When did science make the link between land clearing and dryland salinity?
The first evidence in Western Australia of salinisation as a consequence of land clearance goes back to the 1890s when railway engineers started to notice that their water supplies and dams they had developed for the rail had been salinising, and they began to link it causally to land clearance. The landmark scientific paper that established it beyond all reasonable doubt of that link between land clearing and salinisation was published in 1925 – so for 75 years we have known what causes salinity. Whether we have heeded that advice is another question.
