One of the methods for combat desertification with the movement of sand dune and dust storms, is to spread pebble and gravel bed. I want to know how to distribute gravels in wide areas with different percentages. For example, we're going to spread Gravel In a desert area with 100 hectares and with 65% cover. how we can determine the 65% cover. it is easy for test in a wind tunnel because the test trays are small, but this work is very hard and difficult in large desert areas. If anyone has experience about it, I would be grateful if guide me
I'm afraid I don't have a good solution, but an idea that might help still. You can turn the problem around: you spread the gravel as evenly as you can, then measure the coverage using a drone, taking high-res images. Then you do image analysis to measure the coverage. Should be feasible if the gravel has a different colour than the ground underneath.
Dear Alessandra L Musso
Thank you for your response.
But when we spreading gravel, we need to know how to set the percentage of spread.
A method to instantly stabilize the dust prone areas, and start the restoration of the native plants, is from the mosses up.
By mixing fertilizers with water, some organic matter (compost, aged manure, plant waste products, etc.) plus psyllium as a tackifier, you can start the process of the mosses growing and stabilizing the soil first. If you wanted to accelerate that process, you could add some crushed dried moss pieces to your slurry, as is described at
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333835873_Hydroseeding_tackifiers_and_dryland_moss_restoration_potential_Tackifiers_vary_dryland_moss_growth
Also see article about propagation of desert mosses at https://plantmethods.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13007-021-00740-7
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