Vegetation Drastically Reduces Wind Erosion: An Implementation of the RWEQ in the Mongolian Gobi Steppe

Isita Nandana Talukdar, Virginia Anne Kowal, Binbin Huang and Charlotte Weil
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Isita Nandana Talukdar: 5269 Manderston Drive, San Jose, CA 95138, USA
Virginia Anne Kowal: Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, 327 Campus Drive, Bass Biology Building 123, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Binbin Huang: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 18 Shuangqing Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100085, China
Charlotte Weil: ENAC School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, EPFL, Route Cantonale, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 8, 1-16

Abstract: Soil loss prevention is an important ecosystem service for protecting human and environmental health. Using spatiotemporal climate and environmental data of the Eastern Gobi Steppe, a region missing from previous studies of Mongolian wind-based soil erosion, we implemented the Revised Wind Erosion Equation (RWEQ) model to estimate soil loss. A replicable pipeline was developed to perform these computations, and made available openly. Soil loss was estimated on a monthly basis to analyze seasonal variations. The results show that the annual total soil loss was 61 × 10 10 kg over an area of 69.3 × 10 3 km 2 , which is about 90 tonnes per hectare. Increasing fractional vegetation coverage to a uniform 50% coverage (doubling current vegetation coverage in every 1 km 2 ) could reduce soil loss by 60%, highlighting the importance of protecting and increasing vegetation coverage in ecosystem service preservation.

Keywords: wind erosion; soil loss; ecosystem services; revised wind erosion equation; Gobi Steppe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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