A group of University of California, Merced researchers found that the majority of a key air pollutant is generated by dust from fallowed Central Valley farmland.
The study, published in the Nature journal, tracked down the origin of anthropogenic dust — defined as dust emitted through direct and indirect human disturbance of soil particles — in the region using the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Cropland Data Layer.
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The researchers found that, between 2008 and 2022, the Central Valley accounted for 77% of California’s total fallowed land acreage and 88% of the state’s major anthropogenic dust events.
Over those 14 years, they also tracked a positive correlation between an increase of fallowed acreage and an increase in dust activities.
The researchers believe the study has implications for indicating risk of valley fever and regional climate conditions.
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