Soil erosion by wind - Dust Storm Index (DSI)

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In 2005 the National Land & Water Resources Audit (NLWRA), through the National Committee for Soil and Terrain (NCST), convened four expert panels to advise on the monitoring of: soil acidification, soil carbon changes, water erosion and wind erosion (McKenzie & Dixon 2006). Later in 2006 the NLWRA commissioned a series of trials of the recommended approaches to monitoring soil condition.
Five sub-projects were set up to trial methods for monitoring wind erosion. These included:
(i) The Wind Erosion Assessment Model (WEAM) for field-based wind erosion risk assessment (Subproject 3);
(ii) The roadside surveys of vegetation cover and soil condition for wind erosion risk assessment in Western Australia (Subproject 6) and South Australia (Subproject 9)
(iii) DustWatch Nodes for field based dust concentration assessment (Subproject 6)
(iv) The Dust Storm Index (DSI) for monitoring wind erosion on a national scale (Subproject 11),
(v) The Computational Environmental Management System (CEMSYS) for modeling wind erosion on a national scale (Subproject 12). This document reports on The Dust Storm Index (DSI) for monitoring wind erosion on a national scale (Subproject 11).