Revised wind erosion equation determination of weather factor at national scale

In terms of sustainable and efficient use of the soil and water resources in Turkey, it is inevitable to constitute comprehensive and dynamic datasets, which can be easily updateable, to predict wind erosion risk at the national scale. For this purpose, the General Directorate of Combating Desertification and Erosion (ÇEM) has recently initiated wind erosion modeling works, using the Revised Wind Erosion Equation (RWEQ). In this paper the weather factor (WF ) of the RWEQ model, which on the whole comprises climate, soil, topography, and vegetative cover and management variables to estimate soil losses by wind erosion, is particularly given as the first approximation of soil loss per unit width (WF , kg m-1). The long term average 30-minute wind speed datasets regularly recorded by the 312 Automatic Meteorological Observation Stations (OMGİ) spatially distributed in different locations over Turkey were used as a basic analytical data layer. Analytically evaluating the dataset hereunder provided that the mean annual number of days when erosive winds blow and a wind erosion event would be accordingly expected were 27 days in Turkey, and the monthly WF maps of 16 wind direction sectors. All computations conducted at the national level in the framework of this study to designate spatial wind erosion vulnerability regarding mean annual WF as climatic factor revealed that Central and South Eastern parts of Turkey are locationally very prone to the wind erosion and the month of March (54.398 kg m-1) was found to be the most precarious month when temporal analysis was performed with average monthly data of WF . Eventually, the countrywide first approximation of soil loss by wind erosion using RWEQ WF set spatially out by mappings for given timely intervals. After enabling the analytical works of other model parameters of soil, topography, vegetation and management by running RWEQ throughout the rate of national sediment transport by wind erosion would not be only determined but its spatial and temporal variations would be also put forth in Turkey.