IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v6y2017i3p64-d112327.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Vegetation in Drylands: Effects on Wind Flow and Aeolian Sediment Transport

Author

Listed:
  • Jerome R. Mayaud

    (School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK)

  • Nicholas P. Webb

    (USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA)

Abstract

Drylands are characterised by patchy vegetation, erodible surfaces and erosive aeolian processes. Empirical and modelling studies have shown that vegetation elements provide drag on the overlying airflow, thus affecting wind velocity profiles and altering erosive dynamics on desert surfaces. However, these dynamics are significantly complicated by a variety of factors, including turbulence, and vegetation porosity and pliability effects. This has resulted in some uncertainty about the effect of vegetation on sediment transport in drylands. Here, we review recent progress in our understanding of the effects of dryland vegetation on wind flow and aeolian sediment transport processes. In particular, wind transport models have played a key role in simplifying aeolian processes in partly vegetated landscapes, but a number of key uncertainties and challenges remain. We identify potential future avenues for research that would help to elucidate the roles of vegetation distribution, geometry and scale in shaping the entrainment, transport and redistribution of wind-blown material at multiple scales. Gaps in our collective knowledge must be addressed through a combination of rigorous field, wind tunnel and modelling experiments.

Suggested Citation

  • Jerome R. Mayaud & Nicholas P. Webb, 2017. "Vegetation in Drylands: Effects on Wind Flow and Aeolian Sediment Transport," Land, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-24, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:6:y:2017:i:3:p:64-:d:112327
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/6/3/64/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/6/3/64/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sonia Kéfi & Max Rietkerk & Concepción L. Alados & Yolanda Pueyo & Vasilios P. Papanastasis & Ahmed ElAich & Peter C. de Ruiter, 2007. "Spatial vegetation patterns and imminent desertification in Mediterranean arid ecosystems," Nature, Nature, vol. 449(7159), pages 213-217, September.
    2. David S. G. Thomas & Melanie Knight & Giles F. S. Wiggs, 2005. "Remobilization of southern African desert dune systems by twenty-first century global warming," Nature, Nature, vol. 435(7046), pages 1218-1221, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Justus G. V. van Ramshorst & Lukas Siebicke & Moritz Baumeister & Fernando E. Moyano & Alexander Knohl & Christian Markwitz, 2022. "Reducing Wind Erosion through Agroforestry: A Case Study Using Large Eddy Simulations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(20), pages 1-24, October.
    2. Akito Kono & Toshiya Okuro, 2021. "Spatial Distribution of Shrubs Impacts Relationships among Saltation, Roughness, and Vegetation Structure in an East Asian Rangeland," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-18, November.
    3. Na Wu & Yongxiao Ge & Jilili Abuduwaili, 2021. "Grain Size Characteristics of Sediments Found in Typical Landscapes in the Playa of Ebinur Lake, Arid Central Asia," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-15, October.
    4. Lihui Tian & Wangyang Wu & Dengshan Zhang & Yang Yu, 2020. "Airflow Field Around Hippophae rhamnoides in Alpine Semi-Arid Desert," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-12, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chen, Zheng & Liu, Jieyu & Li, Li & Wu, Yongping & Feng, Guolin & Qian, Zhonghua & Sun, Gui-Quan, 2022. "Effects of climate change on vegetation patterns in Hulun Buir Grassland," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 597(C).
    2. Ferreira, A.S. & Raposo, E.P. & Viswanathan, G.M. & da Luz, M.G.E., 2012. "The influence of the environment on Lévy random search efficiency: Fractality and memory effects," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(11), pages 3234-3246.
    3. Marina E Wosniack & Marcos C Santos & Ernesto P Raposo & Gandhi M Viswanathan & Marcos G E da Luz, 2017. "The evolutionary origins of Lévy walk foraging," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(10), pages 1-31, October.
