Barchans of Minqin:quantifying migration rate of a barchan

The migration speed of a typical barchan on the border of Minqin oasis,Gansu Province,northwestern China,was estimated by means of two methods.One is on the basis of a simple physical model and short-term field measurements.The other comes from the combination of the barchan internal structure detected by ground-penetrating radar and optical/radiocarbon dating techniques.The upper limit of migration speed given by conventional C-14 dating is 3.42 m/yr.The optically stimulated luminescence dating indicates that the time-average migration speed of the studied barchan was 1.78 m/yr in 28 years prior to 2007.The physical estimation further suggests that the annual migration speed has increased in recent years.

A wind tunnel investigation on the transverse motion of aeolian sand

A wind tunnel experiment was performed to investigate aeolian grain motions in the transverse direction, which is perpendicular to the incoming flow and parallels the sand bed. The trajectories in the horizontal plane were recorded by high-speed camera. Statistical analysis of 630 trajectories shows that both the motion orientation and the time-averaged speed follow Gaussian distributions. An exclusive method was used to analyze the driving mechanism. It was concluded that the three-dimensional turbulent air flow, rather than the spin of grain or grain-bed collisions, controls the transverse motion.

Theoretical expressions for soil particle detachment rate due to saltation bombardment in wind erosion

Saltation bombardment is a dominate dust emission mechanism in wind erosion.For loose surfaces,splash entrainment has been well understood theoretically.However,the mass loss predictions of cohesive soils are generally empirical in most wind erosion models.In this study,the soil particle detachment of a bare,smooth,dry,and uncrusted soil surface caused by saltation bombardment is modeled by means of classical mechanics.It is shown that detachment rate can be analytically expressed in terms of the kinetic energy or mass flux of saltating grains and several common mechanical parameters of soils,including Poisson's ratio,Young's modulus,cohesion and friction angle.The novel expressions can describe dust emission rate from cohesive surfaces and are helpful to quantify the anti-erodibility of soil.It is proposed that the mechanical properties of soils should be appropriately included in physically-based wind erosion models.

The varying fetch effect of aeolian sand transport above a gobi surface and its implication for gobi development process

The Gobi deserts are important landscapes and major sandstorm source areas in arid northwestern China.Unsaturated sand flow and decreasing sand supply capacity is well known as the basic characteristics of gobi surface,but relatively little attention has been paid to the fetch effect of sand transport which is closely related to sand supply and indicative of wind erosion process in gobi.Using a field experiment,we investigated the spatial and temporal variations on a manually disturbed gobi surface downwind a sand-blocking belt and a sand-fixing belt by measuring the sand transport rate and the height profile of flux density at different fetch lengths during a sequence of wind erosion events.Results showed that the sand supply capacity determined the critical fetch length(Lc)for the sand transport rate so that the fetch effect varied with wind erosion proceeding due to depletion of erodible material.The height profile of flux density above the surface followed two distributions:an exponential decrease with increasing height,which commonly occurred above the newly treated gobi surface during the early wind erosion events;or a Lorentzian distribution with a peak flux at a certain height,which often happened in the later wind erosion events.The varying fetch effect,decreasing sand transport rates,and the nonerodible area expanded downwind are an epitome of the gobi development and expansion process from the perspective of wind erosion.