Dust Bowl

The dust bowl was the region of the United States that saw over 100 million acres of topsoil striped from over used farmland. This was caused by several factors such as heavy farming and drought. The result was large and powerful dust storms that literally covered the Midwest blanketing entire states and making acres of farmland unusable.

The Dust Bowl is one of the largest examples of a manmade environmental disaster. The destruction largely happened due to the heavy farming that occurred in the Great Plains region of the Midwest. The area of the United States is mostly grassland and relies on the root systems of grasses to hold down the topsoil vital for growing crops. Several factors such as homestead and other land grant programs opened the Great Plains to settlers looking to start their own farms. Unfortunately common farming practices used to preserved topsoil were not put to use. Common practices such as rotation of crops or leaving soil fallow usually extend the use of land allowing for plants to always have root systems in the ground holding top soil in place.

While the role that humans played in creating the dust bowl is significant the droughts that occurred during the 1930s acted as the match to the fuse. By the time of the droughts the topsoil of the Great Plains had been subjected to the farming practices that harmed it for decades. The drought finished the job by drying up the loose topsoil into dust. The winds that regularly sweep the Midwest did the rest. Tons of topsoil were carried into gargantuan dust storms and dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. This made large regions of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona useless for farming.

The economic impact was devastating literally ending the age of independent farming. Many families already on the brink of starvation due to the drought and the Great Depression were forced to migrate to other regions of the country. Due to the expense of restoring the farmland after the drought small farms became economically impossible to maintain. Dust Bowls are not just caused by poor farming practices. There are also the effects of overgrazing by cattle and of course climate change making a region more arid. The threat of the Dust Bowl scenario happening elsewhere in the world is high and governments are looking to find ways to protect the delicate balance of their ecosystems.

We have written many articles about dust bowl for Universe Today. Here’s an article about the research to explain dust bowl drought, and here’s an article about sand storm.

If you’d like more info on dust bowl, check out an article about the cause of the dust bowl in the 1930s. You can also check out an interesting article from The Encyclopedia of Earth.

We’ve also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast all about planet Earth. Listen here, Episode 51: Earth.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

http://www.drought.unl.edu/whatis/dustbowl.htm

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm

Tagged as: dust bowl, dust storm, sand storm