Impact of Drought on Soil

Impacts of drought on soil resources management in Australia.

Over the last decade the drought has been a visible part of the Australian live, the drought in the Australian agricultural and farming community resulted in a range of social and economic impacts on both the rural and metropolitan residence. Although the impact of the drought has had grave results on the soil resources, other contributors have had a direct impact on the current situation such as European style farming, water drilling, land clearing and other farming practices that are common until today.

Early farming methods in Australia was highly criticised for the focus by planters upon clearing new land and extending acreages (Griggs: 2004), this practice directly eliminated local and native plants and grasses in order to accommodate the new crops for the new settlers. Griggs also pointed out other very important factors along with the wide expansion for extra land; which was the farmer did not routinely attend to deep plowing, proper drainage, crop rotation, or adequate fertilizing.

Farming crops that was brought from mainly Europe in the early days of Australian settlement, are water thirsty crops, in contrast to the native vegetation is very water conservative (Luntz:2000).

Land clearing also resulted in the gradual erosion of the top soil from the farming land; loss of top soil reduces the ability of soil to store water nutrient and exposes sub-soils, which have poor physical and chemical properties. In Queensland another factor that lead to higher rate of erosion of top soil was heavy rain fall on bare soil causes the soil surface to seal, Rainfall then starts to runoff, increasing erosion potential as the runoff begins to concentrate (Carey:2006).

Farming is not the only agricultural sector that is affected by the drought, grassing suffers equally as a direct result from the drought and the clearing of native plants. Traditional grassing grass have suffered from the drought and in turn grassing animals are facing less feed and lower notorious levels. As a result a higher energy feeds is needed (brisendine:1993), this bestows extra cost on the grower and has to be introduced gradually to their eating habits.

Poor management practices have contributed to Salinity. Tree clearing can result