Satellites have been sentinels in space, examining the earth since the 1960s to detect changing weather patterns, land use, deforestation, melting ice caps and fire patterns. They have also been used to identify atmospheric dust emissions.
Global inventories of the world's major dust sources point to dry lake basins, many of which are in Africa. Etosha and the Makgadikgadi, for example, are large natural dust emitters in southern Africa. Fine sediment from these basins can travel to the oceans, where it acts as a nutrient for primary marine organisms. Saharan dust from North African basins is even known to reach the Amazon and Caribbean, where it has a fertilising impact on the rain forest but is detrimental to coral.
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