Local source influences upon the structure of dust plumes in the Channel Country of Western Queensland, Australia

Abstract

[Abstract]: Most of the early wind erosion research undertaken in Australia, concentrated on how wind erosion effects cultivated farm land. However, in the 1990's the focus of wind erosion research in Australia started to shift to include rangeland environments. Initially these rangeland experiments used experimental configurations that were developed for cultivated fields. This meant that in most cases a sampler was set up in teh middle of a field and it was assumed that the data collected was representative of the field as a whole. It was also assumed that temporal changes in dust fluxes/concentration reflect overall changes in the land type erodibility and wind erosivity. However, recent experiments and field observations within the rangelands, of the Channel Country suggest that this assumption is not valid. These experiments and observations suggest that there are substantial spatial and temporal variations in erodibility within individual land types. Such variations complicate the interpretation of temporal and spatial erosion trends. In particular, this variability implies that it is difficult to compare sampler data between different wind erosioin events.