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Associate Professor, School of Geosciences F09, The University of Sydney, Sydney 2006, Australia
Interests: soil erosion; land degradation; catchment hydrology; arid lands; erosion management; environmental geomorphology
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleague,

UNCCD was established in 1994 and, over its 25 years of operation, has allowed the development and reporting of national policies that reduce the human impact of desertification. Communities in many countries have also been encouraged to participate in pursuing environmental sustainability goals. Although nations and communities have contributed, in varying degrees, to anti-desertification measures, soil erosion, as both a symptom and an outcome of desertification, remains a key concern, especially in the world’s drylands. Understanding past and present environmental conditions and human responses contributes to the development of future management strategies to combat desertification. Given the uncertainties accompanying global climate change and its probable impacts on the nature and patterns of regional and local erosion, both the assessment and monitoring of soil erosion are required. In addition, identifying any trends in dryland erosion will inform current and future ‘best practice’ responses to desertification.

This Special Issue seeks research articles and review papers that address the problem of water and wind erosion in drylands suffering from desertification, along with contributions which provide empirical studies of soil erosion processes, monitoring, distribution (spatial and temporal), and rehabilitation/ conservation in such areas. Of particular interest is the future trajectory of soil erosion in the desertified drylands under projected conditions of climate change.

Dr. Deirdre Dragovich
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

water erosion
wind erosion
drylands
desertification indicators
soil conservation
erosion monitoring
climate change and erosion

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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18 pages, 9616 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Differences in the Efficiency of the Vertical Transfer of Windblown Sediment over Different Ploughed Surfaces during Wind Erosion Events

Mohamed Taieb Labiadh

and

Thierry Henry des Tureaux

Land 2021, 10(5), 511; https://doi.org/10.3390/land10050511 - 11 May 2021

Viewed by 1405

Abstract

Airborne sediment fluxes were measured in southern Tunisia on two experimental plots tilled with a moldboard and a tiller plough, respectively, during five wind erosion events of different intensities. The sediment fluxes were sampled on both plots using a mast equipped with seven sand traps positioned between ≈10 and 120 cm height. The windblown sediment fluxes in the 0–100 cm layer were about eight times higher on the plot tilled using the tiller plough compared to the plot tilled using the moldboard plough due to different efficiencies in the trapping of the saltating particles in the furrow, depending on the ridges characteristics. On both plots, sediment fluxes of larger particles were depleted in the sediment samplers compared to the proportions measured in the soil from which they were derived. When examining the sediment flux in the 30–100 cm layer, we observed that the efficiency of the vertical transfer was about twice higher on the moldboard plot than on the tiller one. This implies that a higher fraction of the sediment mobilized by wind can be transported over long distances in the case of a surface ploughed with a moldboard. This result could reduce in part the benefit of using the moldboard instead of the tiller plough regarding soil loss by wind erosion. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Erosion and Desertification)

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Review

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35 pages, 543 KiB

Open AccessReview

Modeling Approaches to Assess Soil Erosion by Water at the Field Scale with Special Emphasis on Heterogeneity of Soils and Crops

Ahsan Raza

Hella Ahrends

Muhammad Habib-Ur-Rahman

and

Thomas Gaiser

Land 2021, 10(4), 422; https://doi.org/10.3390/land10040422 - 15 Apr 2021

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 4597

Abstract

Information on soil erosion and related sedimentation processes are very important for natural resource management and sustainable farming. Plenty of models are available for studying soil erosion but only a few are suitable for dynamic soil erosion assessments at the field-scale. To date, there are no field-scale dynamic models available considering complex agricultural systems for the simulation of soil erosion. We conducted a review of 51 different models evaluated based on their representation of the processes of soil erosion by water. Secondly, we consider their suitability for assessing soil erosion for more complex field designs, such as patch cropping, strip cropping and agroforestry (alley-cropping systems) and other land management practices. Several models allow daily soil erosion assessments at the sub-field scale, such as EPIC, PERFECT, GUEST, EPM, TCRP, SLEMSA, APSIM, RillGrow, WaNuLCAS, SCUAF, and CREAMS. However, further model development is needed with respect to the interaction of components, i.e., rainfall intensity, overland flow, crop cover, and their scaling limitations. A particular shortcoming of most of the existing field scale models is their one-dimensional nature. We further suggest that platforms with modular structure, such as SIMPLACE and APSIM, offer the possibility to integrate soil erosion as a separate module/component and link to GIS capabilities, and are more flexible to simulate fluxes of matter in the 2D/3D dimensions. Since models operating at daily scales often do not consider a horizontal transfer of matter, such modeling platforms can link erosion components with other environmental components to provide robust estimations of the three-dimensional fluxes and sedimentation processes occurring during soil erosion events. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Erosion and Desertification)

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