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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #192148
Title: SIMULATION OF WIND SPEED AND DIRECTION FROM LIMITED DATA

Author
item Skidmore, Edward
item LIAO, CHAOYING - NORTHWEST A&F UNIVERSITY
item Van Donk, Simon

Submitted to: International Soil Conservation Organization Conference Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/15/2005
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: The Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS) requires hourly wind data but these are not always available. Therefore, a procedure was developed to stochastically generate wind speed and direction from temporally limited wind data. For three locations, two statistical datasets were created to be used with the WEPS stochastic wind generator, based on 1) the full dataset with 24 observations per day and 2) a subset of 4 observations per day: at 2, 8, 14, and 20 hours local time. Erosive wind power densities, calculated from both datasets, agreed well with each other. The same was true for prevailing wind erosion direction and WEPS-simulated soil loss. In spite of temporally limited wind data, it is possible to use WEPS to estimate wind erosion hazard and relative effectiveness of various conservation practices.