Quantifying Anthropogenic Dust Emissions

Abstract

Anthropogenic land use and land cover change, including local environmental disturbances, moderate rates of wind‐driven soil erosion and dust emission. These human‐dust cycle interactions impact ecosystems and agricultural production, air quality, human health, biogeochemical cycles, and climate. While the impacts of land use activities and land management on aeolian processes can be profound, the interactions are often complex and assessments of anthropogenic dust loads at all scales remain highly uncertain. Here, we critically review the drivers of anthropogenic dust emission and current evaluation approaches. We then identify and describe opportunities to: (1) develop new conceptual frameworks and interdisciplinary approaches that draw on ecological state‐and‐transition models to improve the accuracy and relevance of assessments of anthropogenic dust emissions; (2) improve model fidelity and capacity for change detection to quantify anthropogenic impacts on aeolian processes; and (3) enhance field research and monitoring networks to support dust model applications to evaluate the impacts of disturbance processes on local to global‐scale wind erosion and dust emissions.

Bounding Global Aerosol Radiative Forcing of Climate Change

“…However, uncertainties on these estimates are large. A few GCM studies yield a range of 10% to 60% for the global average in the anthropogenic fraction of mineral dust for present-day (Mahowald & Luo, 2003;Stanelle et al, 2014;Tegen et al, 2004), although their simulated changes in anthropogenic mineral dust aerosol disagree in both sign and magnitude (Webb & Pierre, 2018). This disagreement is at least in part caused by differences in simulated meteorological processes (Fiedler et al, 2016).…”

Reducing Sampling Uncertainty in Aeolian Research to Improve Change Detection

“…Wind erosion, sand dune dynamics, and dust emission are highly sensitive to the impacts of natural and anthropogenic environmental change (Arvin et al, 2017;Hooper & Marx, 2018;Kok et al, 2018;Yizhaq et al, 2009), but magnitudes of aeolian sediment transport responses to these changes are not well established (Webb & Pierre, 2018). The highly nonlinear response of aeolian transport to wind forcing further complicates efforts to quantify its patterns (Durán et al, 2011).…”

Elevated aeolian sediment transport on the Colorado Plateau, USA: The role of grazing, vehicle disturbance, and increasing aridity

“…This is consistent with the concept of a persistent alternative ecological state in ecological state and transition theory. Without active intervention to restore these degraded areas, these ecosystems will likely remain with diminished capacity to support protective vegetation cover, be characterized by accelerated wind erosion, and be a source of dust emissions (Webb and Pierre, 2018). Nauman, 2017 -field observations; Figure 5).…”

“…Areas that have been pushed into such degraded ecological states are often unable to recover biotic and hydrological functioning autogenically, necessitating active management intervention (Bestelmeyer et al, 2009;Miller et al, 2011;Webb et al, 2014;Fick et al, 2016) (Figure 5). Without active intervention to restore these degraded areas, these ecosystems will likely remain with diminished capacity to support protective vegetation cover, be characterized by accelerated wind erosion, and be a source of dust emissions (Webb and Pierre, 2018). However, at present these annualized-bare areas with large q values are relatively localized and generally fit the 'hot spot' concept posited by Gillette (1999).…”