This year 11 serious dust storms have hit the Colorado Rockies – and it’s only April. The storms affect snow melt, air quality and local vegetation.
Yesterday the Washington Post ran a story about the dust storms, the factors contributing to them and the impacts they have on people and the environment.
The 11 storms are a record for the six years researchers have followed the phenomenon. The Post’s Juliet Eilperin writes, “The dust storms are a harbinger of a broader phenomenon, researchers say, as global warming translates into less precipitation and a population boom intensifies the activities that are disturbing the dust in the first place.”
A USGS scientist predicts that by 2050, the region’s soil will be in a Dust-Bowl condition.
How does all this dust affect the ecosystems? Dust on the snowpack cause the snow to melt more quickly, releasing lots of water into the ecosystem two-to-four weeks before crops need it. So grain and potato farmers have trouble irrigating their crops, because the snow water’s all gone by time they need it.
Lastly, the storms reduce air quality. In Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and Scottsdale, officials are fighting the dust problem by cracking down on off-road vehicles and unpaved roads.
Why so many dust storms now? Eilperin notes, “the fact that so much dust is on the move reflects that across vast areas, soil is being loosened by off-road vehicles, livestock grazing, and road development for oil and gas production, much of it on public land.”
Advocates for off-road vehicles, cattle owners and the oil and gas industry all play down the role their groups play in the dust problem. However, in an interview last summer with USDA scientist Debra Peters, she noted how small impacts can accumulate to create large effects — the way the combined actions of individual farmers helped cause the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
Something similar appears to be happening here. Maybe it will take a Dust Bowl or a big dust storm every week to make the special-interest groups acknowledge that their actions are detrimental to the common good.
A record for the six years that researchers have followed the phenomenom…
THe west is wetter right now than usual. I travel a lot and can tell you that. I can also tell you that the dust storms are well withing normal confines. The sky is not falling and the “environment” is not out of control.
Our desert southwest is called a desert for a reason. It is arid. Most of Colorado is a desert. It is arid. When the wind blows, it blows dust. Every year.
Certainly our climate is changing. It always has and always will. Anamolies are not harbringers of disaster.
I am glad you saw fit to bring up the dust bowl. It was a period of very dry conditions and wind exacerbated by poor agricultural techniques. And we lived.
I must warn against the mantra of “the common good”. There is no such thing.
Ben
Actually, I dont think the west is “wetter right now than usual” as mentioned in the comment. Here is the US Drought index map:
whttp://drought.unl.edu/DM/MONITOR.html
I am a former resident of Phoenix and dust is a problem. Part of the reason is because in the Western States because it is so dry.
It is terrible
Dan, you use the same phrase I hear in many environmental articles I read these days….”detrimental to the common good.” Did you ever stop and think about what those words convey and their history? You’ll find them in almost every socialist and communist edict written in these past 100 years. You might want to do a little more research natural cycles of the environment to determine the cause of changes in these cycles.
Right! This “common good” stuff and giving high value to the needs of others sounds a lot like something Jesus Christ would promote. And you can see where that got Him! I can understand how many people would not want to be a part of that. It is entirely too radical!
I find it utterly amazing that some people are lightening-quick to attribute a subversive political agenda to scientific observations. And what is wrong with a socialist state that serves the people? Ever visit Denmark or the Netherlands? Very nice places and no one complains about a lack of personal freedom – just the opposite. Let’s just disconnect the darn politicking from a science discussion, OK?
I agree with Janine: why can’t we look at scientific data objectively without politicizing it? Why can’t we accept that global warming, the irrefutable fact that the earth’s average temperature has already risen by 1.7 degrees could and is having a detrimental effect on the land, and that conditions might be worsening, as evinced by hard scientific data? Sticking our head in the sand and claiming that the host of worsening trends are all ‘anomalies’ is truly symptomatic of the obtuseness that has brought us to these very extremes.
Exceptional website. It absolutely was pleasant to me.