The Water Information Program

The Western United States has become 500 percent dustier in the past two centuries due to westward expansion and accompanying human activity beginning in the 1800s, according to a new study by scientists at four U.S. universities and two federal government agencies. Sediment records from dust blown into alpine lakes in southwest Colorado's San Juan Mountains over thousands of years indicates that the sharp rise in dust deposits coincided with railroad, ranching and livestock activity in the middle of the last century, said lead author Jason Neff, geological sciences professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder. "There seems to be a perception that dusty conditions in the West are just the nature of the region," said Neff. "We have shown here that the increase in dust since the 1800s is a direct result of human activity and not part of the natural system." The results of the study have implications ranging from ecosystem alteration to human health, he said. Dust causes earlier spring snowmelt, so we can now definitively say that humans are in large part responsible for this melt.

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