Abstract
Soil moisture is an important factor in saltation activity as it affects the threshold friction velocity. Based on observed data of wind speed, soil moisture, and saltation from March 2008 to February 2018 in the Taklimakan Desert, the effects of soil moisture on the threshold friction velocity for saltation activity are analyzed, and an improved parameterization for the effect of soil moisture on threshold friction velocity is developed. The results illustrate that soil moisture significantly impacted threshold friction velocity when the soil moisture was greater than 0.025 m3/m3 in the study area. The corrected parameterization of the threshold friction velocity of moist soil can effectively lower the sensitivity of threshold friction velocity to soil moisture. The threshold friction velocities were 48.7%, 49.5%, and 32.1% lower, and the horizontal dust fluxes were 66.6%, 69.2%, and 65.8% greater for soil moistures of 1.0%, 2.0%, and 5.0%, respectively. Compared with the observed horizontal dust fluxes, the error is reduced by 80.2% when the corrected parameterization was used, and the correlation coefficient between the calculated result and the observations increased from 0.87 to 0.91. The results demonstrate that the effects of soil moisture on dust emissions are nonnegligible.
Published Version
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