What is salinization?
That is the level of salts or salt content in water or soil.
A lot of salts do we leach out or wash out of our body with sweating or with peeing.
But how do those salts come into the soil?
There are two different ways of that.
The first one is natural salinization. Where the water picks up salts from weathering rocks.
The second one is human-induced salinization, when the water, in which the salts are dissolved, is used to irrigate a crop. This crop only uses the water and, unless there is adequate drainage, the salts are left behind in the root zone.
There are as well two different classifications of soil salinity.
The first one is the saline soils. Those are the total salt levels in soil that are harmful to plant growth.
The second one is the sodic soils. Those are sodium salt levels that have a negative effect on soil and plant health.