Why Soil Salinity Is Likely to Worsen This Year — and What You Can Do About It
- 14 hours ago
- 3 min read
I spent some time this week visiting with Shane Jordan, a resource conservationist with SD NRCS based out of Brookings, South Dakota.
Shane has spent more than three decades working with producers across the northern Plains, and in 2025 he was recognized nationally with the Hugh Hammond Bennett Award—one of the highest honors in conservation planning.
What struck me in our conversation wasn’t just his experience. It was the quiet urgency in how he described what he’s seeing right now.
As he put it, "The main reason is it really hasn’t disappeared.”
He was talking about soil salinity.
And if anything, the conditions of the past year may have quietly set the stage for it to expand.
A Setup We’ve Seen Before in Saline Soils
Last year, across parts of the northern Plains, what began as a dry start turned into something very different. By mid-May, conditions flipped, and in some areas more than 30 inches of rain fell.
That kind of moisture doesn’t just grow crops—it raises water tables.
And when water tables rise, salts begin to move through the soil profile.
Now, as we enter a new season with exposed soil and the potential for dry, windy conditions, the process reverses direction:
Water moves upward
Evaporation increases
Salts are left behind on the surface
That white crust showing up in patches across a field?
It’s not a new problem.
It’s last year’s water, leaving the salts it carried behind.
The Real Cause of Soil Salinity: A Broken Water Cycle
It’s tempting to blame the weather alone—too much rain, not enough rain, a difficult growing season.
But that misses the deeper issue.
As Shane put it, “We have a broken water cycle.”
Soil salinity is often a symptom of poor water cycle function, driven by:
Simplified crop rotations
Reduced plant diversity
Periods of bare soil
Tillage or chemical disturbance
Limited living roots
Each of these reduces the soil’s ability to:
Infiltrate water
Store moisture
Support biological activity
Instead of soaking in water, ponds. Instead of being used by plants, it sits and eventually moves salts into problem areas.
Why Soil Salinity Could Worsen This Year
In many affected fields:
Soils were saturated last year
Crops drowned out in spots
Living roots were absent or removed
Soil structure was weakened
Now, those same areas may enter spring with:
Little residue
No active root systems
High exposure to evaporation
This combination creates ideal conditions for salt expression and expansion.
And once salinity shows up, it rarely stays contained.
What Happens If Salinity Is Left Untreated
Saline areas don’t stay the same size.
They grow.
Even when treated, salts can continue to move outward if the underlying system isn’t addressed.
What starts as a small patch can gradually take over larger portions of a field, reducing productivity and profitability over time.
Soil Salinity Management: What You Can Do Right Now
The most effective response is also the simplest in principle:
Reduce evaporation. Increase water use through living plants.
In practical terms, that means:
Identify vulnerable areas early (standing water, crop stress, low spots)
Establish plant cover as soon as possible
Maintain surface residue
Keep living roots in the soil
Even small, early interventions can make a difference. The longer soil remains bare, the more opportunity evaporation has to pull salts to the surface.
A Better Question for Long-Term Soil Health
Salinity is often treated as a localized issue—a bad patch in an otherwise productive field.
But the conditions driving it are rarely local.
They are systemic.
So instead of asking:
“How do I fix this saline spot?”
A better question is:
“What is my soil doing with water across this entire field?”
That shift in thinking is where long-term solutions begin.
Explore More on Soil Salinity (and What Comes Next)
If you’re seeing some of these patterns on your own ground, it may be worth spending a bit of time with the material we’ve been putting together on salinity—videos, conversations with producers, and practical resources from the field.
You can explore all of that here: https://www.growingresiliencesd.com/soilsalinity
We’ll come back to this in the next piece and take a closer look at what people are actually doing on the ground.
Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages:
1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more.
2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture.
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4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com