Abstract
In both arid and semiarid regions, erosion by wind is a significant threat against sustainability of natural resources. The objective of this work was to investigate the direct impact of various soil moisture levels with soil texture and organic matter on soil crust formation and evaporation. Eighty soil samples with different texture (sand: 19, loamy sand: 21, sandy loam: 26, loam: 8, and silty loam: 6 samples) were collected from the Nyírség region (Eastern Hungary). A wind tunnel experiment was conducted on four simulated irrigation rates (0.5, l.0, 2.0, and 5.0 mm) and four levels of wind speeds (4.5, 7.8, 9.2, and 15.5 m s−1). Results showed that watering with a quantity equal to 5 mm rainfall, with the exception of sandy soils, provided about 5–6 h protection against wind erosion, even in case of a wind velocity as high as 15.5 m s−1. An exponential connection was revealed between wind velocities and the times of evaporation (R2 = 0.88–0.99). Notably, a two-way ANOVA test revealed that both wind velocity (p < 0.001) and soil texture (p < 0.01) had a significant effect on the rate of evaporation, but their interaction was not significant (p = 0.26). In terms of surface crusts, silty loamy soils resulted in harder and more solid crusts in comparison with other textures. In contrast, crust formation in sandy soils was almost negligible, increasing their susceptibility to wind erosion risk. These results can support local municipalities in the development of a local plan against wind erosion phenomena in agricultural areas.
Highlights
Land degradation (LD) is one of the challenges facing the sustainability of land resources and presents one of the main obstacles against achieving global sustainable development goals (SDGs) [1,2]
Considering that evaporation is influenced by several factors, including by some we could not determine, relevance of the gained 34% uncertainty was smaller than the advantage of the method as our model revealed the importance of the involved factors
The main objective of this study was to investigate the impact of various levels of simulated irrigation rate (0.5, l.0, 2.0, and 5.0 mm) and four levels of wind speeds (4.5, 7.8, 9.2, and 15.5 m s−1 ) on soil crust formation and evaporation by using a wind tunnel experiment
Summary
The main issues are the direct effect on soil quality and fertility reduction, but indirectly the suspended dust can cause health problems [7,8,9], even in intercontinental range [10,11]. In this sense, many strategies were adopted to mitigate wind erosion, for instance, soil irrigation, breaking wind, i.e., decreasing wind speed (with smaller parcels, strip crops, tree rows, and windbreaks) or decreasing bare surfaces (with vegetation or residues) [12]
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