AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Editors' Highlight

What physical features create dust emissions from Australia's Lake Eyre Basin?

Covering about 1.17 million km², Australia's Lake Eyre Basin is an important source of dust for the Southern Hemisphere. But what within the basin is creating the dust? Using data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, Bullard et al. (2008) analyzed the spatial and temporal variability of dust sources in Lake Eyre Basin. They found that of 529 dust plumes detected, 37% originated from dunes and other windblown features, 30% originated from floodplains and other alluvial features, and 29% originated from ephemeral lakes (only 4% of dust plumes originated from the bed of ephemeral Lake Eyre itself). At this subbasin scale, the relative importance of different dust source areas varied primarily in response to sediment supply and availability and thus was not related to wind transport, suggesting that the Lake Eyre Basin is a supply-limited system. The authors expect that their method, if used for other basins, has the potential to bridge the gap between global modeling and field studies and will allow scientists to assess how dust emissions within a basin vary over time.

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