Effects of Climatic Variability and Land Use on American Drylands

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Dust - Climatic, Geomorphic, Ecologic, Land-use, and Hydrologic Factors and Societal Effects

One area of focus for the project is aeolian dust primarily because of its critical but incompletely understood roles in issues of human health and ecosystem dynamics. This work also bears on air quality and visibility standards, management of lands to minimize wind erosion, transportation safety, and runoff from snowpack-melt. The methods of sampling and study, along with models, developed for North America can be applied to arid lands elsewhere to address the effects of mineral dust on humans and their environment.

We investigate causes and effects of aeolian dust with respect to geologic, ecologic, hydrologic, land-use, climatic, and human-health factors to:

Detect wind erosion and dust emission

• Remotely sensed imaging to detect dust emissions
• Measuring wind-erosion

Locate and describe recurrent dust sources

• Remotely sensed imaging to detect dust emissions
• The Inventory of North American Dust Sources
• North American dust events - purpose for building a database

Determine factors responsible for dust emission

• Playas and dry lakes
• Dust emission from Playas (Dry Lakes)
• Dust emission from Franklin Lake playa
• Accelerated deflation on Mesquite Lake playa, Mojave Desert
• Wind-tunnel studies of playa surfaces
• LiDAR studies of wind erosion at Mesquite lake playa (California-Nevada)
• Sparsely vegetated settings
• Sparsely vegetated settings in the Mojave Desert
• Settings in and around Canyonlands National Park, Utah
• Sediment losses and gains across a gradient of livestock grazing and plant invasion in a cool, semi-arid grassland, Colorado Plateau
• Biogeochemical and ecological impacts of livestock grazing in semi-arid Southeastern Utah, USA
• Multi-decadal impacts of grazing on soil physical and biogeochemical properties in Southeast Utah
• Atmospheric mineral dust in dryland ecosystems: Application of environmental magnetism
• Burned and rehabilitated area, Milford Flats, Utah
• Post-Fire Measurement of Dust Emission on the Milford Flat Fire, West-Central Utah
• Wind Erosion and Post-Fire Rehabilitation Strategies - Lessons from the Milford Flat Fire
• Alluvial settings
• Human activities and land disturbances
• Dust from a prairie-dog colony – when human and natural factors intersect

Model winds—insights into conditions of dust generation and dust-transport paths

Determine associations between dust deposition and dust generation

• Sixteen-year Record of Eolian Dust in Southern Nevada and California, U.S.A.
• Composition of Aeolian Dust in Natural Traps on Isolated Surfaces of the Central Mojave Desert-Insights to Mixing, Sources, and Nutrient Inputs
• Relation of Dust Emission to ENSO in the Mojave Desert
• Dust emission and deposition — linking geomorphology, hydrology, and ecology
• Geochemistry of mineral dust in soils
• Geochemical evidence for diversity of dust sources in the southwestern United States
• Compositions of modern dust and surface sediments in the Desert Southwest, United States

Characterize properties of dust (mineralogical, chemical, isotopic, textural, and geophysical)

• Why study dust properties?
• Effects of dust on mountain snow pack

Evaluate the effects of dust on human health

• Bioaccessibility of elements in dust
• Controls on the distribution of potentially toxic metals in playa dust
• Toxic metals in dust – from dry lake sources into the human body
• Health effects of dust from saline surfaces
• Dust from Franklin Lake playa and Mesquite Lake playa, Mojave Desert
• Dust from Owens dry Lake, California
• Dust and valley fever

Anticipate future dust sources

Document the effects of human activities on dust emission-the last 150 years

• Recent increase in aeolian dust deposition related to human activity in the Western United States
• Effects of human activity on atmospheric dust inputs to lakes in the Uinta Mountains, Utah

Develop new methods to detect dust emission

• Automated remote digital imaging system: Applications for monitoring dust emissions in the Mojave Desert, California
• Imaging dust storms using geostationary satellites

Map wind-erosion vulnerability from space

Recent Presentations

• Dust on Snow: Where does it come from? What's in it? (Click to download PowerPoint presentation at the Colorado Water Congress, Feb. 1, 2013, Denver, Colorado)