Soil & Water Res., 2017, 12(2):96-105 | DOI: 10.17221/55/2016-SWR

Evaluation of field performance of BEST aeolian sediment catcher in sandy-loam soil of arid zone of TurkeyOriginal Paper

Mustafa BAŞARAN^1,2,*, Oguzhan UZUN¹, Gunay ERPUL^{3, 4}

¹ Department of Soil Science, Seyrani Faculty of Agriculture, Erciyes University, Develi, Kayseri, Turkey

² Erciyes University Technology Transfer Office, Melikgazi, Kayseri, Turkey

³ Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ankara, Ankara, Turkey

⁴ Earth Sciences Application and Research Center of Ankara University, Diskapi-Ankara, Turkey

Field measurement of wind erosion is still a great challenge for researchers. In this study, field performance of a newly designed sediment trap BEST (Basaran and Erpul Sediment Trap) was evaluated for the first time and compared with the commonly used Modified Wilson and Cook (MWAC) traps. Experiments were carried out at the Karapinar Research Station of Konya Soil and Water Resources Institute over the 50 × 50 m tilled sandy loam plot. Three wind erosion events occurred during the experiments. A small amount of sediment was trapped by the MWAC traps only at 0.20 m in all three events, and there were not sufficient sediment measurements at the catch heights to obtain vertical mass flux profiles. On the other hand, BEST was able to catch sufficient amount of sediment at each trap height to calculate soil losses from the experimental fields. Besides, an analysis for particle size characteristics by electron microscopy imagery indicated that almost all of the sediment particles trapped by BEST at any height above 0.60 m were smaller than 100 mm. Hereby, during three erosive wind events a better performance of BEST than of MWAC at comparable catch heights was verified.

Keywords: sediment trap; trap efficiency; wind erosion

Published: June 30, 2017  Show citation