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Lab 7, Slide 26 |
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This area of Rocky Mountain national Park, along the Trail Ridge Road, is exposed to the winds for much of the winter; it is not usually snow covered. As a result, the wind kills the vegetation on the leading edge, drying it and it becomes light enough that the wind can lift it as shown here. The gravelly bed in the foreground has had its alpine tundra vegetation blown away.
Wind erosion on agricultural soils can be catastrophic. The Dust Bowl of the 1930's is most famous. Recent dust bowl stoems carried material from the Redlands of Texas all the way to Cincinnati, Ohio- a distance of some 2,000 miles! Fortunately, wind erosion does not occur on forestland except when site preparation procedures are followed for even-age artificial reproduction. And then, it occurs only once a rotation, or every 30 to 60 years. The anount of erosion is minor because of the extreme roughness and presence of debris following site preparation .
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