Students to help record dust storm effects
Posted
A pilot weather project has enlisted the help of central Australian school children in recording the soil erosion caused by dust storms.
The School Dust Watch project will be trialled by the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre.
It will involve students in isolated Aboriginal communities between Alice Springs and Tennant Creek.
Dust Watch's Grant McTainsh says the students will be able to provide valuable local knowledge.
"Although we were expecting volunteers to actually make formal measurements, in some respects the more valuable information is their local knowledge," he said.
"They're saying, 'well we think this is due to so and so' and they don't realise that this is very, very valuable information to us because although we might have the fancy scientific terms and everything, local knowledge is hugely valuable."
Mr McTainsh says the students will record wind erosion and fill in details where the Bureau of Meteorology does not have recording stations.
"Therefore our capacity to actually pinpoint the land types which are eroding at a faster rate than other land types is very limited, so we've got to get the network of stations at a higher resolution so that we can pinpoint the hot spots more accurately," he said.
