We analyzed relationships among dust outbreaks, Normalized Difference Vegetation Indices (NDVI), and surface soil water content (0 to 2 cm depth) on the Loess Plateau, a significant dust source area of East Asia. World Surface Data for wind speed and current weather, coarse-resolution data for NDVI, and a three-layer soil model for surface soil water content were used. The threshold NDVI for preventing dust outbreaks was about 0.2 when the wind speed ranged from 7 to 8 m s −1 . This threshold NDVI corresponds to a vegetation cover of 18%. The threshold ratio of surface soil water content to the field capacity (θ r ) was about 0.2. Conditions facilitating dust outbreaks on the Loess Plateau are when NDVI is less than 0.2 with wind speed≧7 m s −1 and θ r <0.2, and when NDVI is greater than 0.2 with wind speed≧9 m s −1 and θ r <0.2.