CAREER: Integrating Hyperspectral Data, Advanced Algorithms, and Community Observations to Uncover the Effects of Increasing Dust Deposition on the Environment

Inland saline lakes are important natural sources of water in the United States and throughout the world. During the last decades, the water levels of inland saline lakes have been shrinking rapidly due to increasing water withdrawals for human consumption and climate change. Dry lakebeds exposed by shrinking saline lakes have become the sources of increased dust storms with adverse impacts on human and ecosystem health throughout the world.

However, a fundamental understanding of the impacts of dust storms and pollution on the environment and ecosystem health has remained elusive. The overarching goal of this CAREER project is to advance the fundamental understanding of how plant ecosystems respond over time to exposure to salt-rich dust storms generated by the exposed dry lakebeds of inland saline lakes.

Additional benefits to society will be accomplished through education and training activities including the mentoring of one graduate student at Utah State University.

Contaminated lakebeds exposed by shrinking saline lakes have become the sources of increasing dust storms resulting in negative environmental and public health consequences throughout the world. Understanding the extent and severity of increasing dust deposition in the environment remains a challenge, as current approaches are limited to monitoring active dust events, modeling emissions and deposition at coarse spatiotemporal resolutions, or sampling deposition fluxes at single geographic locations.

This CAREER project will integrate laboratory analytical and field methods with the latest developments in hyperspectral imaging technology and deep learning to continuously monitor dust deposition, estimate deposition abundance, and evaluate environmental responses to dust storms and pollution generated by the exposed dry lakebeds of inland saline lakes using the Great Salt Lake (GSL) in Utah as case study. The specific objectives of the research are to 1) evaluate the responses of different plants to variable levels of dust exposure and how imaging spectroscopy can assess those responses; 2) develop novel hyperspectral unmixing techniques for detecting and quantifying dust deposition in vegetative systems; and (3) determine how satellite data and field observations can evaluate transport, deposition, and effects of dust pollution over time by applying domain adaptation techniques to dust detection models constructed from laboratory data.

To implement the educational and outreach goals of this project, the Principal Investigator proposes to leverage existing programs and resources at Utah State University to 1) develop new experiential course modules in environmental engineering and laboratory methods for undergraduate and graduate students; 2) create and deliver experimental protocols and curriculum for middle school students to learn about plant responses to dust pollution; and 3) engage community stakeholders in local, personally relevant observational research.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.