Doctor Goodness

We realize here at Doctor Goodness that salinisation of Australia's landscape has progressed at a rate and extent that significant built and natural assets are at immediate or imminent risk of damage or loss.

The dominant national paradigm regarding our response to this challenge can be summarised as: if deforestation caused the problem, then reafforestation (or new farming systems that behave hydrologically like forests) is the solution.

This view underpins the majority of R&D and dry land salinity environmental management investment, whether through community-based approaches such as Land care or through the development and establishment of commercial silvicultural or agricultural alternatives.

However, over the recent past a number of analyses have been published that reveal the general inadequacy of revegetation approaches for the protection of assets at risk to salinity, given the limitations of time, scale, economics, water yield tradeoffs and in some cases the hysteretic nature of phenomenon.