Bureau of Meterology does not suggest the last few years have been partiucularly dry:

The last very dry year was 2002 and that wasn't unusually dry in the scheme of things.

Professor Pannell writes:

"Contrary to the claims expressed on the [Sunday] program, there is copious evidence in support of the rising groundwater model, including a catchment in WA [Western Australia] where groundwater and stream salinity levels have been monitored ever since the land was cleared. There are numerous areas where establishment of perennial vegetation has lowered watertables and thereby mitigated salinity (e.g. Burke’s Flat in Victoria, the Denmark River in WA).

Powerful recent evidence in the Murray-Darling Basin has been the decline in saline discharge in many areas, due to extended periods of below-average rainfall. For example, in a site at Kamarooka (northern Victoria), there was formerly a large area of saline discharge, but the recent dry period has lowered saline groundwaters to 2 metres or more below the surface for the first time in 50 years. This widely observed recent phenomenon is completely consistent with the groundwater model of salinity, and (unless I’ve misunderstood it) completely inconsistent with the soil-health model. The same is true of the fall in salinity in the Murray River, which was rightly emphasised in the program.

... I’d also be very interested to know how the alternative model explains the onset of salinity affecting roads and buildings in the middle of rural towns, or occurring within remnant native vegetation (where soil health is presumably pretty good). It seems to me that these things can only be explained by rising groundwater."

In fact a bit has been written about 'lateral flow' and 'soil health' to explain impacts on roads and other infrastructure from salt, click here for a piece by Ken Tretheway and Rob Gourlay.

Posted by jennifer at 09:37 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

May 28, 2006

Investigate the Scientific Fraud: Rob Gourlay on Salinity Research & Funding in Australia

Rob Gourlay from Environmental Consultants ERIC, is calling for an independent investigation by the Australian Government to get to the bottom of the claims in today's Channel Nine Sunday Program:

"The Channel Nine Sunday Program on Salt Solutions (28 May 2006) was a wake-up call to public workers involved in dryland salinity science and administration in Australia.

There is evidence that points to possible scientific fraud and deceit in salinity science and management that is controlled and manipulated by Australian and State government agencies.

Public workers have used a rising groundwater model based on claims that land clearing causes the groundwater to rise and bring salts to the surface. Computer predictions by government agencies during the 1990’s promoted a dramatic spread of salinity across southern Australia.

Public workers have operated as a cartel to control public funds on dryland salinity and exclude private industry R&D, innovations and services from funding schemes. Evidence now suggests that the public science and predictions were hopelessly flawed.

Many government agencies attempted to suppress contrary evidence from private industry and published false information about the capability of industry technology, while promoting their own mapping technologies and engineering solutions to attract public funds.

Environmental Research and Information Consortium Pty Ltd (ERIC) was one of the companies with an award winning technology in salinity mapping affected by the lock out within government agencies. ERIC has answered questions raised by public workers during the investigation by Channel Nine. These papers are at http://www.eric.com.au/html/news.html.

ERIC, along with many other independent scientists and farmers have demonstrated that degradation in soil health is the primary cause of an increase in dryland salinity from natural levels. This includes a significant loss of soil carbon and microbes, soil compaction and loss of soil structure (eg. hardpans); caused by conventional methods of agriculture. This degradation has caused less rainfall/irrigation percolation to the groundwater, soil salts to be released into the soil water and increased lateral flows of salts into drainage lines and low lying areas.
Public workers have been provided with this alternative evidence to the rising groundwater model since the 1950’s.

ERIC produced conclusive evidence in 1994 and provided further evidence to the National Dryland Salinity Program in 1997, including the House of Representative Salinity Inquiry in 2004 and Senate Salinity Inquiry in 2006. However, public workers have continually failed to produce evidence to support a rising groundwater model and actively denigrated ERIC’s evidence without disproving the evidence.

The Australian public needs to know the extent of the cover-up and protection racket by these public workers. An independent investigation is now required by the Australian government to get to the bottom of the claims in the Channel Nine Sunday Program."

A full transcript of the program is available, click here.

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May 27, 2006

Brian Tunstall Talks Dryland Salinity

It was not long after I started with the Institute of Public Affairs in July 2003, that Prof Bob Carter at James Cook University suggested I contact Brian Tunstall.

Bob knew I was struggling with dryland salinity issues, that I was feeling outraged by the methodology used by the National Land and Water Audit to propose that 17 million hectares of farmland in Australia was likely to become salt affected within 50 years. The actual area showing signs of salinity was estimated at 2 million hectares in 2002. This area was thought to be contracting. So government scientists may have overstated the aggregate dryland salinity problem by as much as 88 percent.

I contacted Brian Tunstall, and subsequently met his colleague Rob Gourlay. Both work for ERIC an environmental consulting company.

It was apparent to me back then, that government scientists had used a very simplistic and flawed methodology as a basis for successfully lobbying for $1.4 billion in funding. I didn't have as much a problem with the model they were using, as the way they were applying it.

It was good to met Rob and Brian. They not only had a problem with the methodology but also with the actual rising groundwater model. Brian and Rob's central thesis is that dryland salinity is really a soil health issue, a symptom of soil degradation not a result of rising water tables.

Brian is in the promo, click here, for tomorrow's Channel 9 Sunday program. He's the one saying, "It's a disaster for farmers and its a disaster for science".

Brian has put together some online articles that provide more background on dryland salinity, click here.

Following is an extract from one of articles at the ERIC website, explaining why one of the most publicised examples of dryland salinity in NSW is a consequence of overgrazing rather than rising groundwater. Obviously correctly diagnosing a cause, is usually the critical first step to finding and implementing an appropriate solution!

"The most publicised example of dryland salinity in NSW occurs at Dicks Creek just outside the ACT. This has long been used to illustrate the applicability of the [flawed] rising groundwater model and the seriousness of the dryland salinity problem.

The site is routinely visited by tours with the next stop being a site where the salinity problem is identified as having been solved through revegetation. Prince Charles has taken the tour and Mr Carr used the site as a backdrop for an announcement of new initiatives to address the environment.

