Physics and Modelling of Wind Erosion

by Yaping Shao

Overview

Wind erosion occurs in many arid, semiarid and agricultural areas of the world. It is an environmental process influenced by geological and climatic variations as well as human activities. In general, wind erosion leads to land degradation in agricultural areas and has a negative impact on air quality. Duste mission generated by wind erosion is the largest source of aerosols which directly or indirectly influence the atmospheric radiation balance and hence global climatic variations. Strong wind-erosion events, such as severe dust storms, may threaten human lives and cause substantial economic damage. The physics of wind erosion is complex, as it involves atmospheric, soil and land-surface processes. The research on wind erosion is multidisciplinary, covering meteorology,—fluid dynamics, soil physics, colloidal science, surface soil hydrology, ecology, etc. Several excellent books have already been written about the topic, for instance, by Bagnold (1941, The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes), Greeley and Iversen (1985, Wind as a Geological P- cess on Earth, Mars, Venus and Titan), Pye (1987, Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits), Pye and Tsoar (1990, Aeolian Sand and Sand Dunes). However, considerable progress has been made in wind-erosion research in recent years and there is a need to systematically document this progress in a new book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789048180202
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	11/29/2010
Series:	Atmospheric and Oceanographic Sciences Library , #37
Edition description:	Second Edition 2008
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.04(d)

About the Author

Yaping Shao is Professor of Meteorology at the Institute for Geophysics and Meteorology at the University of Cologne. After graduation from the Flinders University of South Australia in 1990, he worked in the Pye Laboratory of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization of Australia and then in the School of Mathematics at the University of New South Wales. Shao has maintained a strong interest in Aeolian processes ever since the early 1990s. He has studied the physics of sand movement and dust emission by means of wind-tunnel experiments, worked on the theory of dust emission and developed numerical models for dust-storm predictions. His research aims to bridge the gaps between mathematics, computation, physics and observation in the studies on complex natural environmental problems.

Table of Contents

Wind Erosion and Wind-Erosion Research.- Wind-Erosion Climatology.- Atmospheric Boundary Layer and Atmospheric Modelling.- Land-Surface Modelling.- Basic Aspects of Wind Erosion.- The Dynamics and Modelling of Saltation.- Dust Emission.- Dust Transport and Deposition.- Integrated Wind-Erosion Modelling.- Sand Dunes, Dynamics and Modelling.- Techniques for Wind-Erosion Measurements.- Concluding Remarks.