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African Dust Over Northeastern Spain: Mineralogy and Source Regions

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Part of the book series: Environmental Science and Technology Library ((ENST,volume 11))

Abstract

The dust contained in red rains (rainwater with a reddish silty content) has been collected at La Castanya Biological Station in the Montseny mountains (NE Spain) over 11-years. Dust deposition was highly variable from year to year. In fact, two events accounted together for 63% of the total deposition of dust in the 11-yr record. The mean dust deposition was 5.1 g m−2 yr−1. Red rain events were associated with two main meteorological synoptic situations determining the air-mass trajectories to come from Morocco-Algeria and Tunisia-Libya. Dust of Libya-Tunisian provenance was richer in smectite and kaolinite, and poorer in quartz than dust from Morocco-Algeria. Palygorskite, an African tracer, was present in all dust samples, while chlorite, indication of local peninsular sources, was absent in all samples.

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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Avila, A., Queralt, I., Gallart, F., Martin-Vide, J. (1996). African Dust Over Northeastern Spain: Mineralogy and Source Regions. In: Guerzoni, S., Chester, R. (eds) The Impact of Desert Dust Across the Mediterranean. Environmental Science and Technology Library, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3354-0_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3354-0_19

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4764-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3354-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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