干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Wind erosion is an important process of both progressive and regressive pedogenesis in arid and semi-arid environments around the world. In semi-arid regions, which are influenced by carbon-poor dust depositions from deserts, the properties as a sink area should be maintained to enable C enrichment by continued soil formation. On agricultural land, wind erosion is a soil-degrading process, resulting mainly from the very effective sorting processes. Coarse particles remain in the field, whereas the finest and most valuable parts of the soil get lost, like particles of the silt and clay fractions and soil organic matter. The latter is not regarded in most carbon balances, although this particulate loss can reach considerable amounts. The processes of wind erosion are subject to a great spatial and temporal variability, making its quantification difficult. In this chapter, we expose wind erosion in the context of its influence on soil organic carbon and prove considerable losses by first measurements.