Old Macdonald Needs a Geophysicist
Abstract
The stress of agriculture on the land is starting to cause long term problems which are going to be difficult and expensive to reverse. These effects coupled with low commodity prices and a very narrow profitability margin will drive the need for better information for land and catchment management. Over 10% of once productive land in the southwest agricultural area in Western Australia is now affected by dryland salinity. Groundwater models suggest that even replanting 50% of the landscape back to trees will only slow the development of more salinity with eventually some 30% of the agricultural area going saline. Pumping and drainage are now being examined to further assist.
The scale of the problem is enormous and the cost of remedial works will run into billions of dollars before it is completed. There are few long term economic options open to farmers that can give the returns achieved from broad acre cereals. Farmers now have to choose between alienating their land with salinity or with remedial actions.
Thus there is a need to provide good quality , high resolution data about the ground and subsurface processes that can be used to optimise decisions.