Alternate actions of freeze-thaw, wind and water generate a unique hybrid soil erosion phenomenon

Excerpt

At present, natural soil erosion processes are mainly understood to be single-agent-induced—for instance, by water, wind, gravity, or by freeze-thaw alternation—with rarely investigating the hybrid erosion forms (Fryrear et al. 2000; Sharratt et al. 2000; Gao et al. 2002; Boardman 2006). Soil erosion in a fluvialoaeolian system is only addressed at a beginning stage, which still needs more adequate explorations for further understanding related sub-processes and patterns (Harrison and Yair 1998; El Baz et al. 1999). Therefore, natural soil erosion types are outlined in a general sense as water erosion, wind erosion, freeze-thaw erosion, and gravitational erosion, with only few sprouting reports on hybrid erosion phenomena caused by fluvialoaeolian interactions.

This article reports for the first time the discovery of a hybrid soil erosion phenomenon as determined by freeze-thaw action, wind, and water alternations in a complex thaw-fluvial-aeolian system. We observed this unique hybrid erosion phenomenon through continuing onsite surveillance during 2005 to 2008 in the Songnen Plains (43° to 50° N, 122° to 128° E), northeastern China, as affected deeply by Siberian climate regime with a long and cold winter (see figure 1). With regard to the analysis of local climatic conditions, spatiotemporal processes of this unique hybrid erosion…