The Aeolian Erosion Model (AERO) is a flexible aeolian transport and dust emission modeling framework developed to inform fundamental research and provide decision support for land managers. The model simulates size-resolved horizontal and vertical mass flux on the plot scale from user inputs of meteorological, soil and vegetation data via user-selectable drag portioning, transport and emission schemes. AERO is adaptable to many research and management applications over a range of site conditions and can leverage emerging large-scale ecological datasets to provide new opportunities to evaluate aeolian sediment transport responses to land surface conditions, potential interactions with disturbances and ecological change, and impacts of anthropogenic land use and land cover change.