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Grant McTainsh and others Centre for Riverine Landscapes, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland. 4111, Australia Abstract: The recent upsurge in research attention to aeolian dust has shown that dust transport systems operate on very large spatial and temporal scales, and involve much larger quantities of sediment than was previously realized. An inevitable consequence of this is that researchers from a range of neighbouring disciplines, including ecology, are beginning to realize that this new knowledge has important implications for their study areas as well. In the present paper, we examine the ecological implications (real and potential) of this expanding knowledge of dust transport systems, with a particular emphasis upon the Australian dust transport system. We track these ecological effects from source to sink. At source, we examine how wind erosion-soil-vegetation relationships can result in stable (reversible) ecological changes and in unstable (uni-directional) successional changes. We examine how research attention is turning to the organic content of dusts (including the role of dust as a vector for pathogens), and discuss the role of biological soil crusts in stabilizing soils against wind erosion and in contributing to organic dusts. Amongst the downwind terrestrial impacts, we examine how: dust deposition is having an influence upon soils over very large areas, dust is influencing nutrient budgets within distant forest ecosystems and contributing to river nutrient loads, and finally how these impacts are compounded within internally-draining river basins. Marine ecological impacts upon coral reefs and phytoplankton are also discussed, and finally we examine the largely unmeasured, but potentially very significant ecological impacts of dust upon global climates. |
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