Modeling the aeolian sand transport for the desert of Kuwait: Constraints by field observations

Abstract

The Kuwaiti desert is swept by strong winds, particularly by northwesterly wind, during the summer months (April through September), causing mass-scale sand transport that poses a serious environmental hazard. Understanding that accurate transport rate data are very difficult to obtain either by field measurements or by using any existing sand transport formulae, this paper presents a mathematical model to predict the sand-transport rate for Kuwaiti desert by following a well-known theoretical approach of Lettau and Lettau (1978) and by taking into account the effect of seasonal wind variability. The validity of the model is next examined using the field data from the study of Al-Awadhi and Al-Sudairawi (2002). The examination showed that the model underestimates the rate of sand transport by an average ratio of 0.15. The application of the model, at some seven locations that are evenly distributed across the Kuwaiti desert, indicated that about 40% of the amount of sand transport in Kuwait prevails from the NW during the peak summer months (June and July). The resulting map of sand transport rate indicated that the zone of higher sand transport rate is located within the areas covered by most extensive mobile sand sheets and sand dunes.