Abstract
In order to clarify the process of dust outbreak and the relationship between ground surface conditions, such as surface soil water content, temperature, and vegetation cover, and dust outbreak, two automatic observation stations have been established, one on a cropland and one in the Gobi Desert, both located in Dunhuang, China. The characteristics of dust concentration and dust saltation flux before and after spring tillage of the cropland were analyzed and compared with that of the Gobi Desert.
It can be concluded that dust emission from cropland surface is smaller than that from the Gobi surface before the tillage because of the difference of the land-surface characteristics such as vegetation fraction, surface soil moisture, particle size distribution and so on. However, after spring tillage, dust emission from cropland surface becomes larger than that from the Gobi Desert.
