A Practical Desalinization Model for Large Scale Application

Abstract

Salinity of soil and water is the most important agricultural hazard in arid and semi-arid<br />regions. In saline soils, yield production directly influences by soluble salts in the root zone as<br />well as by shallow water table depth. The first step for reclamation of such soils is reducing<br />salinity to optimum level by leaching. The objective of this study was to develop a practical<br />model to estimate water requirement for reclamation of saline-sodic soils at large scale based<br />on some obtainable soil physical characteristics. Consequently, a large area of 3,216 ha with<br />S4A3 salinity/sodicity class (extreme salinity and sodicity) was selected to obtain the required<br />data. Several mathematical models were applied to the collected data to verify their estimation<br />capability. The results indicated that at large scale, the proposed logarithmic model can provide<br />much better estimates for leaching process than the previously proposed models.