A Geomorphic Approach to Characterizing Material Availability in Numerical Dust Transport Models

Dust schemes generally adjust entrainment rates for hydrological, land cover, and atmospheric conditions but commonly rely on preferential source region parameterizations to incorporate soil-binding processes not explicitly accounted for in the model. In this presentation we demonstrate a technique for characterizing the initial “looseness” or erodibility of arid region soils using links between landscape geomorphology and dust emission potential. Examples of simulated dust entrainment generated via the Weather Research and Forecasting-Chemistry (WRF-Chem) model using our geomorphic erodibility method are provided. Model sensitivity to the original scale of the geomorphic datasets is also discussed.