With the rising groundwater model, tree clearing on hills is said to increase the percolation to groundwater with the adverse salinity occurring through this water rising to the surface on the plains. The rising water is said to bring salt to the surface from sub-surface stores. The water and salt are generally said to move vertically upwards on the plains although it is seldom clear whether the rising relates to upward movement or a failure to drain. However, in drained landscapes upward movement is necessary for subsurface salt stores on the plains to be bought to the surface.

A photograph of the highly publicised site (see above) shows appreciable woody vegetation on the hills. Moreover, those familiar with landscape hydrology recognise that the water is draining down the hill slope over and through the soil. There is an incised drainage gully which drains water from the soil profile and prevents water from moving vertically upward. The water associated with the impact is not part of any groundwater system and the flow is primarilylateral with all vertical movement being down.

Further issues arise when measurements are obtained of salinity. The electrical conductivity (EC) of a 1:5 soil water suspension is around 2.9 ms/cm for the surface soil and 2.3 ms/cm for the subsoil. There is excess salt but the agricultural rating for such levels is slightly saline with yields of sensitive crops being affected.

The land degradation at the site has arisen through grazing. Livestock have disturbed the surface soil and the lateral flow of water down the slope has eroded the dispersible soil. It is a typical example of hill slope erosion where the erosion is occurring through seepage of water through the soil as well as surface runoff. Salt is an issue but in terms of composition rather than amount with sodium promoting the dispersion of clay."

Brian goes on to ask the question, "Why the misrepresentation?".

Brian then quotes from a paper by CSIRO scientist John Passioura titled 'From propaganda to practicalities – the progressive evolution of the salinity debate' (.Aust. J. Expt. Agric. 45, 1503-06).

This is perhaps the first paper in which a CSIRO scientist acknowledges the extent to which the rising groundwater salinity model has some major flaws. In the paper John Passioura suggests that, "Our only defence against the charge of charlatanry is that before deceiving others we have taken great pains to deceive ourselves."

Tunstall comments,

"This identifies that the deceptions associated with dryland salinity have arisen from public research scientists.

The difficulty with the suggested defence is that self deceit is a fundamental characteristic of charlatanry. As self deceit is integral to charlatanry it is no defence and the comment attempts to justify the unjustifiable."

I know of scientists within CSIRO who were not at all decieved, but they couldn't see how to speak up. Afterall, to suggest the problem might not be as bad as suggested was to invite the wrath of many so-called experts.

Posted by jennifer at 02:56 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 26, 2006

'Australia’s Salinity Crisis: What Crisis?' ask Ross Coulthart & Nick Farrow

“Unless you’re prepared to redo thirty years of scientific research yourself, the debate on this point [the salinity crisis] comes down to a pure question of comparative credibility,” wrote Professor John Quiggin in April 2004, click here. John Quiggin was suggesting that I had no credibility on Murray River issues because my thesis contradicted "thirty years of scientific research".

In my discussions with John Quiggin over the Murray River, he has been reluctant to consider the evidence. For him, and many others, it’s been a case of backing the orthodox view, also known as 'the consensus'.

Anyway, some months ago a producer at Channel 9’s Sunday program contacted me. Nick Farrow said that he had heard that I had information showing that salinity levels in the Murray River were falling, not rising. I sent him a copy of 'Myth and the Murray'.

Some weeks later I was interviewed by Ross Coulthart, also from Sunday, and in the following video clip, click here, which is an advertisement for this week's program, I am seen stating that we don't have a salinity crisis, but rather an 'honesty crisis'.

Peter Cullen (a Director of the National Water Commission), Wendy Craik (head of Murray Darling Basin Commission), John Passioura (CSIRO) and others, are quoted in the clip suggesting the Murray River is not dying and that the problem of salinity may have been grossly overstated. The television reporter, Ross Coulthart, describes it as, "Misguided pessimism".

To John Quiggin, who has relentlessly attacked me, and my credibility, over this issues, I say:

Maybe I was just a bit ahead of my time.

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Following is the media release from Channel 9:

Australia’s Salinity Crisis: What Crisis? The SUNDAY Program Nine Network Australia Sunday 28th May 2006 - 9am

Reporter: Ross Coulthart
Producer: Nick Farrow

It’s an apocalyptic story of environmental disaster we all know so well.

The Murray Darling basin is being poisoned by salt. Adelaide’s water supply is threatened, along with some of our most productive farmland – and our beautiful rivers are dying.

It’s a frightening scenario. But is it true?

In this week’s SUNDAY programme, reporter Ross Coulthart takes a look at the real threat posed by salinity – and finds things are going badly wrong in public science.

As Coulthart reveals, some of the claims being used to support calls for billions of dollars to be spent on fixing a ‘looming salinity crisis’ are simply not true.

Salinity is a problem. But it seems nowhere as bad as we’ve been told by environmental groups, government departments and many in the media.

Claims that an area of land twice the size of Tasmania is under threat are false. The reality is a fraction of that. Even top scientists now admit the predictions of a disaster have been exaggerated.

They say this may be because the theory about what causes salinity in non-irrigation areas is flawed.

Worse still, scientists suggest a cheaper and easier solution for salinity problems is being ignored – for very unscientific reasons.

“It’s a disaster for science. It’s a disaster for farmers,” one former CSIRO scientist tells SUNDAY.

Taxpayers have now given Government scientists billions of dollars to spend on efforts to understand and tackle salinity. But how solid is the science behind it?

Watch the SUNDAY Program this Sunday 28th May at 9am to find out."

And here's the link to the video promo: http://www.nextgenmedia.com/nine/promo/sunday_060528_vid_300.asx

Posted by jennifer at 11:37 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

May 24, 2006

Fudging Figures on Murray River Salinity: More Shame on CSIRO

CSIRO, Australia's largest scientific research organisation, released a two-part report* last Friday on 'water' in the Murray-Darling Basin, a region often referred to as the food bowl of Australia. The icon within this region is the Murray River and salt levels in the river have long been considered an indication of the region's health and the sustainability of Australian agriculture.

The report reiterates "salinity ... as one of the most serious environmental issues in the Basin" and suggests that "stream salt loads" and "stream salinity" will increase. Part 1 of the report is 48 pages and Part 2 is 29 pages but there is only one graph of Murray River salinity and it was drawn in 1988, some 16 years ago. It is computer-model generated and interestingly begins in 1920 even though first recording were not made until 1938.

