Land reclamation | Methods, Types, & Definition (2024)

land reclamation, the process of improving lands to make them suitable for a more intensive use. Reclamation efforts may be concerned with the improvement of rainfall-deficient areas by irrigation, the removal of detrimental constituents from salty or alkali lands, the diking and draining of tidal marshes, the smoothing and revegetation of strip-mine spoil areas, and similar activities.

Reclamation of arid land

In the United States, the most extensive reclamation activities are those concerned with irrigation, particularly in the western United States. The United States Bureau of Reclamation, an agency of the Department of the Interior, has as its central purpose the construction and maintenance of dams, canals, and pumping systems to bring irrigation water to arid, semiarid, or subhumid lands in the 17 western states. Among the more than 600 dams constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation are Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River and Hoover Dam on the Colorado River.

Other extensive areas reclaimed from a desert or near-desert status by irrigation are found in Israel, Egypt and other countries of the Middle East, India, Mexico, Peru, Russia, and China. Irrigation of arid lands has been practised in the Middle East for thousands of years and extensive irrigation projects were developed in what is now southwestern United States by American Indians long before the arrival of Europeans. The real impetus to reclaim the arid western United States by irrigation, however, came about the middle of the 19th century when the Mormons established settlements in the Great Salt Lake basin, and settlers drawn to California by the discovery of gold turned to irrigation in order to supply themselves with food.

The extent to which land is improved by irrigation is related to the aridity of the land in its natural state. The deserts of the Middle East, the alluvial valleys of the Central Asia, the Imperial Valley of California, and the Columbia basin are examples of areas reclaimed from a near-desert state to a highly productive intensive agriculture. Land reclamation by irrigation is, however, not limited to desert regions. Much of the land irrigated in humid areas throughout the world is used for the production of paddy rice, although irrigation of vegetable crops, usually with overhead sprinkler systems, also is practised on a considerable acreage.

Many irrigation projects have failed because of salt accumulations in the irrigated soils or the silting in of reservoirs and irrigation canals. It is essential, therefore, that provision for drainage of the irrigated lands be considered in the planning of all irrigation reclamation projects and that water relatively free from dissolved salts be used.

Reclamation of land by irrigation was extensively developed by the Soviet Union. By the late 1950s the Soviets reported a total of about 27 million acres (11 million hectares) under irrigation, about one-half of this being in the Central Asian republics. The Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers were the principal sources of irrigation water in this area. These rivers discharged into the Aral Sea, and diversion of these rivers from their natural course caused an ecological disaster in the region. With its primary sources of inflowing water gone, between 1960 and 2010, the Aral Sea shrank to a tiny fraction of its former size. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the now-independent Central Asian republics bordering the Aral Sea struggling to coordinate a response to the crisis. The loss of the world’s fourth largest body of inland water led to more-extreme temperature swings in the region, and wind storms carried contaminated dust from the exposed seabed across the region. Populations living in the region subsequently experienced a range of diseases and disorders at markedly high rates.