Wind erosion in the Central Ebro Basin under changing land use management : Field experiments with a small, portable wind tunnel

The process of wind erosion is very slow and subtle. Therefore its amount is often highly underestimated compared to that by water erosion. It is important for environmental planners and other stakeholders to evaluate the relationship between agricultural land use and these two erosion processes. In particular the influence of extensification on the quantitative relationship between water and wind erosion is not well understood. To add more quantitative data to the evaluation process, a recently developed small portable wind tunnel has been used during two field campaigns in the central Ebro Basin. Quantitative findings in this field study indicate that the sediment output on undisturbed, crusted soil is negligible compared to that of disturbed soil surfaces. Besides rolling the research suggests that sheep trampling combined with wind causes relatively high amounts of sediment loss by wind erosion.