Soil salinization refers to the accumulation of water-soluble salts in the upper part of the soil profile. Excessive levels of soil salinity affects crop production, soil health, and ecosystem functioning. This phenomenon threatens agriculture, food security, soil stability, and fertility leading to land degradation and loss of essential soil ecosystem services that are fundamental to sustaining life. In this review, we synthesize recent advances in soil salinization at various spatial and temporal scales, ranging from global to core, pore, and molecular scales, offering new insights and presenting our perspective on potential future research directions to address key challenges and open questions related to soil salinization. Globally, we identify significant challenges in understanding soil salinity, which are (a) the considerable uncertainty in estimating the total area of salt-affected soils, (b) geographical bias in ground-based measurements of soil salinity, and (c) lack of information and data detailing secondary salinization processes, both in dry- and wetlands, particularly concerning responses to climate change. At the core scale, the impact of salt precipitation with evolving porous structure on the evaporative fluxes from porous media is not fully understood. This knowledge is crucial for accurately predicting soil water loss due to evaporation. Additionally, the effects of transport properties of porous media, such as mixed wettability conditions, on the saline water evaporation and the resulting salt precipitation patterns remain unclear. Furthermore, effective continuum equations must be developed to accurately represent experimental data and pore-scale numerical simulations.

中文翻译：

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从整体到孔隙尺度的多尺度土壤盐渍化动态：综述


土壤盐碱化是指水溶性盐类在土壤剖面上部的积累。土壤盐分过高会影响作物生产、土壤健康和生态系统功能。这种现象威胁着农业、粮食安全、土壤稳定性和肥力，导致土地退化和对维持生命至关重要的基本土壤生态系统服务的丧失。在这篇综述中，我们综合了从全球到核心、孔隙和分子尺度等不同空间和时间尺度上土壤盐渍化的最新进展，提供了新的见解，并提出了我们对未来潜在研究方向的看法，以解决相关的关键挑战和悬而未决的问题。导致土壤盐碱化。在全球范围内，我们发现了了解土壤盐分的重大挑战，其中包括：(a) 估计受盐影响土壤总面积时存在相当大的不确定性；(b) 土壤盐分地面测量存在地理偏差；(c) 缺乏科学依据。详细介绍旱地和湿地次生盐碱化过程的信息和数据，特别是有关应对气候变化的信息和数据。在核心尺度上，盐析与多孔结构的演变对多孔介质蒸发通量的影响尚不完全清楚。这些知识对于准确预测蒸发引起的土壤水流失至关重要。此外，多孔介质的传输特性（例如混合润湿性条件）对盐水蒸发和由此产生的盐沉淀模式的影响仍不清楚。此外，必须开发有效的连续方程来准确表示实验数据和孔隙尺度数值模拟。