In my opinion it is both sad and deceitful that the CSIRO won't show us what salinity levels really look like but instead keeps republishing a dated and misleading graph from a computer model.

Would you like to see what salt levels are really like?

Here's a plot of yearly average stream salinity from when recordings where first made in 1938:

This graph is based on data that I recently requested and received from the Murray Darling Basin Commission.

A plot of all the daily readings for Morgan, a key site as its just upstream from the off-shoots for Adelaide's water supply, also shows a downward trend for the last 20 years:

This data was also sourced from the Murray Darling Basin Commission and the last data point represents last Friday, 19th May 2006.

It's good news that salt levels are falling. But no-one will acknowledge it!

A common 'excuse' given for the low stream salinity levels is that it's been so dry, "It doesn't rain so much in the Murray-Darling Basin anymore". But hang-on, a plot of rainfall for the Murray-Darling Basin shows no recent drop-off. The last very dry year was 2002 and that wasn't unusually dry in the scheme of things.

The graph is from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, click here.

Perhaps so much funding is dependent on the perception that salinity is a continuing problem, and so many reputations have been made on the myth, that there is almost an obligation to repeat the falsehood?

I reckon it matters that CSIRO and others keep misleading the Australian public on this issue. I reckon it matters that the federal government just announced another $500 million for the Murray River on the pretext that river salinity is a continuing problem.

* The reports are titled 'The Shared Water Resources of the Murray-Darling Basin' by Kirby M et al. 2006 and 'Risks to the Shared Water Resources of the Murray-Darling Basin' by Van Dijk, A et al 2006 published by the Murray Darling Basin Commission, Canberra and prepared by CSIRO Land and Water as part of the Water for a Healthy Country National Flagship Program.

----------------------------------------------------
This Sunday, Channel 9's Sunday program is planning to feature at story on the Murray River and salinity. I'm hoping that Ross Coulthart from SUNDAY will go beyond the empty rhetoric and show that the emperor has no clothes.

So if you live in Australia, watch Channel 9 from 9am on Sunday.

I've written a bit about the Murray River which can be accessed online including an IPA backgrounder, click here, and something for Online Opinion more recently, click here, and for ABC Radio National's Counterpoint with Michael Duffy, click here. I will in due course do a complete critique of the two-part CSIRO report.

Posted by jennifer at 08:24 PM | Comments (25)

April 01, 2006

Climate Models More Accurate Than Salinity Models

Some time ago I was sent a link to a paper by Myanna Lahsen, an anthropologist who spent seven years studying climate modelers at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research.

Her research findings seem to focus on what the modelers said, without scrutinizing the extent to which what they said about the models, accorded with reality. In particular Myanna found that the modelers were very attached to their models and sometimes confused model output with reality. But it is unclear from her work how accurate the models were - the extent to which they did accord with reality?

Last time I looked I was impressed with the extent to which well known global warming scientist, James Hansen, was still on track with his 1988 prediction (Scenario B) about global temperature increase.

Then again between his Scenario A and C, he was covering a range of possibilities?

But hey, all predictions, made back in 1988, have been consistent with what has been a warming trend over the last 18 years.

In contrast, government scientists who made predictions about salinity along the Murray, in particular the NSW Riverina, got it really wrong.

The following graph shows what the models predicted would be the extent of the problem in the Riverina with, and without, a commitment to catchment and farm drainage plans.

The problem of rising groundwater in the NSW Riverina once seemed intractable. In 1990 123,300 hectares was considered at high risk of salinity because the water table was within two meters of the surface. At that time it was predicted that if the irrigators did nothing, by 2006 228,700 hectares would be lost to salt. If the irrigators committed to a $473 million program with $150 million from the state and federal governments, it was predicted that only 182,620 million hectares would be lost.

The irrigators committed to the program in the early 1990s including the implementation of drainage works often including water recycling systems to reduce recharge to the groundwater and improve water use efficiency.

The actual area now affected by shallow water tables is just 3,758 hectares - this is just two percent of the area that the NSW government thought would be affected under the most optimist scenario.

While I am pleased salt levels have been falling in the Murray River, and that the area at risk of salinity in the NSW Riverina has reduced to 2 percent of what was predicted, I am always amazed at how many people ignore this great news story.

Earlier this week the Australian Parliament's Senate Environment Committee released a report about salinity. The report reads as though hardly anything has been achieved in address salinity in the Australian landscape.

The report recommends an extension of funding for the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality - a project that began in 2001 with a budget of $1.4 billion. It is unclear from the senate report how this $1.4 billion has been spent.

Senator Andrew Bartlett chaired the committee and has a blog piece on the report here.

The Senate report repeats the finding from the National Land and Water Audit's Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000 that 17 million hectares of Australian farmland could be lost to dryland salinity by 2050.

Yet various recent reports have shown the 17 million hectare figure to be a gross exaggeration.

As Mick Keogh from the Australian Farm Institute recently explained:

"Increasingly, researchers are concluding that many of the assumptions and much of the data used in generating this estimate were wrong, or should not have been used. There are suggestions, for example, that some State salinity assessments used to calculate the national estimate overstate the current extent of salinity by factors of between three and seven times, let alone the projected future extent. Several of the state reports had no reliable data to base estimates on, and many made assumptions about future groundwater levels - a critical element in salinity assessments - that defy the laws of gravity and science, and are not supported by available data."

At some point in time, the Australian community and the Australian Senate should accept that farmers have learnt how to manage salt. It hasn't gone away, but the area affected by salinity is contracting and this is a great news story everyone should be shouting about.

But they are not.

And I am reminded of a comment posted at this blog about the same day the Senate released the report. While Geoff Sherrington made the comment in the context of global warming, it seems much more applicable to salinity modeling:

"Modelers would be prudent to keep their frameworks up to date, with periodic testing and private comparison with others, until consensus is reached that the methodology is scientifically good and all plausible effects are quantified.

Economists should not make predictions until that consensus is reached, unless they like eating humble pie.

