Salinity and salinity-inclusive water scarcity impacts on crop production in irrigated regions worldwide

Global irrigated crop production risks being severely limited by both water shortages and salinity of the soil and water system.

These risks also are expected to further intensify with ongoing global change pressures, such as increasing drought frequency and severity, which decrease water availability and increase salinity.

Although these are well-known issues, no global study has yet quantified the influence of salinity on crop yield changes in irrigated regions.

This project will target this main challenge, by developing novel globally applicable data-driven multi-regression, machine learning and mass balance models to assess salinity-crop feedbacks across space and time.

A salinity-inclusive water scarcity framework will also be used to evaluate the impact of salinity as a key water quality parameter for irrigation water scarcity.

Together, these methods will enable quantifications of the impacts of both soil and water salinity and salinity-inclusive water scarcity on crop yields, under current to future global change conditions.

This project will also explore where and to what extent different agricultural and water management strategies can aid in lowering negative impacts of salinity on crop production.

Disentangling such salinity-crop feedbacks across large scales is central for developing sustainable irrigation solutions and addressing global food challenges.