Large Effects of Particle Size Heterogeneity on Dynamic Saltation Threshold

TL;DR

This study shows that particle size heterogeneity significantly influences the saltation threshold wind shear velocity, with poorly sorted sands requiring much higher thresholds, impacting planetary geomorphology and climate predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a new wind tunnel measurement method and demonstrates the significant effect of particle size heterogeneity on saltation thresholds, especially for poorly sorted sands.

Findings

Poorly sorted sands have 60-250% higher thresholds than well-sorted sands.

Different measurement methods yield different thresholds for poorly sorted sands.

Coarse particles significantly influence the dynamic saltation threshold.

Abstract

Reliably predicting the geomorphology and climate of planetary bodies requires knowledge of the dynamic threshold wind shear velocity below which saltation transport ceases. Here we measure this threshold in a wind tunnel for four well-sorted and two poorly sorted sand beds by visual means and by a method that exploits a regime shift in the behavior of the surface roughness caused by momentum transfer from the wind to the saltating particles. For our poorly sorted sands, we find that these measurement methods yield different threshold values because, at the smaller visual threshold, relatively coarse particles do not participate in saltation. We further find that both methods yield threshold values that are much larger (60--250\%) for our poorly sorted sands than for our well-sorted sands with similar median particle diameter. In particular, even a rescaling of the dynamic saltation threshold based on the 90th percentile particle diameter rather than the median diameter cannot fully capture this difference, suggesting that relatively very coarse particles have a considerable control on the dynamic threshold. Similar findings were previously reported for water-driven sediment transport. Our findings have important implications for quantitative predictions of saltation transport-related geophysical processes, such as dust aerosol emission.