Environmental Engineering and Management Journal May 2015, Vol.14, No. 5, 1143-1150 http://omicron.ch.tuiasi.ro/EEMJ/ “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, Romania STUDY ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AN AGRICULTURAL TECHNIQUE BASED ON AEOLIAN DEPOSITION, IN A SEMIARID ENVIRONMENT Carlos Asensio 1 , Francisco Javier Lozano 1 , Eduardo Ortega 2 , Zaal Kikvidze 3 1 Departamento de Edafología y Química Agrícola, Universidad de Almería, 04120, Spain 2 Departamento de Edafología y Química Agrícola, Universidad de Granada, 18071, Spain 3 Institute of Ecology, Ilia State University, 3/5 Cholokashvili Ave., Tbilisi 0162, Georgia Abstract Wind erosion, which strongly affects both plant and soil development in arid environments, is dependent on soil properties, wind characteristics and plant cover. In a semiarid zone in SE Spain, a new technique consisting of dusting plants with a forced wind stream reduces tillage and significantly increases productivity. By using a blower once a year, dust is raised and partly retained by plants, and eventually ends up in the understory. To assess the influence of this technique on soil properties and test its efficiency, we maximized its effects by performing monthly applications of dust on natural vegetation not subject to any other human intervention, using two native plant species to assess the dust retention capacity and its effects. Soils were sampled under the canopies of Retama sphaerocarpa and Salsola genistoides, prior to dust applications generated with a modified mechanical blower. Samples were taken again after trials under the canopies of both species and under control plants to check for changes from blowing. Results show that changes generated are mainly in nutrient content, bulk density and soil texture under Retama canopies. Principal components analysis and ANCOVA highlighted the importance of species and exposed plant surface, and its influence on soil features. The effect of interaction between Species and Exposed Surface has relevant role as the main species effect on several soil characteristics, leading to overall higher soil fertility. Key words: dust deposition, soil fertility, Tabernas Desert, understory soil Received: July, 2012; Revised final: July, 2013; Accepted: July, 2013  Author to whom all correspondence should be addressed: e-mail: casensio@ual.es; Phone: +034 950015519 1. Introduction In semi-arid areas, where vegetation is sparse, rainfall is erratic and wind often blows intensively, wind erosion repositions enormous amounts of soil components, and may cause serious agricultural and environmental problems, such as textural changes having an impact on soil water status or plants being buried after emergence. Wind erosion is affected by inherent soil properties (Liu et al., 2003), wind speed (López et al., 2000) and plant cover (Li et al., 2004). This type of erosive soil degradation affects the organic carbon content and nitrogen dynamics (Mendez et al., 2006) essential to soil quality that determine productivity and sustainability (Sharma et al., 2005). As in any erosive process, wind action is reflected in three stages: removal of materials, transport, and deposit. Soil loss affects carbon sequestration (Lal, 2003) and is related to plant cover (Feng et al., 2006; Mahdi et al., 2005; Piao et al., 2007) and land use (Wu et al., 2003). Deposition plays an important role in the nutrient cycle in natural ecosystems, as observed in the Sahel (Bielders et al., 2002), where windblown sediment was monitored using Big Spring Number Eight (BSNE) traps in a conventionally managed cultivated field. The nutrient content of windblown