The desert and permafrost conditions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are unique.However,the effects of desertification on the ground temperature of permafrost are currently unclear.Recently,understanding this problem has become more urgent because of increasing desertification on the plateau.For this reason,an observational field experiment was undertaken by the authors at Honglianghe on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.Thermistor ground temperature probes were used,and synchronized contrasting observations were made in an open area.Observations of the ground temperature of permafrost below sand layers with a range of thicknesses were made from May 2010 to April 2011.The sand layers were found to play a key role in the protection of the underlying permafrost.The ground temperature below a permafrost table overlain by a thick sand layer was lower than that of the average annual temperature for the natural ground surface,and the temperature drop was roughly constant at 0.2°C.During the warmer part of the year (May to September),the maximum temperature drops over the five months were 3.40,3.72,4.85,3.16,and 1.88°C,respectively.The ground temperature near a permafrost table overlain by a thin sand layer was also lower than that of the average annual temperature for the natural ground surface.However,in this case the average of the annual maximum temperature drop was significantly less,0.71°C.The scientific significance of our preliminary conclusions is not only to present an exploration of the interaction between desertification and permafrost,but also to provide new engineering ideas for protecting the permafrost in regions where construction is required on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
Disturbance in wind regime and sand erosion deposition balance may lead to burial and eventual vanishing of a site.This study conducted 3D computational fluid dynamics(CFD)simulations to evaluate the effect of a proposed city design on the wind environment of the Crescent Spring,a downwind natural heritage site located in Dunhuang,Northwestern China.Satellite terrain data from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer(ASTER)Digital Elevation Model(DEM)were used to construct the solid surface model.Steady-state Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations(RANS)with shear stress transport(SST)k-ωturbulence model were then applied to solve the flow field problems.Land-use changes were modeled implicitly by dividing the underlying surface into different areas and by applying corresponding aerodynamic roughness lengths.Simulations were performed by using cases with different city areas and building heights.Results show that the selected model could capture the surface roughness changes and could adjust wind profile over a large area.Wind profiles varied over the greenfield to the north and over the Gobi land to the east of the spring.Therefore,different wind speed reduction effects were observed from various city construction scenarios.The current city design would lead to about 2 m/s of wind speed reduction at the downwind city edge and about 1 m/s of wind speed reduction at the north of the spring at 35-m height.Reducing the city height in the north greenfield area could efficiently eliminate the negative effects of wind spee.By contrast,restricting the city area worked better in the eastern Gobi area compared with other parts of the study area.Wind speed reduction in areas near the spring could be limited to 0.1 m/s by combining these two abatement strategies.The CFD method could be applied to simulate the wind environment affected by other land-use changes over a large terrain.
Sand/dust storms are some of the main hazards in arid and semi-arid zones. These storms also influence global environmental changes. By field observations, empirical statistics, and numerical simulations, pioneer researchers on these natural events have concluded the existence of a positive relationship between thermodynamic effects and sand/dust storms. Thermodynamic effects induce an unsteady stratified atmosphere to influence the process of these storms. However, studies on the relationship of thermodynamic effects with particles (i.e., sand and dust) are limited. In this article, wind tunnel with heating was used to simulate the quantitative relationship between thermodynamic effects and particle movement on different surfaces. Compared with the cold state, the threshold wind velocity of particles is found to be significantly decrease under the hot state. The largest decrease percentage exceedes 9% on fine and coarse sand surfaces. The wind velocity also has a three-power function in the sand transport rate under the hot state with increased sand transport. Thermodynamic effects are stronger on loose surfaces and fine particles, but weaker on compacted surfaces and coarse particles.
