Study on the effect of initial soil moisture content on wind erosion rate using a laboratory wind tunnel

Background and objectives: Wind erosion is known as one of land degradation aspects in arid and semiarid regions. Soil moisture affects the erosion rate through controlling threshold velocity and soil erodibility. This study was done to investigate the effect of initial soil moisture content on wind erosion rate and threshold velocity as well in two soils with different texture classes using a wind tunnel facility under controlled conditions.
Materials and Methods: The experiment was conducted in two separate tests on two soils with different texture classes, each as factorial based on completely randomized design. Two factors including wind speed and initial moisture each at three replications were applied for each soil. For this purpose, two soils with different texture classes of sandy loam and sandy were chosen, afterwards various levels of initial moisture were produced for each soil and then were exposed to several wind speeds. Regarding to the different texture and erosion threshold of the soils, three levels of initial moisture contents of 1.5, 6.5 and 11.5% for sandy loam and 1, 2.5 and 4.5% for sandy soil were produced. After preparing the soil samples and placing in the wind tunnel, wind velocities of 5, 7.5 and 10 m s–1 at 10 cm height were generated and finally, sediment yield due to wind erosion was measured. In addition, the threshold wind velocity was determined through the observation method. Furthermore, the critical moisture content for each soil was determined based on the minimum moisture amount in which a significant reduction in erosion rate was observed.
Results: Results of this study showed that with increasing wind speed and initial moisture content, wind erosion rates increased and decreased, respectively. The measured erosion rates for sandy loam and sandy soils ranged from 0.015 to 0.768 and 0.086 to 14.088 g m–2 min–1, this difference was attributed to the soils primary and secondary particle size distribution. With increasing the soils moisture content, the threshold wind velocity increased as a power function. The critical moisture contents of 6.5% and 4.5% were determined for sandy loam and sandy soils, respectively. With increasing moisture content in sandy loam soil from 1.5 to 6.5%, at wind velocities of 5, 7.5 and 10 m s–1, the erosion rate decreased by 64.6, 80.7 and 62.9%, while with increasing moisture content from 1.5 to 11.5%, it was reduced by 82.3, 90.8 and 77.5%, respectively. These reduction values for sandy soil for the increase in moisture from 1 to 1.5% were 27.7, 32.8 and 71.3% and for the increase in moisture content from 1 to 4.5% were 92.2, 86.6 and 93.9%, respectively.
Conclusion: The findings of this research revealed the importance of maintaining and or increasing in soil moisture to combat wind erosion, so that due to soil moisture increase, wind erosion rate can be restricted by 90%. It was concluded that the critical value of moisture content differs in various soils. This critical value for sandy soil (4.5%) was lower than that in sandy loam soil (6.5%). By reducing wind speed toward values less than the threshold velocity, in addition to soil management strategies to maintain and improve soil moisture, wind erosion can be reduced, remarkably.