If, in my earth sciences past, our company had announced a new ore deposit and given figures for its value to the Stock Exchange that was premature, we would well have ended up incarcerated.

If we got our maths wrong and mined a body that turned out a dud, we could go out of business and on the street. These outcomes instill a certain caution and accountability. Greenhouse modelers who produce premature estimates don't have the same sword hanging over their heads. Their reward is more likely idolatry from supplicants."

Certainly the doomsay salinity modelers have received nothing but praise, and the science managers who repeated their predictions promoted including to the National Water Commission, while I am often called all sort of nasty names at the popular blogs including at John Quiggin's and Andrew Bartlett's for daring to suggest they might have got their predictions very wrong.

Posted by jennifer at 09:50 AM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

February 15, 2006

Can Trees Cause Salinity? Asks Ian Mott

Regular commentator at this blog Ian Mott sent me the following email:

Hello Jen,

We have all grown accustomed to the notion that it is the removal of trees from the landscape that causes salinity. But recent research from the Argentine Pampas indicates that the addition of trees to a natural grassland can also increase the salinity of groundwater flow systems (GFS).

This could have major implications for the management of salinity in the Murray Darling Basin, particularly in rangeland areas where major thickening events have taken place or where existing small clusters of forest have expanded onto grassland ecosystems.

The study, by Esteban G. Jobbagy and Robert B. Jackson, published in Global Change Biology compared 20 paired plots of forest and grassland and found a significant increase in groundwater salinity under the forested plots. "Afforested plots (10-100 ha in size) showed 4-19-fold increases in groundwater salinity on silty upland soils but less than twofold increases on clay loess soils and sand dunes."

While this study has been limited to planted forest plots on previously grassland ecosystems, the same causal factors are at play whenever forest vegetation expands on grassland. And it logically follows that the same causal factors will be at play when, for example, a 10% canopy woodland thickens to become a 60% canopy forest.

Jobbagy & Jackson have concluded that "Soil cores and vertical electrical soundings indicated that ...salts accumulated close to the water table and suggested that salinization resulted from the exclusion of fresh groundwater solutes by tree roots."

To which the average farmer would say, "Well, they would do that, wouldn't they".

The extensive, 1400 plus, rangeland sample plots done by Bill Burrows confirm that more than 60 million hectares of rangeland in Queensland is subject to thickening at an average rate of circa 0.25m2 increase in basal area per hectare. There is a further estimated 30 million hectares in NSW. And there are also numerous landholder reports of properties that had only 3,000 ha of Gidgee in the early 1900's but have in the order of 50,000 ha today as a result of major encroachment onto grassland.

And this poses an interesting question for the publicly funded anti-salinity industry and the policy arms that have focussed so much public attention on the removal of trees as salinity causal agent. If the lowering of a water table by excess bore irrigation can be widely recognised as a causal factor in increasingly brackish ground water resources, why has it taken so long to recognise that a similar lowering of a water table by the addition of trees can produce the same result?

It certainly invites the question, is there any similar research conducted here in Australia?

Clearly, the political exploitation of salinity appears to be sinking deeper and deeper into murkier water.

Regards,
Ian Mott

Posted by jennifer at 09:35 PM | Comments (47) | TrackBack

February 07, 2006

What the Farm Lobby Had Wanted: Salt Threat Grossly Exaggerated (Part 3)

Continuing my blog posts on salt ...

Mick Keogh, from The Australian Farm Institute, wrote in the Australian Financial Review that,

"Dryland salinity is a challenge that Australian farmers must continue to deal with, and cannot ignore. However, successful future management will require ...that all involved reject the crisis mentality, and instead become coolly objective about appropriate responses, which in many cases may be to 'do nothing'."

This was certainly not the approach that the National Farmers Federation (NFF) was advocating a few years ago. A few months before the detail of the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality was announced,with the promise of $1.4 billion in funding, the NFF and the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) made a claim for $65 billion!

At that time, the bogus dryland salinity audit, claiming 17 million hectares of farmland would be lost to salt, had not been released, but the NFF and member organisations knew its release was imminent.

This is what Wendy Craik, on behalf of the NFF, had to say to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineers in November 2000:

"NFF's membership was significantly encouraged to hear the Prime Minister himself acknowledge that compensation and incentives were necessary and key components of any implementation strategy for the National Salinity and Water Quality Action Plan.

Whilst we represent very different interests and viewpoints, NFF and ACF are under no illusions about the difficult choices we will face over the next decades. The sheer magnitude of the [environmental] threats facing us if we do nothing was a driving force behind the establishment of our alliance.

NFF and ACF - having identified the problem and put a figure on that cost, have proposed a five-point plan centred on:

1. a 10 year bipartisan commitment to tackling degradation;
2. national leadership by the Commonwealth Government;
3. a new scale of strategic investment;
4. strong private sector engagement; and
5. the active involvement of all Australians.

The future will be about repair and change to ensure agricultural production is sustainable and our natural heritage is conserved.

So how does the Salinity and Water Quality Action Plan, rate against the NFF/ACF proposal?

Bipartisan Commitment: We believe there has been acknowledgement by all sides of politics that the issues are so severe and pose such a threat to our resource base that action must be taken.

National Leadership: NFF and ACF warmly welcomed the leadership demonstrated by the Prime Minister in putting the plan to COAG and the commitment by COAG to its implementation. The significance of this commitment by COAG must not be underestimated, it is the first time that every leader of a Government in Australia has agreed to play its' part in an integrated solution to an environmental issue.

A new scale of investment: It is fair to say the Action Plan is not of the magnitude of investment which NFF and ACF demonstrated was required. We believe the Action Plan offers the groundwork from which a long-term, sustained commitment of significant resources must be made.

Our estimate is that, over 10 years, the public contribution required to achieve sustainability targets will be at least $3.35 billion a year, together with an ongoing maintenance program of $320 million a year.

In terms of government expenditure, this represents $3.7 billion per year, over the next decade.

Given that we spend $43 billion per year on the health of the Australian population, is $3.7 billion too much to spend on the health of our country?

NFF believes that all levels of government should commit to increased and significant levels of financial resourcing to deal with dryland salinity.

This will need to be delivered in the form of a variety of incentives and direct investment.

