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6.3 Integrated Solutions
Development of integrated catchment solutions to salinity management has been a
vision for salinity managers. The goal of integrating recovery, containment and
adaptation options within agricultural catchments has been driven by conceptualisa-
tion of the problem being of a scale that necessitates regional control, and from a
viewpoint that aligns to the principles of community action through tools such as
Landcare and Integrated Catchment Management (ICM). This has also been rein-
forced by science that develops catchment-driven ‘conceptual models’ that are rein-
forced with numerical models that estimate the probability of treatments having
impacts that should be accumulated by applying treatments at scale.
ICM has some significant limitations in the context of hydrological issues like
dryland salinity. Technically, George ( 1992 ) and George et al. ( 1997 , 1999 ) identi-
fied that the governing scale for salinity processes relevant to agricultural systems
and its management is at a local scale. In general terms, the processes driving dry-
land salinity are well understood (Grundy et al. 2007 ) but there is variability in
changes in expression of salinity over time. This variability is increased further as the
rainfall (the input to the system) is also highly variable. The landscape is heteroge-
neous, and landscape properties such as topography, aquifer parameters all vary. The
scale of the different groundwater systems results in different groundwater response
times, which influence the lag between action and impact (Gilfedder et al. 2009 ;
Walker et al. 2015 ). This variability makes it difficult to predict with certainty the
expression of salinity in the broader landscape. The time-lags between implantation
of options and impact are much greater for dispersed management approaches. As a
result, treatments located at a distance from the affected site and unlikely to be effec-
tive unless implemented at a considerable scale in which case they are unlikely to be
cost effective unless they are economic in their own right (Gilfedder et al. 2016 ).
Not understanding the consequence of this approach has resulted in well-intended
but unrealistic salinity management programs. An example in Western Australian is
the funding of four catchment groups (AUD $6 M) under the banner of the Catchment
Demonstration Initiative (Robertson et al. 2009 ). Developed in 2000, and delivered
between 2002 and 2008, the CDI project sought catchment management proposals
from 22 groups across Western Australia and funded four who were successful in
providing technically-based integrated catchment plans for co- investment.
Robertson et al. ( 2009 ) reviewed the outcomes, noting while the technical elements
were sound at a planning level, the expectation of impact and the social and eco-
nomic consequences were underestimated, as was the level of benefit and risk.
ICM for salinity management is confounded by the lack of economically-
attractive solutions and the technical complexities of scale required for impact, and
more specifically, there is a disincentive for managers who are not directly affected
or benefiting from the action to adopt it – and certainly not if it is sub economic.
Additionally, ICM assumes a level of accountability, group cohesion and capability
at the catchment scale that may not exist outside a well-funded project and within a
commercial farming business and local wheatbelt community context.
D.J. McFarlane et al.