Wind-Blown Dust

Similar to wildfire activity, dust is expected to play an increasing role towards changing the atmospheric composition across the Intermountain West. Wind-blown dust can have a number of impacts including (1) degrading air quality, (2) decreasing visibility, and (3) accelerating snowmelt in our mountains, which serve as the "Water Towers of the West".

Understanding how more frequent droughts, land use changes, and desiccating lakes impact dust production are topics that my research group are investigating. Here, we use modeling tools such as (HYSPLIT-STILT) to track the transport of dust from its origin point to our location of interest, which can be an urban air quality site or a snow hydrology site located up in the mountains!