Soil salinity is one of the factors limiting agricultural development of semiarid and arid areas.
Salinization is especially widespread in fine-grained soils which have a high water absorption capacity and a low to very low infiltration rate. The natural process of soil salinization may be seriously exacerbated by irrigation practices that add substantial amounts of salts into the soil. Salinization risk is great in closed systems with an impeding layer at a shallow depth. In the 1960's the Jewish National Fund constructed numerous small earth dams across ephemeral small watersheds. Runoff waters collected upstream of the dams were used for the plantation of small groves.