TY - JOUR
T1 - Three millennia of southwestern north American dustiness and future implications
AU - Routson, Cody C.
AU - Overpeck, Jonathan T.
AU - Woodhouse, Connie A.
AU - Kenney, William F.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank K. Routson, R. Yetman, and C. Stielstra for extensive help in the field. We thank N. Mckay, J. Betancourt, A. Cohen, E. Brown, D. Meko, J. Conroy, S. Hayes, J. Addison, and M. Sliwinski for comments and insights. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation, the Science Foundation Arizona, the NOAA funded Climate Assessment for the Southwest, the Colorado Scientific Society, and the University of Arizona Department of Geoscience contributed funding and support for this research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Routson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2016/2
Y1 - 2016/2
N2 - Two sediment records of dust deposition from Fish Lake, in southern Colorado, offer a new perspective on southwest United States (Southwest) aridity and dustiness over the last 3000 years. Micro scanning X-ray fluorescence and grain size analysis provide separate measures of wind-deposited dust in the lake sediment. Together these new records confirm anomalous dustiness in the 19th and 20th centuries, associated with recent land disturbance, drought, and livestock grazing. Before significant anthropogenic influences, changes in drought frequency and aridity also generated atmospheric dust loading. Medieval times were associated with high levels of dustiness, coincident with widespread aridity. These records indicate the Southwest is naturally prone to dustiness. As global and regional temperatures rise and the Southwest shifts toward a more arid landscape, the Southwest will likely become dustier, driving negative impacts on snowpack and water availability, as well as human health.
AB - Two sediment records of dust deposition from Fish Lake, in southern Colorado, offer a new perspective on southwest United States (Southwest) aridity and dustiness over the last 3000 years. Micro scanning X-ray fluorescence and grain size analysis provide separate measures of wind-deposited dust in the lake sediment. Together these new records confirm anomalous dustiness in the 19th and 20th centuries, associated with recent land disturbance, drought, and livestock grazing. Before significant anthropogenic influences, changes in drought frequency and aridity also generated atmospheric dust loading. Medieval times were associated with high levels of dustiness, coincident with widespread aridity. These records indicate the Southwest is naturally prone to dustiness. As global and regional temperatures rise and the Southwest shifts toward a more arid landscape, the Southwest will likely become dustier, driving negative impacts on snowpack and water availability, as well as human health.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0149573
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0149573
M3 - Article
C2 - 26886350
AN - SCOPUS:84960450784
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 2
M1 - e0149573
ER -