And it will need to be delivered by working with land managers and communities in the transition to new production and natural resource management systems that will combat the degrading processes.

Strong Private sector engagement: Achieving sustainability targets in rural landscapes will require major management and land use changes over the next 10 to 20 years.

We estimate this will require an investment in the order of $65 billion over the next decade. Of which we estimate about $37 billion should come from government."

The metropolitan media ran with the $65 billion figure for sometime along with interviews from leading conservationists and farmers ... both communicating the same message that agriculture had destroyed the Murray Darling Basin, and the Australian landscape more generally, etcetera, etcetera.

At that time I was working for the Queensland sugar industry and I could not believe the damage NFF was doing to the reputation of Australian farmers ... my protests fell on deaf ears. The focus was on securing money from the Action Plan, no one seemed to care too much about the long term implications of 'crying wolf' and so effectively.

................
Postscript

I received a couple of phone calls from bureaucrats yesterday about my recent blog posts on salt. There is concern that problems still exist and that John Passioura's paper "From Propaganda to Practicalities - the progressive evolution of the salinity debate" is not a completely accurate assessment of the situation. I am always keen to post the alternative perspective as a guest post, but someone needs to be prepared to articulate the case and put their name to it.

And while John Quiggin avoided comment at my post, he did start his own blog post on the issue, click here. Quiggin's Federation Scholarship at the University of Queensland is on the topic of sustainability and the Murray Darling Basin, so I am surprised there not more interest in what the models have, and have not, accurately predicted by way of water quality and dryland salinity.

Posted by jennifer at 12:31 PM | Comments (23)

February 03, 2006

Salt Threat Grossly Exaggerated (Part 2)

The consensus from Australian scientists in positions of authority on the issue of 'river salinity' and the 'spread of dryland salinity' appears to be crumbling.

As Mick Keogh wrote yesterday in The Australian Financial Review with respect to the issue of dryland salinity:

"Increasingly, researchers are concluding that many of the assumptions and much of the data used in generating this estimate [that 17 million hectares of farmland would be lost to salt] were wrong, or should not have been used. There are suggestions, for example, that some State salinity assessments used to calculate the national estimate overstate the current extent of salinity by factors of between three and seven times, let alone the projected future extent. Several of the state reports had no reliable data to base estimates on, and many made assumptions about future groundwater levels - a critical element in salinity assessments - that defy the laws of gravity and science, and are not supported by available data. It would be easy to dismiss these criticisms if they were just coming from farmers who have an interest in downplaying salinity.

But increasingly, the criticisms are coming from senior scientists and researchers employed by State and Commonwealth Governments, from University academics, and are contained in official reports and published research findings."

Mick Keogh heads The Australian Farm Institute and published several papers in the institute's journal last November (Farm Policy Journal, Vol 2, No. 4) by scientists and economists explaining that previous estimates were a gross exaggeration and that many of the policy solutions funded under the $1.4 billion Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality are seriously flawed.

I have been questioning the figure of 17 million hectares since the Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000 was first published*. I am on record in submissions to government inquiries and, for example, in Quadrant magazine in December 2004 explaining how myths are made:

"...[journalists at The Australian] have relied heavily on the government's report "The National Land & Water Resources Audit's Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000" (NLWRA) for information regarding the spread of dryland salinity. The document warns that the area with a high potential to develop dryland salinity (from rising groundwater) will increase from 6 million hectares in 2000 to 17 million hectares in 2050, as reported by Hodge in the Australian on March 17, 2001.

The NLWRA has been widely cited and was used to help secure $1.4 billion in funding through the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. It is therefore worth considering its technical integrity.

Interestingly, the report does not distinguish between what might normally be considered irrigation salinity as opposed to dryland salinity. It determined that areas with groundwater within two metres of the surface are at high risk of dryland salinity. The forecast ground-water levels were "based on straight-line projection of recent trends in groundwater levels".

Yet no data supports the notion that we currently have a situation of rising groundwater in the Murray - Darling Basin. Groundwater levels in the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Coleambally irrigation areas - the regions considered most at risk - have generally fallen during the past ten years."

I have also questioned claims river salinity levels were rising, and would continue to rise, including in my IPA Backgrounder Myth and the Murray: Measuring the Real State of the River Environment.

John Quiggin has been scathing of my work on salinity and my daring to challenge "30 years of scientific research". In April last year he suggested that the debate really comes down to a "a pure question of comparative credibility" and concluded I had none.

What a difference a year can make.

Now some CSIRO scientists are suggesting that their organisation may have got it wrong including John Passioura who wrote in a review paper titled From Propaganda to Practicalities - the progressive evolution of the salinity debate that, "Our only defence against the charge of charlatantism is that before deceiving others, we have taken great pains to deceive ourselves" (Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture, Vol 45, pgs. 1503-1506).

John Passioura also commented:

"Remote sensing techniques, especially aerial electromagnetics coupled with good ground-truthing, were revealing great variation below ground in the occurrence of saline aquifers, both laterally and vertically. The methaphor of the 'silent flood', the widespread rapidly-rising uniformly-saline watertable that as going to take out millions of hectares of our most productive agricultural land, was therefore being questioned - not by the mass media, who embraced it with the macabre fascination that goes with gothic horror novels, but by experienced observers of landscapes and of hydrographs."

Those who hate having to admit they might have been wrong, could now argue that Passioura and others are only referring to dryland salinity, not river salinity levels. That salt levels in the Murray could still be, just about to start rising again.

But come on, the boggie man with respect to reducing river salinity, has always been the argument that because of spreading dryland salinity, well, it would eventually find its way into the Murray and river salinity levels would start rising again.

This argument has now been exposed as just as hollow.

Let's accept, it now appears that I got it right on both river salinity and dryland salinity! I feel vindicated. But I won't hold my breath, waiting for an apology from John Quiggin or anybody else.

And I suggest Mick Keogh not hold his breath either, waiting for the ABC to correct the information at their websites.

-------------------------

*It used to be easy to access the Salinity Assessment on the internet but now I just keep finding this 'summary document'. Lucky I kept my hard copy!

