Assessing changes in wind erosion climatic erosivity in China’s dryland region during 1961–2012

Abstract

China's dryland region has serious wind erosion problem and is sensitive to climate change due to its fragile ecological condition. Wind erosion climatic erosivity is a measure of climatic factors influencing wind erosion, therefore, evaluation of its intensity and response to recent climate changes can contribute to the understanding of climate change effect on wind erosion risk. Using the FAO equation, GIS and statistical analysis tools, this study quantified the climatic erosivity, analyzed its spatiotemporal variations, and detected the trend and sensitivity to climate factors during 1961-2012. The results indicate that mean annual climatic erosivity was 2-166 at 292 stations and 237-471 at 6 stations, with the spatial distribution highly in accordance with wind speed (R 2 = 0.94). The climatic erosivity varied greatly over time with the annual variation (CV) of 14.7%-108.9% and monthly variation (concentration degree) of 0.10-0.71 in the region. Meanwhile, annual erosivity showed a significant downward trend at an annual decreasing rate mostly above 1.0%. This significantly decreasing trend was mainly attributed to the obvious decline of wind speed during the period. The results suggest that the recent climate changes were highly possible to induce a decrease of wind erosion risk in China's dryland region.

Spatial and Temporal Variation of Wind Erosion Climatic Erosivity and Its Response to ENSO in the Otindag Desert, China

“…The major alterations were associated with the frequency and intensity of wind events and precipitation patterns. These changes influence not only the wind erosivity, but also adversely affect the land erodibility [2][3][4][5][6].…”

“…Therefore, due to the data limitations, these models are generally unsuitable analyses of wind erosion at large-scale. In contrast, the wind erosion climatic factor (C-factor), commonly referred to as the indicator of wind erosion, can be used to measure the trend of climate change and its influence on wind erosion conditions [5,9]. Therefore, the spatial and temporal distribution difference of the C-factor often indicates the wind erosion potential of the region [10].…”

“…Wind erosion region is the basic unit of desertification control, soil conservation inventory and planning. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the spatial distribution of climatic erosivity [5].…”

Interactive effects of wind speed, vegetation coverage and soil moisture in controlling wind erosion in a temperate desert steppe, Inner Mongolia of China

“…Wind erosion, the wind-forced movement of surface soil particles (Řeháček et al, 2017), is a continuous and dynamic natural geomorphic process. Anthropogenic and natural disturbances can greatly accelerate wind erosion, resulting in the loss of soil nutrients and the decline of land productivity, thus threatening human survival (Adhikari and Hartemink, 2016;Yang and Lu, 2016). Global accelerated soil erosion by wind is a serious environmental issue affecting approximately 9×10 8 people from 100 countries and territories (Webb et al, 2006).…”

A field investigation of wind erosion in the farming–pastoral ecotone of northern China using a portable wind tunnel: a case study in Yanchi County

“…Wind erosion is widespread over the land surface of Earth. It reduces agricultural sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions (Yang and Lu, 2016). Wind erosion has significant offsite effects and can greatly affect local and regional air quality by entraining fine particles (<100 μm in the case of an aerosol) and nutrients from the soil surface into the air (Zobeck and Van Pelt, 2011).…”