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National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality and Farm Forestry
National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality
The National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality is a strategy to tackle salinity and improve water quality in some of Australia’s worst affected areas.
The NAP supports regional communities and landholders to carry out targeted action in catchments or regions highly affected by salinity or at great risk. Commonwealth, State and Territory governments endorsed the NAP in 2000 and committed $1.4 billion over the following seven years.
The scale of action to redress the salinity threat, or to make a difference in fighting it, is daunting. The National Land and Water Resources Audit found that about 5.7 million hectares of Australia’s agricultural or pastoral zone are at risk. The figure could treble – to 17 million hectares– in 50 years (see Joint Venture Agroforestry Program (JVAP) publication Environmental and commercial outcomes through agroforestry - Policy and investment options 
PDF [400kb]).
Issues the NAP aims to combat include:
- Dryland salinity, caused by the rising watertable in areas of over-cleared land.
- Irrigation salinity, which occurs when irrigation water soaks through the soil to where the plant roots grow, adding to the existing watertable, raising the underground watertable and bringing salt to the surface.
- Excessive levels of surface water nutrients, which increase algae and pest plants that can choke waterways and severely disrupt natural ecosystems.
- Excessive turbidity levels that can affect natural aquatic ecosystems, increase wear on equipment and water reticulation systems, and make water undrinkable.
How does farm forestry relate to the NAP?
When strategically integrated into the farming system, farm forestry can help combat salinity and water quality problems, and provide the farm with another source of income.
Historically, trees have been viewed as a less profitable option than traditional agriculture, so farm forestry projects under the NAP are developed with two goals in mind. These are:
- to achieve the best salinity and water quality controls with the least displacement of valuable agricultural land
- to maximise the profitability of tree products before and after harvest.
An underlying cause of Australia’s salinity and water quality problems is the change in water balance that has occurred in response to land use change. Past land clearing practices have contributed to these problems.
Trees are most useful when strategically located in accordance with knowledge about interactions between trees, soils, the landscape and groundwater flow. In other words, you can use farm forestry for either recharge management or groundwater interception in dealing with salinity and water quality issues.
Design principles for farm forestry (JVAP publication PDF [1.67mb]) offers some useful advice regarding location of trees when combating salinity.
Where the causes of dryland salinity are linked to specific groundwater behaviour, strategic replacement of deep-rooted perennials may slow the spread of salinity and, sometimes, even mitigate damage.
This means that trees need strategic planting to achieve multiple environmental benefits. To successfully integrate farm forestry into the landscape to combat salinity and water quality issues, it is important to:
- understand the catchment-scale salt and water balance
- assess the costs and benefits of farm forestry
- determine the best area, location and arrangement for revegetation
- find commercially viable perennials
- capture farm forestry’s multiple benefits
Although trees are seen in many catchments as the solution for salinity mitigation, a balanced, well researched approach to tree planting is critical. Farm forestry offers great potential for improving water and land quality in farming systems and catchments affected by, or at risk from, salinity and water quality issues.