    4. van den Berg, J. & Björnberg, J.E. & Heydenreich, M., 2015. "Sharpness versus robustness of the percolation transition in 2d contact processes," Stochastic Processes and their Applications, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 513-537.
    5. Martinez-Garcia, Ricardo & Cabal, Ciro & Calabrese, Justin M. & Hernández-García, Emilio & Tarnita, Corina E. & López, Cristóbal & Bonachela, Juan A., 2023. "Integrating theory and experiments to link local mechanisms and ecosystem-level consequences of vegetation patterns in drylands," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    6. Nauta, Johannes & Simoens, Pieter & Khaluf, Yara, 2022. "Group size and resource fractality drive multimodal search strategies: A quantitative analysis on group foraging," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 590(C).
    7. Meron, Ehud, 2012. "Pattern-formation approach to modelling spatially extended ecosystems," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 234(C), pages 70-82.
    8. Reed, M.S. & Podesta, G. & Fazey, I. & Geeson, N. & Hessel, R. & Hubacek, K. & Letson, D. & Nainggolan, D. & Prell, C. & Rickenbach, M.G. & Ritsema, C. & Schwilch, G. & Stringer, L.C. & Thomas, A.D., 2013. "Combining analytical frameworks to assess livelihood vulnerability to climate change and analyse adaptation options," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 66-77.
    9. Pliscoff, Patricio & Luebert, Federico & Hilger, Hartmut H. & Guisan, Antoine, 2014. "Effects of alternative sets of climatic predictors on species distribution models and associated estimates of extinction risk: A test with plants in an arid environment," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 288(C), pages 166-177.
    10. Tekwa, Edward W. & Gonzalez, Andrew & Loreau, Michel, 2019. "Spatial evolutionary dynamics produce a negative cooperation–population size relationship," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 94-101.
    11. Andrew Gunn & Amy East & Douglas J. Jerolmack, 2022. "21st-century stagnation in unvegetated sand-sea activity," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-7, December.
    12. Wu, Chengxing & Duan, Dongli, 2024. "Collapse process prediction of mutualistic dynamical networks with k-core and dimension reduction method," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    13. Narcisa G. Pricope & Andrea E. Gaughan & John D. All & Michael W. Binford & Lucas P. Rutina, 2015. "Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Vegetation Dynamics in Relation to Shifting Inundation and Fire Regimes: Disentangling Environmental Variability from Land Management Decisions in a Southern African Transb," Land, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-29, July.
    14. Berenguer, J. Segarra, 2013. "A simple bistable model for reforestation in semi-arid zones, or how to turn a wasteland into a forest," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 266(C), pages 58-67.
    15. Kang Zhang & Wen-Si Hu & Quan-Xing Liu, 2020. "Quantitatively Inferring Three Mechanisms from the Spatiotemporal Patterns," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-13, January.
    16. Wang, Ching-Hao & Matin, Sakib & George, Ashish B. & Korolev, Kirill S., 2019. "Pinned, locked, pushed, and pulled traveling waves in structured environments," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 102-119.
    17. King, Elizabeth G. & Franz, Trenton E., 2016. "Combining ecohydrologic and transition probability-based modeling to simulate vegetation dynamics in a semi-arid rangeland," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 329(C), pages 41-63.
    18. Yanli Lyu & Peijun Shi & Guoyi Han & Lianyou Liu & Lanlan Guo & Xia Hu & Guoming Zhang, 2020. "Desertification Control Practices in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-15, April.
    19. van de Koppel, Johan & Gupta, Rohit & Vuik, Cornelis, 2011. "Scaling-up spatially-explicit ecological models using graphics processors," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 222(17), pages 3011-3019.
    20. Wu, Zeyan & Li, Jianjuan & Liu, Shuying & Zhou, Liuting & Luo, Yang, 2019. "A spatial predator–prey system with non-renewable resources," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 347(C), pages 381-391.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:6:y:2017:i:3:p:64-:d:112327. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.