Posted by jennifer at 03:29 PM | Comments (22)

Salt Threat Grossly Exaggerated (Part 1)

Mick Keogh from The Australian Farm Institute had a piece published in yesterday's Australian Financial Review titled 'Getting a balanced perspective on salinity'. It reiterated what some scientists have been saying since late last year, that they got it wrong with their salt predictions.

Keogh wrote:

Conduct an internet search using the terms "salinity" and "17 million hectares" and you can access almost 500 references explaining that Australia could have 17 million hectares of salinised land by the year 2050. Websites providing this information range from the ABC and the CSIRO, to Parliaments, the BBC, the Australian Academy of Sciences, major Australian and international media groups, educational organisations, environmental groups and even sites containing speeches by the Prime Minister and the Governor General. With such an impressive list of organisations, anyone from school children through to senior policymakers could feel comfortable that the figure is credible, and represents an authoritative estimate of the potential scale of the dryland salinity problem in Australia. Unfortunately, the comfort is ill-founded.

Increasingly, researchers are concluding that many of the assumptions and much of the data used in generating this estimate were wrong, or should not have been used. There are suggestions, for example, that some State salinity assessments used to calculate the national estimate overstate the current extent of salinity by factors of between three and seven times, let alone the projected future extent. Several of the state reports had no reliable data to base estimates on, and many made assumptions about future groundwater levels � a critical element in salinity assessments - that defy the laws of gravity and science, and are not supported by available data.
It would be easy to dismiss these criticisms if they were just coming from farmers who have an interest in downplaying salinity. But increasingly, the criticisms are coming from senior scientists and researchers employed by State and Commonwealth Governments, from University academics, and are contained in official reports and published research findings.

Despite these criticisms, dire predictions about the massive areas of Australian farmland that will become sterilised under an inexorable rising tide of salt continue to be made, and go unchallenged. Perhaps part of the reason is the innate attraction people have for doom and horror stories. Another reason may be that a salinity 'industry' has developed over recent years, which has a strong interest in maintaining the sense of crisis that brings funding with it. Perhaps a further reason is that environmental groups and bureaucracies have linked salinity to issues such as landclearing and biodiversity conservation, and have an interest in using the salinity "crisis" to maintain momentum on those issues. And undoubtedly a final reason is that the State governments which were responsible for this highly questionable estimate have done little to provide more objective and accurate data.

The fact that 'official' estimates of the current and future extent of dryland salinity are substantially overstated is in itself of little significance, except for two consequences.

The first is the false negative perception these estimates create about the sustainability of agriculture. Both within Australia and internationally, salinity estimates have become an albatross around the neck of Australian farmers, continually used to denigrate the industry and as evidence of poor environmental performance. Few would realise, for example, that the most reliable estimate is that dryland salinity at most affects around 2 million hectares, or just 0.4% of all farmland, that many saline sites predate European settlement, and that its economic impact is comparatively minor.

The real impacts of these false negative perceptions are difficult to measure, but include international consumers electing not to buy Australian products, and investors and financiers downgrading or allocating a higher risk to agricultural investments. They also include inappropriate land and water management regulations that sap farm profitability, and reduce the propensity of farmers to voluntarily take actions to reduce salinity threats.

The second consequence is more significant to all Australians, in that the crisis mentality has resulted in large amounts of public money being allocated to measures aimed at addressing salinity. Investing in massive tree plantings and other measures in the absence of good objective data and a commitment to longer-term monitoring is a sure recipe for waste and ineffective action on a massive scale. Unfortunately, that is the situation being forced on many of the regional bodies charged with spending salinity funds, and these bodies also face the threat of having the funding withdrawn if it is not spent quickly enough.

Dryland salinity is a challenge that Australian farmers must continue to deal with, and cannot ignore. However, successful future management will require State governments to make long-term commitments to establishing and maintaining salinity monitoring networks, so that a much better understanding of its current and likely future extent is available. It will also require governments to recognise that simplistic responses such as tree planting on a massive scale will result in serious economic impacts, and may create just as many environmental problems as they solve. It will also require that all involved reject the crisis mentality, and instead become coolly objective about appropriate responses, which in many cases may be to 'do nothing'.

Perhaps the most important first step, however, will be to permanently banish the phrase "17 million hectares" from any discussion or reference to dryland salinity, and for an apology to be made to Australian farmers for the unnecessary harm it has caused.

.................

Republished with the permission of Mick Keogh.

Posted by jennifer at 01:21 PM | Comments (38) | TrackBack

November 28, 2005

Rising Salt Problem in WA

A main premise of the following guest post from Boxer* is that across the West Australian wheatbelt, water tables are showing an upward trend. Boxer explains the problem and the need to act now if we are to learn from history and avoid the problems that destroyed, for example, agriculture in the valleys of the once fertile Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

I have asked Boxer for a link to some data that quantifies the extent of the rising water table problem. He has responded that:

There is no single place that I can find where a large amount of water table data is assembled in one place. This is not because there is a paucity of data, but I think because there is so much data, and the fundamental cause and effect of dryland salinity has been so well established for so long, that the publications over the last decade or two do not directly present water table data. The scientific debate has moved on.

If a problem is complex and widespread, all the more reason, in my opinion, to have a few agreed indicators and regularly report on how they are trending. Others may see things differently? The issue is important. Let's have some discussion. Here's the post:

Like a number of other people who comment on this blog, I enjoyed Jennifer's recent piece on Ockham's Razor (ABC Radio, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1509193.htm ) in which she addressed the arguments of various doomsday prophets such as Tim Flannery and Ian Lowe.

The Prophets of Doom have a list of iconic issues. I think it is healthy for the Prophets to be challenged because they have a vested interest in, for example, arguing that climate change will be the end of all things, just as coal miners have a vested interest in business as usual. Challenge them both.

On the issue of salinity however, I argue that dryland salinity is a major issue for this country. On this one, I am with the doomsday crowd. My vested interest? My professional life is bound up in finding ways for agriculture to adapt to rising water tables and perhaps even find ways to prevent the problem becoming as bad as the models predict.

