By the early 1990s, it was widely acknowledged that dryland salinity is a major threat to the resource base of many rural industries around Australia. Despite considerable spending on the problem through both State and Commonwealth initiatives, studies on the national salinity R&D effort showed that a lack of coordination was impeding progress in developing better management practices.

The National Dryland Salinity Research, Development & Extension Program was established jointly by the Commonwealth and State Governments in 1993. It set out to collaboratively develop ways of meeting the challenge of dryland salinity.

In its first 5-year phase, the program dramatically improved the level of coordination amongst researchers and has established much stronger linkages between community groups and the research community.

Some of the major achievements of the first phase include:

• determination of costs of the problem and the development of guidelines for establishing costs in particular situations
• a range of improved tools and techniques for estimating that part of the hydrologic imbalance that is related to deep drainage
• a better understanding of the capacity (or lack of) of different farming systems to control recharge and manage salinity
• significant advancement in the conceptual thinking behind development of catchment scale models for salinity management
• improved methods for analysing the extent of dryland salinity
• greatly improved methods of using remotely sensed data to map and monitor the risk of dryland salinity
• identification of critical constraints to progressing better management of dryland salinity  

More detailed information about research completed during Phase 1 of the NDSP can be found by using the Phase 1 projects and
Focus Catchments links in this section or go to the Phase 2 research section for information about more recent projects.