Accelerated Wind Erosion and Prediction of Rates

When vulnerability of the soil to wind erosion is coupled with high surface winds, large-scale damage to agriculture, transportation, and human habitation can result (for example McCauley et al., 1980; Wilshire et al, 1980). The effects of off-road vehicles (ORVs) on areas of arid or semiarid soils may continue long after the ORV event if some physical property of the soil is altered so that natural resistence to damage by wind and rainfall is decreased. Soils disturbed by ORVs may be subject to wind erosion where they were resistent before disturbance (Gillette et al., 1980). Documentation of wind erosion events which occurred after the disturbance of arid and semiarid land is reported by Nakata et al. (1976) and by Wilshire (1980).