NEW YORK: The dust of Sahara Desert is a blessing for the Brazilian Amazon rainforests as it provides necessary material for growth. Plants need phosphorus for their protein nutrients and growth, and the Amazon rainforest relies on phosphorus to fertilize and bloom.
In a larger research effort to establish the roles of dusts and aerosols on our environment and on global climate, researchers have come upon a finding that phosphorus contained in Saharan dusts get transported over the ocean and rainforests to help with blooming of plants and trees in the Amazon rainforests.
“This is a small world,” said said lead author Hongbin Yu, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland who works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “And we’re all connected together.”
Published February 24 in the Geography Research Letters – a journal of the American Geophysical Union, the new research provides the first satellite-based estimate of phosphorus carried in African sands to South America and other places over several years.
And then, this is also the first time NASA’s satellite will be quantifying how much dust is carried to fertile lands in 3D – three dimensions.
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