Annual Changes of Soil Salinity of the Saemangeum Reclaimed Tide Land during Last 10 Years

BACKGROUND: Through Saemangeum development project, 283 ㎢ of new land is planned to be created and the reclaimed land of 89.7 ㎢ will be used as agricultural land.Therefore, monitoring of soil salinity is required to evaluate the suitability of the land for agricultural purposes. METHODS AND RESULTS:We investigated changes of soil physico-chemical properties, including electric conductivity (EC), of the Saemangeum reclaimed tidal land (1,195 ha) from 2008 to 2017 to obtain basic data for suitable soil management of the Saemangeum reclaimed tidal land.Soil samples were collected from the sites spaced 200 meters apart from each other.Soil analysis results showed that average soil EC was 14.5 dS m -1 in 2008, and decreased to 6.5 dS m -1 in 2014 and to 0.9 dS m -1 in 2017.Accordingly, the soil area below soil EC 4.7 dS m -1 (accepted as farmable soil salinity) increased; 25.0% in 2008, 54.3% in 2014, and 96.9% in 2017.The annual decrease in soil EC was described as y = -1.5756x+ 14.6 (R²= 0.96), where y = soil EC and x = elapsed years since 2008.CONCLUSION: The soil salinity have decreased to a level for cultivation of most edible crops.However, since the soil chemical properties, such as soil organic matter were inadequate for the cultivation of crops, it was suggested that management of soil fertility would be important for efficient agricultural use of Saemangeum reclaimed land.