Wind Erosion in Western Queensland Australia

AUSLEM was developed as a Geographic Information System tool to assess landsusceptibility to wind erosion across western Queensland, Australia. The model operatesat a 5 x 5 km spatial resolution on a daily time step, using inputs of grass and tree cover,soil moisture, soil texture and surficial stone cover. Model performance was evaluated bycomparing trends in the model output with trends in wind speeds and observationalrecords of dust events recorded at eight meteorological stations in western Queenslandbetween 1980 and 1990. The validation was conducted at four spatial length scales, from25 to 150 km. Results show that AUSLEM performs well in the arid southern andwestern regions of the study area. Poor model performance at scales