Preliminary results from a field investigation of aeolian sand transport using high resolution wind and transport measurements

Abstract

Preliminary results are presented from two field experiments which employed a new high-sampling-frequency aeolian sand trap together with a single anemometer and wind vane. This system allows simultaneous assessment of wind velocity and sand transport rate every second. Results indicate an almost instantaneous response of transport to wind accelerations which is modified by a short (<6s) memory. The wind velocity/transport relationship is found to be well constrained by a second order polynomial in velocity with a threshold. Transport predictions based on this equation give a high correlation with observation; discrepancies possibly being due to differences in unquantified environmental variables between the two experiments. It is suggested that this approach could be improved to include the effect of other environmental variables, and that useful predictions of transport rate might then be made from existing meteorological databases.