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Aeolian erosion of flat, arid landscapes is induced (and sustained) by the aerodynamic surface stress imposed by flow in the atmospheric surface layer. Conceptual models typically indicate that sediment mass flux, Q (via saltation or drift), scales with imposed aerodynamic stress raised to some exponent, n, where . This scaling demonstrates the importance of turbulent fluctuations in driving aeolian processes. In order to illustrate the importance of surface-stress intermittency in aeolian processes, and to elucidate the role of turbulence, conditional averaging predicated on aerodynamic surface stress has been used within large-eddy simulation of atmospheric boundary-layer flow over an arid, flat landscape. The conditional-sampling thresholds are defined based on probability distribution functions of surface stress. The simulations have been performed for a computational domain with  …