Date of Award:

8-2019

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Wildland Resources

Committee Chair(s)

Andrew Kulmatiski

Committee

Andrew Kulmatiski

Committee

Michael Duniway

Committee

Janice Brahney

Abstract

Wind erosion is a global issue and affecting millions of people in drylands by causing environmental issues (acceleration of snow melting), public health concerns (respiratory diseases), and socioeconomic problems (costs of damages and cleaning public properties after dust storms). Disturbances in drylands can be irreversible, thus leading to natural disasters such as the 1930s Dust Bowl. With increasing attention on aeolian studies, many studies have been conducted using ground-based measurements or wind tunnel studies. Ground-based measurements are important for validating model predictions and testing the effect and interactions of different factors known to affect wind erosion. Here, a machine-learning model (random forest) was used to describe sediment flux as a function of wind speed, soil moisture, precipitation, soil roughness, soil crusts, and soil texture. Model performance was compared to previous results before analyzing four new years of sediment flux data and including estimates of soil moisture to the model. The random forest model provided a better result than a regression tree with a higher variance explained (7.5% improvement). With additional soil moisture data, the model performance increased by 13.13%. With full dataset, the model provided an increase of 30.50% in total performance compared to the previous study. This research was one of the rare studies which represented a large-scale network of BSNEs and a long time series of data to quantify seasonal sediment flux under different soil covers in southern Utah. The results will also be helpful to the managers for controlling the effects on wind erosion, scientists to choose variables for further modeling or local people to increase the public awareness about the effects of wind erosion.

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