Development of a Low-Cost Sensor to Quantify Wind Erosion in Remote Locations

Monitoring and quantifying wind erosion from agricultural and arid lands is importantfrom a resource conservation and an air quality perspective. Current techniques rely onmanual data collection are costly or are not commercially available or are acombination of all three.The project goal here is to demonstrate the feasibility of a low- cost device suitable for remote and/or harsh environments that provides real-timequantitative wind erosion data.Three existing proven techniques (passive sand/soilcollection particle counts with an optical gate device and mass accumulation with atipping bucket) will be merged into a single measuring "circuit."The project willdevelop in steps beginning with an existing passive measurement device andincrementally adding and testing each adaptation in a laboratory setting to demonstratefeasibility.The project will culminate in a field test conducted in parallel with anestablished method.The proposed project will support the research priority of developing new technologiesand methods for monitoring soil erosion by wind as defined in the USDA topic area 8.4:Conservation of Natural Resources. This research area has been confirmed as a priorityneed by the National Wind Erosion Research Network where the lack of affordablewind erosion instruments has been identified as a barrier to full-scale sourcecharacterization. Therefore our proposed instrument has a market and also meets acritical need. The project narrative outlines how the funds from the SBIR grant USDA- NIFA-SBIR-006790 would be used to develop a prototype within eight months toexpedite this technology to market.