Dust^2An introduction to the 2024 Collectors Tour from Dust^2 Principal Investigator Jeff Munroe.
Posted: December 21, 2024
Dust 13
Some details about the workings of the passive dust collectors in the Dust^2 array, how samples are collected, and scenes from a lovely fall drive.
More about the design and function of the collectors in "Relation between regional drought and mountain dust deposition revealed by a 10-year record from an alpine critical zone" published by Science of The Total Environment in 2022.
Dust 14
Dust^2 Cluster member Jeff Munroe talks about the importance of studying the movement of dust in the Critical Zone.
Dust 2
A visit to one of the OG collectors in the Collectors Tour array. In this visit Cluster member Jeff Munroe describes the importance of long-term research in environmental science, how Dust^2 research helps better understand arid landscapes, and we see a hike on a lovely fall day in Utah.
Dust 5
The Collectors Tour takes you to passive dust collectors stationed in an array throughout the Southwestern United States. In this visit to the collector know as Dust 5, Cluster member Jeff Munroe describes how soil that supports life in an alpine landscape sorts itself from the rocks all around it, creating almost an oasis of fertility in a sea of rocks. We're talking about patterned ground is this segment of the Collectors Tour.
More about patterned ground in this 2007 paper published in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research.
Dust 1
An idea sketched on a piece of paper is now a valuable tool to learn ways alpine landscapes become fertile carbon sinks with an important role in the complex systems at play in the Critical Zone.
More in 2014's "Properties of modern dust accumulating in the Uinta Mountains, Utah, USA, and implications for the regional dust system of the Rocky Mountains" published in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms.
Dust 19
In this stop along the Collectors Tour Jeff answers the question: what happens when it snows?
Visit a weather station at 12,000 that's been operating since 1997 in this Collectors Tour bonus content. This station has also served as active dust sampler base for Dust^2 Cluster member Jeff Munroe and in this video he describes how this active sampler works and adds data to his research about how dust moves through the Critical Zone.
Dust 20
What happens when you take a passive dust collector, put it in a place where it will get covered with snow for perhaps more than a year, then find out how much dust was in that snow. That's exactly what Critical Zone Collaborative Network Dust^2 Cluster member Jeff Munroe did. Here in this stop of the 2024 Collectors Tour he describes how this location is tied to others in the collector array and why knowing the relationship between snow and dust is important as the Earth continues to experience rapid climate change.
Dust 8
A turkey baster, a colander, a funnel and a toothbrush hike up a mountain. Important scientific samples hike back down. This isn't a kind of riddle, it's how Dust^2 Cluster member Jeff Munroe collects the dust that becomes the data used in the Cluster's source-to-sink study of how dust moves through the Critical Zone.
See the process in action here at Dust 8 in the Collectors Tour.
Dust 7
Soils feed plants. And if the right things aren't in the soils plants don't live there. In this stop along the Collectors Tour Critical Zone Collaborative Network Dust^2 Cluster member Jeff Munroe shares about how he's conducted detailed studies to determine that dust has an essential role to play in the development and growth of fertile soils. Soils that feed plants, that feed animals, that feed our families.
Read the study mentioned in this video.
Dust 3
Dust can be a kind of time travel device. In this stop along the Collectors Tour Dust Cluster member Jeff Munroe describes how combining samples and data from the 21st century with samples that have been undisturbed for millennia tell a long-term story about the movement of dust in the Critical Zone of the Southwestern United States.
This paper published in the Journal of Quaternary Science includes more about these findings: https://bit.ly/48qdXzb
Dust 6
"It's all connected," Dust^2 Cluster member Jeff Munroe highlights in this video at the intersection of not only geologic time and geographic space, but also a place where water and soil interact in interesting ways.
More about the work from Greg Carling and his students that's mentioned in this video can be found in this paper published by Frontiers in Water in 2020: https://bit.ly/3NOn1EE
Dust 18
Meet a family of scientific instruments all working together to provide researchers a better understanding of the Earth's Critical Zone.
Find out more about how all the members of the Dust Cluster are working together to study the source-to-sink movement of dust across the surface of the Earth in this October 2024 review paper: https://bit.ly/3NNsawn
Dust 4
Shhh. "Don't tell the other collectors," Dust^2 Cluster member Jeff Munroe says. Because out of all 20 instruments in the collector array in the southwestern U.S. this one, Dust 4, is Munroe's favorite. The reason why, and the difficulty of answering the question "where does the dust come from" in this stop along the Collectors Tour.
More about determining the source of dust in "Isotope fingerprinting reveals western North American sources of modern dust in the Uinta Mountains, Utah, USA" published by Aeolian Research in 2019: https://bit.ly/3YOBQgI
Dust 16
Your water, your food, your family all depend on the health and sustainability of the Earth's critical zone. In this stop along the Collectors Tour Dust^2 Cluster Member Jeff Munroe talks a bit about the critical zone itself and how the nine clusters of the Critical Zone Collaborative Network are working to better understand the complex systems that support life as we know it.
More about the creation of the Critical Zone Collaborative Network in "Designing a network of critical zone observatories to explore the living skin of the terrestrial Earth" published by Earth Surface Dynamics in 2017: https://bit.ly/3YA439w
Dust 15
Increasing understanding of the source-to-sink movement of dust through the Earth's critical zone is the overall goal of the @NSFScience -funded Dust^2 project.
In this stop of the Collectors Tour Middlebury-based Cluster member Jeff Munroe describes how samples gathered during the tour are helping to achieve that goal.
Read more about the findings described in this video. "Regional sources control dust in the mountain critical zone of the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains, USA" published by Environmental Research Letters in 2023: https://bit.ly/3V3ZELJ
Dust 11
Attention Critical Zone scientists: join this effort to connect researchers from all around the world. In this stop on the Collectors Tour Dust^2 Cluster member Jeff Munroe describes how you can get involved in the newly-funded AccelNet project CZ-NoN, work creating a network of networks strengthening connections and developing collaborations between scientists all around the world who are studying the critical zone.
More about one of these networks, the OZCAR network in France: https://bit.ly/4fdDm1y
Dust 9
Dust is powerful. Combine dust with snow and you get a formula that makes civil engineers very busy. Towns and cities plan very carefully to take into account how much water flows into and is held by reservoirs that provide running water for residents. Any change in that carefully calculated amount could mean floods or water restrictions. Find out why our work studying the source-to-sink movement of dust in the critical zone has direct implications for how much water your community has access to in this video from our Collectors Tour series.
Read more about this dust-on-snow research in this 2023 paper published in Environmental Research Letters: https://bit.ly/46YUk0v
Dust 10
We work to understand how dust moves through the critical zone so we can be part of policy decisions that affect all members of a community. That's why alpine landscapes aren't the only place we're visiting during the Collectors Tour.
Read more about this work in "Industrial Particulate Pollution and Historical Land Use Contribute Metals of Concern to Dust Deposited in Neighborhoods Along the Wasatch Front, UT, USA" published by GeoHealth in 2022: https://bit.ly/3V0p1O7
Dust 17
The last stop of the 2024 Collectors Tour is in Provo, Utah on the campus of Brigham Young University where a collection of collectors are working together, much like the members of the Dust^2 Cluster itself.
In this video Jeff Munroe bids farewell to the road for this season, offers thanks to members of the team, and reflects on his time in the field.
Read "Trace element chemistry of atmospheric deposition along the Wasatch Front (Utah, USA) reflects regional playa dust and local urban aerosols" for more about the work of BYU-based Greg Carling mentioned in this video: https://bit.ly/4flfQQs