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The Dust Bowl was the result of a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought ) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion , most ...
Dust storms are a major health hazard. Drought and wind contribute to the emergence of dust storms, as do poor farming and grazing practices by exposing the dust and sand to the wind. Wildfires can lead to dust storms as well. [5] One poor farming practice which contributes to dust storms is dryland farming.
A farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936; Resettlement Administration photograph by Arthur Rothstein. Farmer and Sons Walking in the Face of a Dust Storm is a 1936 photograph of the Dust Bowl taken by 21-year-old Arthur Rothstein, a photographer for the federal Resettlement Administration, while he was driving through Cimarron County, Oklahoma.
Dryland farming caused a large dust storm in parts of Eastern Washington on October 4, 2009. Courtesy: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response [1]. Dryland farming has evolved as a set of techniques and management practices to adapt to limited availability of water, as in the Western US and other regions affected by climate change for crops such as tomato and maize.
He experienced the period of dust storms, and the effect that they had on the surrounding environment and the society. [5] His observations and feelings are available in his Farming the Dust Bowl memoirs. [5] Here he describes an approaching dust storm: "… At other times a cloud is seen to be approaching from a distance of many miles.
There were also dust storms in 1934 and 1935 in the southern Great Plains, the Midwest, Great Lakes States and even the East Coast of the U.S. [3] Many studies indicate that the drought spells might have been caused when tractors and farm machinery were introduced the previous decade. [2]
These immense dust storms—given names such as "Black Blizzards" and "Black Rollers"—often reduced visibility to a few feet (around a meter). The Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km 2), centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. [37]
The Plow That Broke the Plains is a 1936 short documentary film that shows the cultivation of the Great Plains region of the United States and Canada following the Civil War and leading up to the Dust Bowl as a result of farmers' exploitation of the Great Plains' natural resources. [1]