Salinity Province 31, Edenhope

The large Edenhope Salinity Province to the south of the Little Desert National Park is characterised by its dominant NNW to SSE oriented ridgelines and intervening swales, which often contain lunette-bordered lakes of the Parilla Sand. Left behind by the retreat of the ocean several million years ago, the coastal dune landform has poorly developed surface drainage, and while it provides a regional scale Groundwater Flow System (GFS), dryland salinity is mostly natural and associated with the many small lakes and depression drainage lines at the lower landscape elevations. Overlying this is a local to intermediate scale GFSs of aeolian, alluvial and paludal sediments. With the clearance of the original vegetation, wetter climate periods resulted in high watertables under low-lying areas.

Best management practices include avoiding disturbance of known waterlogged and saline sodic soil areas and their protection from damage. Farming should concentrate effort on adjacent up-slope soils to increase perennial pastures and native re-vegetation to reduce recharge during wet periods.