Published: May 2004

In its second phase, the NDSP invested in research across seven themes:

• Theme 1 - Audit and monitoring
• Theme 2 - Industries
• Theme 3 - Infrastructure management
• Theme 4 - Policy and operating environment
• Theme 5 - Regional and community initiatives
• Theme 6 - Productive use of saline resources
• Theme 7 - Environmental protection and rehabilitation

An important report to emerge from the NDSP captures the key messages to emerge from the past decade of NDSP and related research, and offers an insight into the major, outstanding salinity issues requiring further investigation.

Breaking Ground - Key Findings from 10 years of Australia's National Dryland Salinity Program (NDSP) reveals that the more you know about salinity the more you realise you don't know.

A decade of NDSP research has provided many answers, but also demonstrates that there is still much to be done if we are to confidently identify the best management strategies for salinity in diverse situations. Tension still exists between farm and catchment-scale outcomes given conflicting national cost/benefit decisions made in respect to the options available at the respective scales. Over the period of this research the focus has shifted from salinity as largely an issue for agriculture, to an increasing awareness of the impact on infrastructure.

While the research has given us valuable insights into the causes and the impacts, practical and economic solutions are still elusive and their effects may not be felt for decades. This highlights the importance of integrating salinity management with other natural resource management strategies, but also points to the likelihood that in some cases we will have to live with salinity and we need to find ways to make that practical and acceptable.

In the light of this research, added to that of the first phase, six key messages emerge to guide our future response to salinity:

1. Salinity costs are significant and rising, hence responses must be strategic.
2. Profitable options for reversing the trend are lacking, but under development.
3. There is no one salinity problem: It challenges us to look beyond traditional policy instruments.
4. Integrated catchment management must be seen as only one approach to deal with dryland salinity.
5. Vegetation management remains the key to managing water resources, although the benefit:cost ratio of re-vegetating catchments requires careful analysis.
6. Lack of capacity is an important, but secondary constraint to managing salinity.

Many R&D priorities are identified in the Breaking Ground report, but the three highest priorities are:

1. Breaking Ground - Key Findings from 10 years of Australia's National Dryland Salinity Program
2. Developing profitable industry solutions: so that economically, environmentally and socially feasible options are in the hands of those managing the vast majority of Australian landscapes; and
3. Reconciling farm and catchment decision trade-offs: so that the potential conflicts in rational decisions at one scale with rationale decisions at another are minimised in the meantime (awaiting the outcomes of priority 2).

IMPORTANT: This report is now out of print however you can download an electronic version of  Breaking Ground - Key Findings from 10 years of Australias National Dryland Salinity Program (pdf - 585KB) (pdf 571Kb)

The report is also available electronically on the CD-ROM Managing Dryland Salinity in Australia - Key findings, Research Directory and Action Manuals from Australia's National Dryland Salinity Program which can be ordered from Land & Water Australia's Online Products Catalogue.