By South Dakota Soil Health Coalition

In the past month, dust storms have been making headlines across the western United States, including South Dakota. Blowing soil has created driving hazards due to low visibility, and accumulated wind-blown silt even forced boat ramp closures near Fort Pierre.

“The dust storms of the past few weeks, I've never seen them this bad,” Natural Resources Conservation Service state soil scientist Nathan Jones said. “The road to my house – I live off gravel – it was even blacked out by dust being blown across the road.” It might be tempting to blame the dust storms on high winds, but as Jones said, “The wind never stops in South Dakota.”

The real issue, he said, is how people are managing their land.

“The biggest problem is people leaving their ground uncovered,” Jones said. “If we look at a lot of the native range in western South Dakota, there's always grass. There's always something covering the soil surface. So, when something happens and the soil is left uncovered, it blows, and the soils in western South Dakota, especially, are kind of fragile, and when they're mismanaged, they blow and erode really, really bad.”

Soil can be exposed through tillage or being left uncovered by crop residue or cover crops after harvest. In livestock operations, overgrazing is also a problem, Jones said. “Eventually, you lose your good native range vegetation, the stuff that's tasty to the animals. You get into a bare ground situation,” he said.

No matter the reason, once the soil is exposed to wind or rain, it’s vulnerable to erosion. Even land managed with no-till practices can erode if it is left uncovered. A serious problem

These dust storms pose several difficulties for South Dakota ag operations and their surrounding communities.

“Well obviously, we're losing topsoil,” Jones said. “We talk about water as our most limiting factor as far as growing stuff in South Dakota, but if we lose our topsoil then we don't have the nutrient-rich part of the soil surface for plants to grow in, and then we're left growing in subsoil where there are less nutrients, where it's just harder for plants to survive and thrive.” Dust storms also increase the risk of vehicle accidents. “A few years ago, we had a place on Highway 14 between Highmore and Miller where the road was blacked out, basically, due to a dust storm, and there was a traffic accident caused by that,” Jones said.

Jones also mentioned that air quality is an issue. “I think more and more we're running into people who have asthma or some sort of breathing issues,” he said. “If you've planted crops and you've fertilized, then now you have fertilizer-tainted soil blowing through the air that you're breathing into your body, and that's never a good thing.”
Land management solutions

The good news is that land can be managed to minimize erosion.

“I used to have about 1,500 acres of crop ground, and we used to farm it, and we're at the foothills,” Dean Lockner said. READ FURTHER FROM THE SOUCE above