As Droughts Intensify, More CA Famland Fallowed; Unsurprisingly, Dust Content In Central Valley Air Rising 36% /Decade

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The researchers started by pinpointing fallowed land across California between 2008 and 2022 using U.S. Department of Agriculture datasets. The data showed that 77% of the state’s fallowed land was in the Central Valley.

The team then examined NASA satellite images of atmospheric aerosols, identifying which aerosols were dust particles on the basis of the way they scatter light. When they overlaid the regions that regularly experienced dust events with the agricultural data, they saw that dust events were tightly associated with fallowed fields.

The problem appears to be getting worse. Between 2008 and 2022, both the area of fallowed land and corresponding dust levels have increased: In this period, the amount of dust in the atmosphere over the Central Valley grew by about 36% per decade.

Having grown up in California and spent the first decade of his career studying dust in the Central Valley, Thomas Gill, an Earth scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso who wasn’t involved in the study, has long worried that land use changes could lead to dust issues. “This study by Adebiyi et al., unfortunately, shows that my worries have been coming true,” he said. Daniel Tong, an atmospheric scientist at George Mason University who also wasn’t involved in the study, agreed that the work provides some much-needed conclusive data on the connection between land use and dust levels. “This is a very useful study,” he said.

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https://eos.org/articles/fallowed-fields-are-fueling-californias-dust-problem