Soil erosion - Soil Essentials: Managing Your Farm's Primary Asset - page 101

Erosion by wind or Aeolian erosion
In the right circumstances, wind can shift huge amounts of soil, sometimes large
distances, and may even deposit it in other countries across oceans. Wind blown
soil may end up as dunes, ridges or as f lat plains with deep topsoils such as the
loess plains of China.
Sheet erosion (Figure 33 on p. 114)
As with water erosion, wind may remove large areas of topsoil, leaving infertile
subsoils exposed on the surface. Areas of cultivated light sandy soils are especially
at risk, as are fine textured heavier soils. Bare soil surfaces caused by over grazing
with stock with little or no vegetative cover are also at serious risk of wind erosion.
Soil may be removed relatively short distances and be deposited as drifts against
fence or tree lines, or, Victorian Mallee soil has been found as far away as in
glaciers in New Zealand. Even now, it is not uncommon to find snow in the
Australian Alps stained pink or brown by dust blown in on the wind.
Past land management practices led to severe wind erosion, and dense dust
storms were not uncommon, depositing soil many kilometres from their source.
Soil deposition (Figure 34 on p. 114)
High velocity wind can pick up soil particles and keep them airborne until the
wind velocity decreases and the soil is deposited back to earth, usually as a fine
dust layer.
Larger soil particles may also be moved across the ground surface by a process
called 'saltation', and again the soil will stop moving either when it comes against
an obstruction, or when the wind velocity drops.
Each individual wind event may not necessarily move soil large distances, but
left unchecked over decades or centuries, wind can move huge amounts of soil very
large distances. For example, the sand in the dunes that are found in the Sahara
desert originated in southern Africa, and was moved right up the west coast of
Africa to the Sahara region.
In the past, soil movement in the Victorian Mallee could be severe enough to
expose tree roots and cover fence lines in just one erosion event. At such times,
visibility in the dust cloud was reduced to a metre or less.
Sandblasting
When wind-speeds reached high velocities, larger airborne soil particles could
impact on plants and even structures, causing considerable damage. The outer
protective layers of plants could be stripped away, destroying their ability to retain
water, which could lead to the plant's death.