Abstract

Tracing the sand source is helpful to interpret the evolution of deserts and explain the relations between the desert and the climatic geographical condition around. Furthermore, it is helpful to investigate the reasons for sandstorms in corresponding areas. In this work, near infrared spectroscopy combined with hierarchical cluster analysis was proposed as a novel method to characterize sand samples collected from Badain Jaran and Tengger Deserts, two main sources of sandstorms in North China. Partial least square discriminant analysis gives a classification result with an accuracy of 100% for the estimation of hierarchical cluster analysis. The results provide support that Badain Jaran Desert and Tengger Desert have sand exchanged by monsoonal weather events. The transmission between the two deserts is also affected by the local terrain. The sand samples were also analyzed by electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to investigate the sample differences in morphology, elemental contents and molecular structures. Near infrared spectroscopy combined with chemometric methods has the potential to be used for the identification of sand samples to determine the sources of sands with advantages of fast, nondestructive, low cost and in situ analysis.

© 2019 The Author(s)

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