A field investigation of wind erosion in the farming–pastoral ecotone of northern China using a portable wind tunnel: a case study in Yanchi County

The farming–pastoral ecotone in northern China is an extremely fragile ecological zone where wind erosion of cropland and rangeland is easy to occur. In this study, using a portable wind tunnel as a wind simulator, we conducted field simulated wind erosion experiments combined with laboratory analysis to investigate wind erosion of soils in trampled rangeland, non-tilled cropland and tilled cropland in Yanchi County, China. The results showed that compared with rangeland, the cropland had a higher soil water holding capacity and lower soil bulk density. The wind erosion rate of trampled rangeland was much higher than those of non-tilled cropland and tilled cropland. For cropland, the wind erosion rate of the soil after tilling was surprisingly less than that of the soil before tilling. With increasing of wind speed, the volume mean diameter of the eroded sediment collected by the trough in the wind tunnel generally increased while the clay and silt content decreased for all soils. The temporal variation in wind erosion of the trampled rangeland indicated that particle entrainment and dust emission decreased exponentially with erosion time through the successive wind erosion events due to the exhaustion of erodible particles.