Dust Fallout Characteristics within Baghdad City during 2013

Abstract

The frequency and severity of dust storms have been significantly increased especially in the last decade as a result of regional and local reasons like climate changes and mismanagement of water resources. Within this framework, this study was conducted to analysis the dust fallout characteristics within Baghdad city during February to July 2013. The results of particle size analyses indicate the texture most of samples are ranging from clayey (Mean=14.1%) and silt (Mean=74.35%) with less quantities of sand (Mean=11.99%). Abo-Graib region recorded the highest level of heavy metals concentration among other studied region (Mean=9.9 mg/kg), while Adamiyah gave less concentration (Mean=1.62 mg/kg). The results of dost loading refer to  that station B (Kadumyah Mean=0.82kg/m²)  recorded high dust loading from station A (Al-Sena?a street Mean=0.57 kg/m²), it is worth mentioning that dust loading depending on speed of winds, duration of blowing and altitude of sample collection. From microbial analyses we can observed that Aspergillus nigerr recorded high frequency (F= 41.12%) and high occurrence percent (27.6%) at dilution 10^-3, from the results Bacillus spp the only bacteria have been isolated as spore forming bacteria.

Key words: Dust storm, Dust loading, heavy metals, Baghdad, Iraq