Cutting-Edge Tools Help Farmers Seek Out Salt
Washington, D.C. (September 2, 2004) - Getting too much salt in
your fields? A network of federal agencies is helping farmers in America's
Southwest to answer that question.
Led partly by scientists with the Agricultural Research Service,
the
network provides resources to growers who wish to pinpoint salt-affected
areas in their irrigated fields. High soil salinity can lead to stressed-out
plants and reduced yields.
The collaborative agency effort--known as the Lower Colorado
Region
Salinity Assessment Network (LCRSAN)--hopes to identify areas plagued by too
much salt and help alleviate the excess salinity. The effort is
based on a partnership between the ARS George E. Brown Jr. Salinity
Laboratory at Riverside, Calif., and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
(USBR).
Irrigation is a necessary lifeline for almost 1.25 million acres
of
agricultural lands in Arizona, southern Nevada and southern California.
But as waters are channeled from the Colorado River and its tributaries
and conveyed to needy fields, they inevitably pick up salts such as sodium,
calcium and magnesium from the rocks of corridors and canyons
along the way.
Through the network, USBR brings salt-detecting hardware and
software developed by ARS to salinity action agencies that, in turn, assist
their local farmers and growers.
Participating agencies include the Coachella Valley Resource
Conservation District and the Imperial Irrigation District, both in
California; the Yuma Agricultural Center in Yuma, Ariz.; and the U.S.
Bureau of Indian Affairs, along with the Natural Resources Conservation
Service office, in Parker, Ariz.
Scott Lesch, the network's technical program coordinator based
at the
ARS laboratory in Riverside, says that before LCRSAN, many growers were
ill-equipped to diagnose complex salinity problems. Lesch and ARS soil scientist
Dennis Corwin help train field personnel on using the new
remote sensing soil-assessment equipment.
Corwin says an ideal use of the ARS field equipment and software
is to
test the feasibility of using recycled drainage waters for irrigation.
This could help conserve the region's valuable freshwater sources.
Contact:
Erin Peabody
(301) 504-1624
ekpeabody@ars.usda.gov
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