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Linking the Scales of Process, Observation, and Modeling of Dust Emissions

2004 Dust Workshop, Boulder, Colorado

Introduction

To address the urgent need for advancing the understanding of conditions and processes of dust emission, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) hosted a workshop that assembled specialists in theory, field experimentation, climate modeling, meteorology and monitoring of regional dust emission, remote sensing, geomorphology, and as well as physical and biologic aspects of earth-surface dynamics. The workshop was also a sponsored activity under the new project, "Westerlies and monsoons: Impacts of climate change and variability on dryland environments, hydrology, and people", of the International Geologic Programme (IGP-500). Twenty-four participants from 17 institutions gathered October 22-23, 2004, to enjoy lively discussions (and scenic views!), along with strong coffee, in the comfortable conference room of the Earth Sciences building on the campus of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Attendees limited their discussions on what is already known, except for vital background, to emphasize instead what needs to be done in the future to advance the integration of "dust studies" and thereby the understanding of dust emission.

Topics covered included:

1. How can we integrate dust studies of different scales, scaling up from small study sites to regional and global modeling of dust processes?
2. What physical and biotic conditions give rise to the spatial and temporal variability of dust emissions, including the geomorphic/geologic processes and conditions in dust emission areas that influence the capacities of these settings to generate dust?
3. How can we anticipate or predict changes in these conditions to assess future dust emissions on the scale of seasons to a few decades? (That is, how and when some settings change character, leading to higher or lower dust-emission potential?)
4. How can we produce maps of regions that describe dust-emission potential (wind-erosion vulnerability) at spatial scales suitable for linking to meteorological and climate models?
5. What portion of the emissions are attributable to anthropogenic disturbances, be they direct (e.g., land-use practices including agriculture) or indirect consequences of climate change (including natural dust emission changes and changes in land-use practices resulting from climate changes)?

As important outcomes of the workshop, participants are taking steps to:

1. Define a set of priorities and strategies for linking the spatial and temporal scales of dust emissions and transport;
2. Establish working plans to integrate the activities of small-scale process-oriented studies, regional programs, and meso- and macro-scale modeling of dust processes;
3. Initiate development of a field-based program that integrates direct measurement of surface characteristics at appropriate scales that are readily detectable by remote sensing imagery and that can be used as input to meso- and macro-scale dust emissions, transport, and deposition models.

Workshop Presentations

Grand overview
Joe Prospero
Strategies for advancing global and regional dust studies (47 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Surficial processes - issues of scaling
Bill Nickling and Jack Gillies
Factors controlling the spatial and temporal variability of dust emissions: the need for suitable surrogate measures at large spatial scales (40 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Jon Pelletier
Small-scale models - critical issues in the up-scaling process (high resolution boundary-layer models to resolve friction velocities and vertical concentrations at regional and neighborhood scales) (6.5 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Physical and biotic surfaces
Greg Okin
The effects of surface heterogeneity on dust emission (8.7 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Linking models to surfaces and observations
Doug Westphal
Mesoscale modeling with high-resolution inventories of dust source regions in southwest Asia and east Asia (30 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Karen Kohfeld
Visibility measures as a proxy for dust-storm frequency and concentration: Questions and challenges (2.5 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Charlie Zender
Opportunities for dust and loess observations to improve models (1.3 Mb. PDF)

Local and regional studies of dust emission
Rich Reynolds, Pat Chavez, Jr., and others
Dust in the American Southwest - sources and monitoring (80 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Marith Reheis
Dust in the American Southwest - a 16-year record (5.3 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Additional Contributions

Tom Gill, Joe Prospero, and Max Bleiweiss
Dust Sources and Dust Transport in the Chihuahuan Desert and Southern Great Plains of Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico (27 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Dale Gillette
A Qualitative Geophysical Explanation for Hot Spot Dust Emitting Source Regions (1 Mb. PDF)

Paul Ginoux
Dust sources location: combining TOMS and MODIS data (12 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Joe Prospero and others
Environmental Characterization of Global Sources of Atmospheric Soil Dust Identified with the Nimbus 7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) Absorbing Aerosol Product (2.2 Mb. PDF)

Rob Bryant
Controls on dust emissions from large ephemeral lakes (23 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Thomas Painter
Radiative effects of desert dust deposits in alpine snow (6 MB. Powerpoint file)

Dan Muhs
Evidence of far-traveled dust additions to soils (25 Mb. Powerpoint file)

Dan Muhs
Loess as a paleoclimate indicator (5.3 Mb. Powerpoint file)

List of Attendees

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