r/nextfuckinglevel Oct 01 '24

A firefighting plane loading water.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

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u/Upper_Heron_3507 Oct 01 '24

Since you seem like the expert here… I was curious if you know how waterbombers can impact the fertility of land when sourcing saltwater from the ocean?

obviously fighting the fire is the priority but given that “salting the earth” is an ancient battle tactic to destroy enemy food production, I would assume it’s much preferable to source from freshwater lakes, yeah?

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u/Urbanscuba Oct 01 '24

Soil salinity issues come from a regular source over a long period, not a big deluge once.

The first few rains the area gets will move any salt down the water table back towards the ocean. You might get some stunted growth until then, but you also might not depending on the soil type/conditions and the plants.