Dust plays a critical role in Earth's climate system and serves as a natural source of iron and other micronutrients to remote regions of the ocean. We have generated records of dust deposition over the past 500,000 years at three sites spanning the breadth of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Equatorial Pacific dust fluxes are highly correlated with global ice volume and with dust fluxes to Antarc...

The dynamics of dissolved inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus in seawater after a dust event were followed to better understand the impact of dust deposition in low nutrient waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Three independent abiotic experiments were performed over three seasons (winter, spring, end of summer) characterized by contrasted biogeochemical conditions. Experiments consisted of seeding ...

[1] During transport, atmospheric aerosol particles experience nonlinear size-dependent deposition processes which affect their size distribution. This implies that the aerosol particle size distribution (PSD) should be well represented in three-dimensional transport models that simulate their transport and their radiative or biogeochemical impacts. In particular, mineral dust aerosols exhibit ...

Cement dust deposition on soil has been implicated in the heavy metal (HM) contamination of soil, leading to adverse effects on plants and humans. This study assessed the impact of cement dust deposition on the HM content of the soil samples in the vicinity of a cement factory and its implication on the public health of the host community. Topsoil samples were collected at varying distances and...

Tundra ecosystems are sensitive to disturbance and slow to recover. To account for environmental costs of development in the North, cumulative impacts of roads and dust deposition must be quantified. After a previous study, we re-examined tundra adjacent to the 577-km-long Dalton Highway in northern Alaska to assess 13 y of additional calcareous road dust deposition. Dust loading continues to a...

Many alpine areas are experiencing deglaciation, biogeochemical changes driven by temperature rise, and changes in atmospheric deposition. There is mounting evidence that the water quality of alpine streams may be related to these changes, including rising atmospheric deposition of carbon (C) and nutrients. Given that barren alpine soils can be severely C limited, atmospheric deposition sources...

current sampling instruments of respirable dust (rd) may over estimate the inhaled dose by up to 400% depending on the size distribution of airborne dust. this limitation and the practice of assigning a single value for rd to all jobs regardless of the level of activity are incompatible with the advances in occupational epidemiology. a new dust sampler designed to estimate pulmonary deposition ...

Elongated dust grains exist in astrophysical plasmas. Anisotropic growth of elliptical dust grains, via plasma deposition, occurs if the deposited ions are non-inertial. In reality the extent of such growth depends upon the initial kinetic energy of the ions and the magnitude of the electric field in the sheath. Simulations of the dynamics of the ions in the sheath are reported, showing how ell...