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IMPROVING THE OUTCOMES OF SALINITY MANAGEMENT IN AUSTRALIA’S REGOLITH LANDSCAPES: LESSONS LEARNED FROM 5 YEARS OF RESEARCH IN CRC LEME, AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES IDENTIFIED

In the last five years, CRC LEME, in partnership with a range of Natural Resource Management (NRM) agencies and regional communities across Australia, has successfully demonstrated how multi-disciplinary geoscience approaches can be used to address more effectively a range of salinity-related NRM issues. In particular, new insights into Australia’s regolith landscapes, and processes operating within these landscapes, combined with the acquisition of new 3D geospatial data layers, have significantly improved confidence levels in models that are used to prioritise and target salinity management investments across a wide range of landscapes and land use settings. While there have been significant outcomes from salinity research in Program 4 (P4), much remains to be done. For example, fundamental flaws in the methods used to predict salinity in the National Land and Water Resources Audit (2000) have not yet been addressed, and great uncertainty remains about the future extent and timeframes for the development of salinity across Australia. In this context, salinity is a symptom of broader water balance and climate change issues, and some fundamental research remains to be done to ascertain climate change impacts, and the hazard from infrequent extreme events in particular. There is also still considerable scope for research into the dynamics of salinity in a range of landscapes, climate zones and land use scenarios, and significant gaps in our understanding of the capacity of natural systems to respond to salinity under its diverse manifestations, risks and hazards. In summary, a demand has now been created for regolith-based services and products to underpin salinity management and broader NRM issues in Australia. CRC LEME has pioneered the development of new approaches and products in a number of case studies, although it is not clear how these will be rolled out in a post-CRC LEME world. Knowledge transfer is hampered by a lack of suitably skilled staff in many NRM agencies and the private sector. This is not just an issue confined to Australia, as much of P4’s science has relevance internationally. KEY LESSONS LEARNED IN THE FIRST 5 YEARS OF PROGRAM 4 (P4) RESEARCH There have been over 40 projects carried out in P 4 in the past 5 years, and many of these projects have contributed valuable new science insights, as well as assisting with salinity and broader environmental management outcomes. It is not possible in this paper to summarise all the program achievements, so a few key highlights are documented below. 1. Development of a holistic, multi-disciplinary, multi-scale systems approach to mapping and predicting salinity hazard and risk in regolith landscapes. At a high level, this approach underpins the whole program approach to mapping and predicting salinity hazard and risk, and underpins development of appropriate salinity risk management strategies and management actions. The approach has provided the conceptual framework for demonstrating the relevance of geoscience datasets and approaches, notably the perceived value and relevance of airborne and ground geophysics and regolith studies in NRM applications. Adoption of a systems approach has been recommended by the joint Academies Salinity Mapping Review for application to the mapping and prediction of salinity hazard and risk in Australia, and underpins the airborne geophysics component of the $20m Australian Government Community Stream Sampling and Salinity Mapping Project. The approach seeks to map and characterise key biophysical components of the hydrogeological system critical to the movement of water and salts in the landscape, and to integrate spatial characterisation with studies of water and salinity dynamics. This approach has enabled geophysical and regolith datasets to be integrated with hydrogeochemistry, and through appropriate modelling interfaces, has led to the development of a range of new salinity hazard and risk products, Regolith 2006 Consolidation and Dispersion of Ideas