Roosevelt Library Digital Archives. Although the s drought is often referred to as if it were one episode, there were at least 4 distinct drought events: —31, , , and —40 Riebsame et al. These events occurred in such rapid succession that affected regions were not able to recover adequately before another drought began. Effects of the Plains drought sent economic and social ripples throughout the country.
For example, millions of people migrated from the drought areas, often heading west, in search of work. These newcomers were often in direct competition for jobs with longer-established residents, which created conflict between the groups. In addition, because of poverty and high unemployment, migrants added to local relief efforts, sometimes overburdening relief and health agencies.
Many circumstances exacerbated the effects of the drought, among them the Great Depression and economic overexpansion before the drought, poor land management practices, and the areal extent and duration of the drought. Warrick et al. The peculiar combination of these circumstances and the severity and areal coverage of the event played a part in making the s drought the widely accepted drought of record for the United States.
To cope with and recover from the drought, people relied on ingenuity and resilience, as well as relief programs from state and federal governments. Despite all efforts, many people were not able to make a living in drought-stricken regions and were forced to migrate to other areas in search of a new livelihood. It is not possible to count all the costs associated with the s drought, but one estimate by Warrick et al. Fortunately, the lessons learned from this drought were used to reduce the vulnerability of the regions to future droughts.
In the early s, farmers saw several opportunities for increasing their production. New technology and crop varieties were reducing the time and costs-per-acre of farming, which provided a great incentive for agricultural expansion. This expansion was also necessary to pay for expensive, newly developed equipment such as listers and plows that was often purchased on credit, and to offset low crop prices after World War I.
When the national economy went into decline in the late s because of the Great Depression, agriculture was even more adversely affected. In addition, a record wheat crop in sent crop prices even lower.
These lower prices meant that farmers needed to cultivate more acreage, including poorer farmlands, or change crop varieties to produce enough grain to meet their required equipment and farm payments. When drought began in the early s, it worsened these poor economic conditions. The depression and drought hit farmers on the Great Plains the hardest. Many of these farmers were forced to seek government assistance. However, even with government help, many farmers could not maintain their operations and were forced to leave their land.
Some voluntarily deeded their farms to creditors, others faced foreclosure by banks, and still others had to leave temporarily to search for work to provide for their families. In fact, at the peak of farm transfers in —34, nearly 1 in 10 farms changed possession, with half of those being involuntary from a combination of the depression and drought. Farm family, Sargent, Nebraska, Photograph by Solomon D.
A number of poor land management practices in the Great Plains region increased the vulnerability of the area before the s drought. Some of the land use patterns and methods of cultivation in the region can be traced back to the settlement of the Great Plains nearly years earlier. Several expeditions had explored the region, but they were not studying the region for its agricultural potential, and, furthermore, their findings went into government reports that were not readily available to the general public Fite, Misleading information, however, was plentiful.
In addition to this inaccurate information, most settlers had little money and few other assets, and their farming experience was based on conditions in the more humid eastern United States, so the crops and cultivation practices they chose often were not suitable for the Great Plains.
But the earliest settlements occurred during a wet cycle, and the first crops flourished, so settlers were encouraged to continue practices that would later have to be abandoned. When droughts and harsh winters inevitably occurred, there was widespread economic hardship and human suffering, but the early settlers put these episodes behind them once the rains returned.
Although adverse conditions forced many settlers to return to the eastern United States, even more continued to come west. The idea that the climate of the Great Plains was changing, particularly in response to human settlement, was popularly accepted in the last half of the 19th century.
It was reflected in legislative acts such as the Timber Culture Act of , which was based on the belief that if settlers planted trees they would be encouraging rainfall, and it was not until the s that this idea was finally abandoned White, Low crop prices and high machinery costs discussed in the previous section meant that farmers needed to cultivate more land to produce enough to meet their required payments.
Since most of the best farming areas were already being used, poorer farmlands were increasingly used. Farming submarginal lands often had negative results, such as soil erosion and nutrient leaching. By using these areas, farmers were increasing the likelihood of crop failures, which increased their vulnerability to drought. These economic conditions also created pressure on farmers to abandon soil conservation practices to reduce expenditures.