Jennifer uses the example of the Murray River, where, at a point just upstream from the off-take for Adelaide's water supply, salinity levels have fallen over the last couple of decades due to salt diversion work. Good news, but is that a reasonable reflection of the state of affairs in the whole river system? I don�t know, but if you look at the experience in WA, and consider the forecasts for the next 50 years, it would seem unwise to be cavalier about this problem. I suspect that Jennifer's example may actually demonstrate how well the dryland salinity issue is understood. There are, I am told, borefields placed adjacent to parts of the Murray and they are used to hold the rising saline water tables down below the riverbed. Perhaps this protects Adelaide's water supply. If so, the success of this remedial work is evidence that the science is valid. It also indicates that there are solutions to the problem, and this is where most of the scientific effort is now directed, trying to understand the complexity and variability of the issue so that appropriate responses can be developed. But in relation to Adelaide's water supply, is the current remedial action all that will be required for perpetuity? The Murray Darling Basin is an extremely complex system.

WA makes an interesting case study because it is a comparatively simple system, in hydrogeological terms, and the hydrology has responded very quickly to the clearing for agriculture. About 10% of the WA wheatbelt (about 1.5 million hectares) is affected by salinity now. In the next few decades, this is expected to increase to about 6 million hectares. All the once-fresh rivers which arise in the wheatbelt are now saline. Across the wheatbelt, water tables are showing an upward trend; the lower the rainfall, the slower the rise, and in dry years some water tables stabilise, but the long-term trends are up. At this point, the sceptics may say, and reasonably so, "show us the data, prove that things are trending towards increasing problems". There is no single place that I can find where a large amount of water table data is assembled in one place. This is not because there is a paucity of data, but I think because there is so much data, and the fundamental cause and effect of dryland salinity has been so well established for so long, that the publications over the last decade or two do not directly present water table data. The scientific debate has moved on.

To illustrate the point by analogy, Columbus determined in 1492 that sailing west from Spain did not result in his ships falling over the edge of the world. The world is roughly spherical in shape. The Chinese had discovered this by circumnavigation of the world in 1421. I would guess that by about the end of the 16th century, it was no longer considered necessary to present evidence on every occasion that the world was not actually flat.

If you doubt that dryland salinity in southern Australia is caused by rising water tables, and/or you don't accept as a given that the water tables are in general still rising, you will simply have to immerse yourself in the literature and communicate directly with the people who are hold the data and are still collecting it. There are, as with all things in the natural world, exceptions to the rule. But these exceptions represent relatively small areas of land and they do not disprove the general understanding. On the national scale, they are minor exceptions and demonstrate the extremely complex nature of the issue.

A key reference that is still cited in recent publications is a 1924 paper by W.E. Wood (Increase in salt in soil and streams following the destruction of native vegetation. Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 1924, 10: 35-47). Another paper, viewable on line and available as a downloadable pdf file is available at http://www1.crcsalinity.com/pages/about.aspx. This paper presents a summary of the current understanding of the situation and cites 39 references to launch you on your way. But if you want to see the data that summarises the whole situation on one page, or even in a single journal paper, there is another rule that comes into play - simple questions produce very complex answers. The world is not flat.

The debate has moved on to the extremely complex task of understanding this problem and the processes in detail. What to do about the rising water tables, can they be controlled or lowered? Why does this remedial action work here, but not over there? Exactly how bad will it be when a new equilibrium between incoming rainfall and outgoing evaporation is established? These issues are far from resolved and they are the subjects of vigorous debate within scientific circles.

As with forecasting climate change, the future is predicted with models, but these water table models, while undoubtedly relatively crude and flawed, can be verified to some extent by the records from the last few decades. In WA, 450 endemic species of plants and unknown numbers of invertebrate animals are expected to become extinct as water tables rise, wiping out nature reserves. This process already well under way. Even if the predictive models are out by 50%, and even if only half the anticipated extinctions take place, will that be acceptable? Will this more modest catastrophe mean we are not subjected to trade sanctions upon our agricultural produce? For how long will North America and Europe fail to turn this issue to their own advantages by arguing that we are subsidising our agricultural exports by degrading the environment?

The Australian community encouraged and coerced farmers to clear the land. "A million acres a year" (of clearing) was the vote-winning catch cry in the recent past, decades after the paper by Woods (1924) was published. Self-sufficiency in food is a primal urge for all nations. And this nation, a precarious third world resource-based economy with a first world attitude, should be careful with the increasingly popular call to import everything but iron ore and coal.

Yes, farmers are increasing their production, but that doesn't mean they are not losing land every year; it means they are getting better at using the land they have left. We should applaud their effort, not condemn them for it. Farmers will not be able to contribute as much as they do now to fixing the problem if they are not financially viable.

Broad scale clearing of native woody vegetation ecosystems, particularly when combined with irrigated agriculture, has contributed to the decline of ancient civilisations, such as the Mesopotanian civilisation on the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern day Iraq. One of the major reasons for these declines was the degradation of the soil by salinisation. See for example, http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/concept.htm and http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/salton/TheSalinityofRivers.html. The degradation of agricultural land involving salinisation is an experiment that has been conducted before. The early data from the local replication of the experiment is in and has been used to sharpen the models being used to predict our future.

We need not suffer the same fate as the ancient civilisations, but first we need to accept that the problem exists and then devote adequate resources to finding solutions to the problem.

...........

Boxer is the 'nom de plume' of a resident of Western Australia, who regularly contributes comment at this blog.

Posted by jennifer at 09:36 AM | Comments (28) | TrackBack

September 21, 2005

'Red Poles' Also Costs Lots

Louis was perhaps somewhat baffled by my recent post on salinity. A reader of this weblog who lives closer to the issue sent in this comment from 'The Ringer', Download file. It perhaps provides an additional perspective.

The Ringer suggests the random red splotches on that map are just as controversial and costly to tax payers as the National Gallery's Blue Poles.

And all this reminds me of the 'National Land & Water Resources Audit Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000' which appears to provide detailed statistics on the extent and magnitude of our salinity problem. But on careful analysis it is evident that the document always presents a prediction - even when data is presented for 1998. The entire document is concerned with 'hazard' and 'high risk' without providing a single statistic indicating the actual measured extent of dryland salinity.

