What I want to do;

Have a ground plane that has some accumulated debris, I then want to be able to disturb this by various degrees with a floating box (representing a vehicle, be it helicopter, drone, submarine, etc) and which as a result expels smoke/dust. That's the best way of describing the setup I'm wanting to work towards.

Whilst I get that it's not as simple as using some shelf tools, if anyone has links to tutorials, references, or suggestions on further reading (etc) I'd be super grateful. I'd also be happy to hear how you'd approach breaking this down and recreating this yourselves, if only to get an idea of how I should be thinking. I hope that's not too much to ask.