Estimation of Soil Wind Erosion and Dust Emission During Continuous and Intense Dust Events In Northern China

Abstract

The spring in northern China is characterized by strong winds that create frequent dust storms, and to support efforts to mitigate the effects of these storms, it is necessary to quantitatively estimate the wind erosion and dust emission and to identify the dust sources. In the present study, we monitored 10 intense dust events in northern China in March and April 2023, and then used the RWEQ model to calculate the wind erosion intensity for loose soils in farmlands and sandy lands and the extended RWEQ model to calculate wind erosion intensity for compacted grassland and gobi soils. By combining the two models and accounting for the soil clay content, we calculated wind erosion and dust emission for the entire study region. The wind erosion intensity exceeded 200 Tg during each dust event in March and April 2023, and during four dust events, the wind erosion intensity exceeded 1000 Tg and the dust emission was greater than 2 Tg. We delineated four erosion regions based on the spatial distribution of the soil loss rate and dust flux: the west-central Inner Mongolia Plateau, with severe wind erosion and at least a 50% contribution to total dust emission, was the dominant dust source in northern China; the Tarim Basin–Qaidam Basin contributed more than 30% of wind erosion but less than 10% of dust emission; and the wind erosion and dust emission in northern Xinjiang and the eastern Inner Mongolia Plateau were always least intense.

Keywords: soil wind erosion, dust event, RWEQ, dust emission