The West wasn’t always so dusty
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From Times Staff and Wire Reports
University of Colorado at Boulder geologist Jason Neff measured 5,000 years’ worth of dust that settled in the floors of alpine lakes in Colorado, and found the West wasn’t always so dusty. The layers became much thicker after railroads broke through the West, prompting an increase in ranching, farming and mining in the second half of the 19th century.
Neff estimated that it’s four to five times dustier today than it was 200 years ago. The findings were published Sunday in Nature Geoscience.
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