Definition
Soils with high concentrations of halite (NaCl) or other soluble evaporites such as additional chlorides, sulfates, or nitrates.
Saline soils may occur naturally in coastal mudflats (sabkhas), desiccated lakes and pans, and ephemeral river environments and are particularly common in desert environments such as the coastal Gulf States, the Middle East, Northern Africa, Asian interior, arid and some semiarid parts of South and North America, Australia, Southern Africa, and Spain. They have also been identified in the Arctic permafrost (Brouchkov 2003) and reclaimed land. The sources of salt may be seawater or dissolved salts from sedimentary bedrock which are concentrated in areas of shallow water tables (Salama et al. 1999) and high evaporation rates. Saline soils are a particularly common by-product of dryland irrigation but can also be the result of seawater intrusion and even atmospheric sea spray inputs.
Saline soils may depict a white surface crust and altered physical...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Brouchkov A (2003) Frozen saline soils of the Arctic coast: their distribution and engineering properties. Permafrost: Lisse, Swets & Zeitlinger, pp 95–100
Charola AE (2000) Salts in the deterioration of porous materials: an overview. J Am Inst Conserv 39(3):327–343
Metternicht GI, Zinck JA (2003) Remote sensing of soil salinity: potentials and constraints. Remote Sens Environ 85(1):1–20
Qadir M, Ghafoor A, Murtaza G (2000) Amelioration strategies for saline soils: a review. Land Degrad Dev 11(6):501–521
Salama RB, Otto CJ, Fitzpatrick RW (1999) Contributions of groundwater conditions to soil and water salinization. Hydrogeol J 7(1):46–64
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Eckardt, F. (2017). Saline Soils. In: Bobrowsky, P., Marker, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Engineering Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12127-7_249-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12127-7_249-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-12127-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-12127-7
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Earth and Environm. ScienceReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Earth and Environmental Sciences