Saltation and aerosol suspension over cultivated histosols in southern Quebec

Cultivated histosols are subject to several degradation processes that jeopardize their sustainability. These include wind erosion, caused by winds that induce saltation, reptation and suspension of organic particles above a certain threshold. In order to limit soil loss, it is important to identify wind speed thresholds for particle saltation and suspension to guide corrective interventions. In order to describe these erosion processes on cultivated histosols, weather stations were installed at two sites during the summer of 2019 to measure wind speed, saltation and aerosol concentration in the air. A standard method (Stout and Zobeck, 1996) was used to extract the saltation threshold velocity, then adapted to determine a suspension threshold for fine material. Results suggest that this method can accurately determine a saltation threshold for cultivated histosols. It also better describes the suspension mechanism of aerosols, for which a high concentration was observed at low wind speeds, with a decrease for stronger winds and an increase above the saltation threshold.