Furthermore, during the s, many farmers switched from the lister to the more efficient one-way disc plow, which also greatly increased the risk of blowing soil. Basically, reductions in soil conservation measures and the encroachment onto poorer lands made the farming community more vulnerable to wind erosion, soil moisture depletion, depleted soil nutrients, and drought. Many of these measures were initiated by the federal government, a relatively new practice. Before the s drought, federal aid had generally been withheld in emergency situations in favor of individual and self-reliant approaches.
The Dust Bowl was caused by several economic and agricultural factors, including federal land policies, changes in regional weather, farm economics and other cultural factors. After the Civil War , a series of federal land acts coaxed pioneers westward by incentivizing farming in the Great Plains. The Homestead Act of , which provided settlers with acres of public land, was followed by the Kinkaid Act of and the Enlarged Homestead Act of These acts led to a massive influx of new and inexperienced farmers across the Great Plains.
This false belief was linked to Manifest Destiny —an attitude that Americans had a sacred duty to expand west. Rising wheat prices in the s and s and increased demand for wheat from Europe during World War I encouraged farmers to plow up millions of acres of native grassland to plant wheat, corn and other row crops.
But as the United States entered the Great Depression , wheat prices plummeted. Farmers tore up even more grassland in an attempt to harvest a bumper crop and break even. Crops began to fail with the onset of drought in , exposing the bare, over-plowed farmland.
Without deep-rooted prairie grasses to hold the soil in place, it began to blow away. Eroding soil led to massive dust storms and economic devastation—especially in the Southern Plains.
Severe drought hit the Midwest and Southern Great Plains in Massive dust storms began in A series of drought years followed, further exacerbating the environmental disaster. By , an estimated 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land had been rendered useless for farming, while another million acres—an area roughly three-quarters the size of Texas—was rapidly losing its topsoil.
Regular rainfall returned to the region by the end of , bringing the Dust Bowl years to a close. The economic effects, however, persisted. Population declines in the worst-hit counties—where the agricultural value of the land failed to recover—continued well into the s. Some of these carried Great Plains topsoil as far east as Washington , D.
Billowing clouds of dust would darken the sky, sometimes for days at a time. In many places, the dust drifted like snow and residents had to clear it with shovels. Dust worked its way through the cracks of even well-sealed homes, leaving a coating on food, skin and furniture. Estimates range from hundreds to several thousand people. On May 11, , a massive dust storm two miles high traveled 2, miles to the East Coast, blotting out monuments such as the Statue of Liberty and the U.
The worst dust storm occurred on April 14, News reports called the event Black Sunday. A wall of blowing sand and dust started in the Oklahoma Panhandle and spread east. As many as three million tons of topsoil are estimated to have blown off the Great Plains during Black Sunday. Under the Taylor Grazing Act of , the government reserved million acres as protected federal lands.
Grazing and planting would be monitored to encourage land rehabilitation and conservation. Three-million young men volunteered for forestry and conservation work for the CCC. They were called Roosevelt's "Forest Army," and they planted trees, dug ditches and built reservoirs -- work that would contribute to flood control, water conservation and prevent further soil erosion. Additionally, between and many more programs and agencies were introduced specifically to help people affected by the Dust Bowl, including efforts like the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, the Resettlement Administration, the Farm Security Administration, the Land Utilization Program and the Drought Relief Service.
The WPA was a work relief program that employed more than 8. The SCS now the Natural Resources Conservation Service promoted healthy soil management and farming practices, and paid farmers to put such practices to work on their farms. The legacy of the Service's practices such as irrigation, crop diversity and no-till farming continue in the Plains today.
About 90 percent of the million hectares of arid land in North America suffers from moderate to severe desertification [source: Center for International Earth Science Information Network ].
Sustainable agriculture and soil conservation practices could help avoid another dust bowl, but experts aren't sure that such measures will be enough if extended and severe drought revisits the Great Plains. Tilling is a method of turning over the top layer of soil to remove weeds and add fertilizers and pesticides. But tilling also allows carbon dioxide, an important soil nutrient, to escape from the topsoil.
No-till is a sustainable farming method that helps nutrients stay put. Organic matter, such as crop residue, remains at the surface -- healthy topsoil is fertile and decreases water runoff and erosion. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Environmental Science. Green Science.
What caused the Dust Bowl? A giant dust storm blacks out the sky of Goodwell, Okla.
0コメント