Saharan dust keeps tropical rainforest blooming
Every year, millions of tons of dust particles travel from the Saharan desert to the tropical forests of America. The dust contains high concentrations of bioavailable phosphorus (P), which can be 100-500 times higher than the P concentrations in the highly weathered, P limited soils of the humid tropics. In our lab we follow the changes in the P chemistry of Saharan dust during its long-range atmospheric transport and study the biogeochemical and ecological effect of dust on the forest P budget.
