Highly soluble salts are undesirable in agriculture because they reduce yields or the quality of most cash crops and can leak to surface or sub-surface waters. In some cases salinity can be associated with unique history, rarity, or special habitats protected by environmental laws. Yet in considering the measurement of soil salinity for long-term monitoring purposes, adequate methods are required. Both saturated paste extracts, intended for agriculture, and direct surface and/or porewater salinity measurement, used in inundated wetlands, are unsuited for hypersaline wetlands that often are only occasionally inundated. For these cases, we propose the use of 1:5 soil/water (weight/weight) extracts as the standard for expressing the electrical conductivity (EC) of such soils and for further salt determinations. We also propose checking for ion-pairing with a 1:10 or more diluted extract in hypersaline soils. As an illustration, we apply the two-dilutions approach to a set of 359 soil samples from saline wetlands ranging in ECe from 2.3 dS m-1 to 183.0 dS m-1. This easy procedure will be useful in survey campaigns and in the monitoring of soil salt content.
Estación Experimental de Aula Dei, CSIC, Ave. Montañana 1005, 50059 Zaragoza, Spain;Department of Plant and Soil Science, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas 79409, United States of America;Estación Experimental de Aula Dei, CSIC, Ave. Montañana 1005, 50059 Zaragoza, Spain
Recommended Citation:
Juan Herrero,David C. Weindorf,Carmen Castañeda. Two Fixed Ratio Dilutions for Soil Salinity Monitoring in Hypersaline Wetlands[J]. PLOS ONE,2015-01-01,10(5)