UCLA

Dust storms and chronic dust loadings are a growing but heterogeneously characterized publichealth concern in California, where a warming climate, more frequent heat and drought, and expanding disturbed land surfaces are increasing dust activity. This dissertation builds, in sequence, the evidence a dust warning system requires, organized around the four components of a people-centered early warning system: risk knowledge, monitoring and forecasting, communication, and response. Aim 1 systematically reviews global dust storm early warning systems. Of 22 included studies, 19 addressed monitoring and forecasting while only three addressed risk knowledge, communication, or response, a gap that has persisted for more than two decades and that frames the dissertation. Aim 2 develops and externally validates a daily, statewide surface of the dust-attributable fraction of PM (DAF-PM ) at population-weighted ZIP-code centroids for 2006 through ₁₀ ₁₀ 2019, combining a machine-learning ensemble with a transparent rule-based comparator. Evaluated against independent composition-based dust, the ensemble preserved strong rank- order agreement (pooled Spearman rho 0.65) and discriminated high-dust days well (AUC up to 0.90), localizing chronic burden to the southern San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys.Aim 3 links this exposure surface to roughly 24 million case-crossover strata of cardiovascular and respiratory encounters, 2006 through 2018. A one-interquartile-range increase in DAF-PM₁₀ raised the odds of a respiratory encounter by about 1% on the same day, peaking one day later and accumulating to roughly 1.4% over a week, and raised cardiovascular odds by about 0.2%. The respiratory response was nonlinear, concentrated in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, amplified specifically by peak daytime heat, and positive across most populated air basins, with the notable exception of the chronically dust-saturated Salton Sea basin, where the case-crossover design returned a null estimate; cardiovascular effects concentrated in hypertensive disease and coastal basins. Aim 4 translates this evidence into a risk communication and community engagement plan, an evidence-based infographic, and a short educational video, and shows how the exposure metric and the dust-by-heat findings can inform alert thresholds and timing. Together, the four aims form an exposure-to-action pathway that makes a climate-sensitive hazard more measurable, more clearly linked to health, and more actionable.