Dust emission source characterization for visibility hazard assessment on Lordsburg Playa in Southwestern New Mexico, USA

Abstract

In drylands around the world, ephemeral lakes (playas) are common. Dry, wind-erodible playa sediments are potent local and regional sources of dust and PM10 (airborne particles with diameters less than 10 μm). Dust clouds often cause sudden and/or prolonged loss of visibility to travelers on downwind roadways. Lordsburg Playa, in southwestern New Mexico, USA is bisected by Interstate Highway 10. Dust storms emanating from the playa have been responsible for numerous visibility-related road closures (including 39 road closures between 2012 and 2019) causing major economic losses, in addition to well over a hundred dust-related vehicle crashes causing at least 41 lost lives in the last 53 years. In order to improve understanding of the surfaces responsible for the dust emissions, we investigated the critical wind friction velocity thresholds and the dust emissivities of surfaces representing areas typical of Lordsburg Playa’s stream deltas, shorelines, and ephemerally flooded lakebed using a Portable In-Situ Wind ERosion Laboratory (PI-SWERL). Mean threshold friction velocities for PM10 entrainment ranged from less than 0.30 m s− 1 for areas in the delta and shoreline to greater than 0.55 m s− 1 for ephemerally flooded areas of the lakebed. Similarly, we quantified mean PM10 vertical flux rates ranging from less than 500 μg m− 2 s− 1 for ephemerally flooded areas of lakebed to nearly 25,000 μg m− 2 s− 1 for disturbed delta surfaces. The unlimited PM10 supply of the relatively coarse sediments along the western shoreline is problematic and indicates that this may be the source area for longer-term visibility reducing dust events and should be a focus area for dust mitigation efforts.

Dust Release during Playa Activation in a Typical Semiarid Steppe

“…The wind-sand flow allows the crust to overcome the resistance to do work. This causes the ground surface of the to produce a large number of erodible particles [38]. The particles at sites C and D had been activated through wind and sand grinding to produce more fine particles (<63 μm), which could migrate directly upward and can migrate farther relative to particles from deserts (125-250 μm) and the Gobi desert (63-125 μm) [39,40].…”

Health and Safety Effects of Airborne Soil Dust in the Americas and Beyond

“…In Arizona, crashes in dusty conditions have a higher‐than‐average ratio of fatalities to injuries (Burritt & Hyers, 1981), possibly because of high speed limits and sudden, unexpected, small‐scale events of blinding dust. Not far to the east, Interstate 10 highway crosses the naturally‐ephemeral, dust‐emitting Lordsburg Playa in southwest New Mexico (Eibedingil et al., 2021); this single short stretch of road was the site of 117 dust‐and‐sand‐related highway crashes between 1980 and 2017, with at least 41 fatalities since 1965 and 21 since 2012 (Botkin & Hutchinson, 2020; New Mexico Department of Transportation, 2018; Van Pelt, Tatarko, et al., 2020). The “Black Tuesday Storm” of 14 April 2015 generated dust in the Great Basin Desert of western Utah, limited visibility on Interstate 80, and caused a 17‐vehicle pileup with one death and 25 injuries (Nicoll et al., 2020).…”

Mechanisms of dust emissions from lakes during different drying stages in a semi-arid grassland in northern China

“…The physical characteristics of the surface, texture, and structure and the presence of undisturbed crust at the test site have a strong influence on both the friction velocity and roughness (Van Pelt et al, 2020). The friction velocity is generally considered to be the dominant factor controlling the horizontal deposition fluxes during wind erosion events and is generally influenced by surface roughness, soil moisture, soil particle size, and crusting (Buyantogtokh et al, 2021).…”

“…Wind erosion caused by the drying of salt lakes is one of the sources of dust release in arid and semi-arid regions and even globally (Gill et al, 2002;Abuduwaili et al, 2010;Baddock et al, 2011;Motaghi et al, 2020;Van Pelt et al, 2020), accounting for about 30% of global dust emissions (Sweeney et al, 2016). According to current studies on dust emissions, landscapes that exist in semi-arid and arid regions such as the Gobi Desert (Wang et al, 2006b;Wang et al, 2008), salt and dry lakes, ephemeral stream depressions, seasonal marshes, and alluvial fans (Derbyshire et al, 1998), emit dust in different seasons (Varga, 2012).…”