The Bodele depression: a single spot in the Sahara that provides most of the mineral dust to the Amazon forest

被引:258
作者
Koren, Ilan [1 ]
Kaufman, Yoram J. [2 ]
Washington, Richard [3 ]
Todd, Martin C. [4 ]
Rudich, Yinon [1 ]
Martins, J. Vanderlei [2 ,5 ,6 ]
Rosenfeld, Daniel [7 ]
机构
[1] Weizmann Inst Sci, Dept Environm Sci, IL-76100 Rehovot, Israel
[2] NASA, Goddard Space Flight Ctr, Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
[3] Univ Oxford, Ctr Environm, Climate Res Lab, Oxford OX1 2JD, England
[4] UCL, Dept Geog, London WC1E 6BT, England
[5] Univ Maryland Baltimore Cty, Joint Ctr Earth Syst Technol, Baltimore, MD 21228 USA
[6] Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Phys, BR-05508 Sao Paulo, Brazil
[7] Hebrew Univ Jerusalem, Inst Earth Sci, IL-91904 Jerusalem, Israel
关键词
Sahara; Amazon; dust; aerosols; rainforest; fertilization;
D O I
10.1088/1748-9326/1/1/014005
中图分类号
X [环境科学、安全科学];
学科分类号
08 ; 0830 ;
摘要
About 40 million tons of dust are transported annually from the Sahara to the Amazon basin. Saharan dust has been proposed to be the main mineral source that fertilizes the Amazon basin, generating a dependence of the health and productivity of the rain forest on dust supply from the Sahara. Here we show that about half of the annual dust supply to the Amazon basin is emitted from a single source: the Bodele depression located northeast of Lake Chad, approximately 0.5% of the size of the Amazon or 0.2% of the Sahara. Placed in a narrow path between two mountain chains that direct and accelerate the surface winds over the depression, the Bodele emits dust on 40% of the winter days, averaging more than 0.7 million tons of dust per day.
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页数:5
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