And then there is the 'National Land and Water Resources Audit Australian Water Resources Assessment 2000' which is also meant to provide salinity information. However, without presenting a single trend line for any water quality indicator, the report purports to provide, "the first overview of Australia's declining surface water quality with salinity, nutrients and turbidity issues revealed across most of the intensively used basins".

Posted by jennifer at 08:38 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

September 19, 2005

Mapping Salinity: What a Mess

Two weeks ago I received an email from Rob Gourlay letting me know that Brian Tunstall's response to the 2005 Spies and Woodgate Report on salinity mapping methods was available at the ERIC website.

Some of the issues Brian Tunstall raises in this review, include the same issues that I raised in my Land column of May last year, titled Challenging Belief on Dryland Salinity in which I wrote:

A recent released technical report, Salinity Mapping Methods in the Australian Context (January 2004), from the Australian Academy of Science restates the cause as 'changes in the water balance of landscapes following the removal of native vegetation and the introduction of European agricultural practices' (pg. 8). It predicts that the area affected by dryland salinity will continue to increase because of continuously rising saline water tables from the changed water balance.

This basic premise, however, was challenged by NSW government scientist Dr Christine Jones, who had articles published in The Australian Farm Journal in 2000-2001.

She contends that the 'rising groundwater model' has failed us because it makes false assumptions about the nature of pre-European vegetation and the way water moves in the landscape.

Rob Gourlay and Dr Brian Tunstall of Environmental Research and Information Consortium Pty Ltd (ERIC) independently came to similar conclusions through the development of an airborne gamma radiation salinity mapping technology.

According to Gourlay, 'Dryland salinity (in the Murray Darling Basin) is really a soil health issue, a symptom of soil degradation not a rising water table issue.

The Academy of Science report compares salinity mapping methods with the conclusion that the main 'knowledge gap' is the location of salt at depth and whether it is likely to be mobilised by rising groundwater.

The electromagnetic (EM) mapping technique that the report advocates for plugging this knowledge gap is expensive---up to 10 times the cost of doing the gamma ray mapping that focuses on the top metre and that Gourlay has commercialised.

The Academy of Science report was dismissive of the gamma ray technology for salinity mapping describing it as not having a scientific foundation and advising potential users of the technology to seek 'independent advice on claims made by the vendors'. Gourlay regards this as an attack on his 'professionalism and capacity to trade'. He questioned how 'publicly funded scientists who compete with the private sector can get away with using taxpayer money to discredit the only technology that has delivered benefits to clients at a paddock, farm, catchment and regional scale across Australia since 1992'.

One of the authors of the Academy of Science report, Brian Spies, works for the CSIRO and has been involved in the development and commercialization of the TEMPEST electromagnetic mapping system.
CSIRO provides commercial services based around the TEMPEST technology and hence the Australian Academy of Science report could be interpreted as knocking a competing service as well as promoting the CSIRO method.

The saga drags on.

It is interesting to reflect back to November 2000 when the Council of Australian Governments endorsed the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality with a funding package of $1.4 billion over 7 years.

As part of this package state governments produced a series of salinity hazard maps.

On 2nd August 2002 industry representatives gathered with media at The Salinity Summit at Queensland's Parliament House to hear speeches from State Premier Peter Beattie, Federal Minister for Environment and Heritage Hon Dr David Kemp and others.

The Premier's speech included:

"The first thing that we have to avoid is denial, and I am going to come back to this. The first thing we have to avoid is denial about the problem. There is a problem. ... We have to accept there is a problem, and denial is not on the agenda. It will not be on the agenda. It cannot be. We have got an action plan where all the stakeholders have a say in the solution. ...I want to make it clear that we stand by the science in the map. Its methodology has been checked and endorsed by the CSIRO, the National Land and Water Audit and AFFA. As I said before, I want to thank Dr Kemp for taking this constructive approach and lending this support to our science ..." (pg. 2)

A lot of government policy decisions, and government dollars were allocated, on the basis of the map the Premier proudly displayed that day. The map was all over Brisbane television that evening.

Ian Beale (a local landholder with a PhD) was reported in the Queensland Country Life (QCL) explaining that according to the government's own Salinity Management Handbook (QDNR 1997) the area west of the 600mm isohyet could not be at risk of dryland salinity - yet is shown on the Premier's map as bright red and therefore at high risk. The map with the isohyte marked by Beale can be downloaded here (600 Kbs).

This map that the Premier had proudly displayed at the summit, but with the isohyet as drawn by Ian Beale, was published in the QCL.

In March 2005 at the Australian Water Summit in Sydney I listened to a speaker from Geoscience Australia explain how technology used by the Queenslnd government to develop the salinity hazard maps and other maps used in catchment management planning were based on old technology. I queried this during the question session and Brian Spiers (a member of the Conference audience) volunteered that the Queensland scientists who put the original maps together were not skilled in the technology that they were using. This includes the map Premier Beattie said he stood by at the Summit and that he said CSIRO had endorsed.

Meanwhile Tunstall and Gourlay continue to explain how CSIRO has got it so wrong with the new review at ERIC. Tunstall summarizes part of the problem:

... This error could reflect deficiencies in the presentation of hazard and risk in the report as, while hazard is implicitly identified as being categorical, this was not explicitly stated. However, it demonstrates the limited ability of those producing the report [and maps] to integrate the disparate information it contains. If the information in the Report is inadequate for the authors to draw correct conclusions then it would be considered grossly inadequate for those that are meant to use it. If the authors get it wrong from the material presented then it would be reasonable to expect that most people will get it wrong.

This inability to integrate diverse information derives from a failure to apply basic scientific considerations such as the
form of variable (e.g. continuous variable or category), independence of observations (the advocated use of information that is
not independently derived results in circular arguments) and mutual exclusion between categories. This latter condition is illustrated by the failure to discriminate between soil water and ground water, and
the apparent confusion between geology and hydrology.

............
Relevant documents/links:

Peter Beatties speech at the Salinity Summit,
Download file .

The Spies and Woodgate report, (I am having trouble uploading my copy of this report, perhaps someone can send me a link? 19/9 at 6.30pm) (4,000 Kbs).

The Tunstall report at ERIC, Download file (678 Kbs).

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