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Friday Find: The Sahara fertilizes the Amazon

By tfk on January 5, 2007.

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NASA tells us Bodele Depression Dust Feeds Amazon:

By studying NASA satellite data of the spread of dust across the globe, scientists discovered that more than half of the mineral dust that fertilizes the Amazon soil comes from a single spot in the southern Sahara, a large mountain-rimmed valley called the Bodele Depression.

They have an image of the Bodélé there, and a link to the original research paper, "The Bodélé depression: a single spot in the Sahara that provides most of the mineral dust to the Amazon forest." As you can see from the image above, reproduced from that paper, there are a series of wind tunnels in the landscape of the Bodélé which channel wind, and those winds pick up dirt and carry it around the world to the Amazon, where it enriches the soil in one of the most diverse and productive regions on earth.

I'm carefully avoiding all references to Bob Dylan songs here.

Tags
Planet Earth

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Wow. Cool science.

Yeah! Science for once.

Instead of the usual hate fundies and relgion in general rants.

I always wondered why they let Josh get away with calling this a science blog.
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I always wondered why they let Josh get away with calling this a science blog.

Probably for a better reason than bozo politicians trying to decide science by fiat.