Salinity Province 101, Ravenswood Nuggetty

The Ravenswood_Nuggetty Salinity Province is dominated by a circular landform developed from a deeply weathered Devonian granitic pluton, enclosed by the remnants of the surrounding metamorphic aureole. These remnants form the ridges that make up the landscape’s high points. The ridges converge the drainage patterns onto the weathered pluton that, when coupled with its restricted drainage, develops a shallow watertable particularly at the valley floor. Dryland salinity is mostly associated with local to intermediate scale Groundwater Flow Systems in the deeply weathered granitic and colluvial landscape, and to a lesser extent with similar scale systems in the weathered, fractured Palaeozoic meta-sediments. It typically occurs within the low-lying areas and deeply incised drainage lines of the weathered granite and to a lesser extent at ‘break-of-slope’ locations in the meta-sediments.

Landuse an almost exclusively dryland pasture/grazing, with some minor cropping. Fenced tree planting and perennial pasture planting for recharge control has been undertaken in the province with good success.