Salt Lake Dust Storm

I did some research on the risk of dust storms from the retreating Great Salt Lake bed recently for grad school. Stumbled across this video that illustrated exactly what I was researching -

This video shows a dust storm from the GSL that impacted Salt Lake City on the afternoon of 11/16/2016. Utah Division of Air Quality monitors recorded significant, short-term spikes in particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations. The visibility at SLC International Airport was temporarily reduced to less than 4 miles. This dust plume originated from the exposed lakebed of Farmington Bay when the wind speeds exceeded ~22 mph. [Webcam images courtesy of Dr. John Horel and the University of Utah Department of Atmospheric Sciences]

A video posted by Kevin Perry (@greatsaltlakedust) on Nov 27, 2016 at 8:50am PST

Canyon Wildfire Assessment at Vandenberg Air Force Base

I worked on this project recently with Haoyu Li at Clark University. Vandenberg Air Force Base had a quick burning fire pass by one of its rocket launch pads this past September. The fire started by an unknown source in the hills behind the launchpad and at its peak had over 1,000 fire fighters working to contain the fire. We used Landsat 8 for Pre and Post fire imagery, classification, and for NBR. We created training sites and used Maximum Likelihood Classification.

Pre Fire: Oct 1, 2015 Landsat 8

Post Fire: Oct. 3, 2016 Landsat 8

Pre Fire Maximum Likelihood Classification

Post Fire Maximum Likelihood Classification

Normalized Burn Ratio or NBR
Landsat 8 uses bands 5 and 7

Shows burn severity and change 

Source: Landsat 8

             Landscape Toolbox: Normalized Burn Ratio

View of Earth from Moon by Japanese spacecraft

Lens flare from the sun adds texture to this view of Earth above the moon’s horizon, as seen by Japan’s Kaguya spacecraft in August 2008. 

Great Salt Lake Dust Hazard

Here is my latest paper written for grad School concerning the Great Salt Lake Dust Hazard. Below are some of the images and figures found in the paper that some might enjoy -

Image from Standard.net View of GSL from Davis County causeway

MODIS image showing the sources of dust in Utah. Great Salt Lake Desert (GSLD), Dugway (D) Tule Dry Lake bed (TDL) Sevier Dry Lake bed (SDL) Milford Flat (MF) - (image from Hahnenberger and Nicoll, 2014)

 

MODIS imagery showing Utah and Nevada on April 14, 2015 (left) and April 15, 2015 (right) Highlights a dust storm that hit Salt Lake with dust carried all the way from the Lake Sevier dry lake bed

Great Salt Lake and surrounding environs - false color composite as seen from the European Space Agency Sentinel 2-A satellite August 20, 2015

Great Salt Lake levels with Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) population data

Figure 6 2014 NAIP (top) and Enhanced Vegetation Index 2010-2015 compared to a 2001-2010 median (bottom) green shows an increase, red show a decrease in vegetation while yellow shows a trend that follows the average

Great Salt Lake through the years. Imagery created from the median of all Landsat 5 scenes from April to September 1988 (top) and 2015 (bottom).