What is salinity? Salinity is excessive salt in soil and water.  From our experiments we concluded that salt water kills plants and water will evaporate leaving the salt behind.
	What is a water table?  A water table is the water beneath the earth's surface. Salt naturally occurs deep in the soil and it is brought to the surface by rising water tables. Land clearing allows much more water to seep into the soil and so the water table rises.  Irrigation can also raise the water table as more water than normal is soaked into the ground. How does salinity affect the environment? When the salt reaches the root zone of plants, they die.  This in turn affects crops and grazing pastures making the land useless.
Where is salinity a problem in the Australian environment? This map shows the areas affected by salinity. These areas have been cleared for farming ( cattle, dairy and sheep) and crops.  Land clearing for grazing and irrigation for crops are major causes of our salinity problem.
By  Ashleigh, Alexander and Matthew

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