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Two Main Causes Of The Dust Bowl

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DUST BOWL
Imagine having a dry tidal wave of dust and soil about 7,000 feet high approaching you.Having dust blasting everywhere not allowing you to notice anything. The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the land/environment in the western united states in the 1930s. Two main causes of the Dust Bowl were poor farming skills and severe drought.In order to end the Dust bowl era the government had to take action. To begin with, the main causes of the dust bowl was due to poor farming practices and a severe drought. The drought would last about eight straight years. It was a severe and dangerous dust storm, for instance,in the article Legacy it states “static charges in the air shorted out automobiles on the road:men avoided fear of shocks that could knock a person to the ground.Huge drifts of dirt buried pastures …show more content…

The government encouraged farmers to try advance techniques. One of the techniques the farmers used was counter plowing. As stated in the text Legacy “like contour plowing to minimize erosion”This conserved some moisture for the plants/crops. Another thing the farmers did was irrigate their land. To irrigate land meant to supply it with water for crops or grass to grow. These were very helpful techniques and helped the land. The government purchased over 4 million acres of land during the Dust Bowl and has successfully converted it back to green lands. Restoring the land was a miracle and it's all thanks to the government and the farmers new techniques. As a result, poor farming experiences and severe drought was a major source of the Dust Bowl.The government taking action resulted to the end of the Dust Bowl.To sum it all up, you should make sure your land is healthy,watered daily,and encourage other to do the same for healthy land and to avoid something similar to the Dust Bowl

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Evidence from Doc D, shows that over 100 million acres were harvested crops. How this was possible was advances in machinery. The tractor at the time was a new type of technology used to help farmers plant soil for crops. Since the soil was not watered because of the drought in the previous paragraph, this caused the soil to turn into dust.

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768 Words | 4 Pages

The Dust Bowl was severe dust storms that happened in three waves. These dust storms occurred in 1934, 1936, and 1939 - 1940. The Dust storms were centered in a 150 thousand square area. This area stretched from the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles to the neighboring states of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. The extensive deep plowing of the topsoil in the Great Plains during the previous decade was the main factor for these storms.

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To conclude, over-farming and drought caused the dust bowl. Maybe the dust bowl could have been avoided if people hadn’t over-farmed land but the drought may not have had the ability to be

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It caused many people to get sick with dust pneumonia which was caused when people and the dust got into their lungs. 500 people died of dust pneumonia; there was no cure but people attempted to treat themselves with vaseline, lard, kerosene, turpentine, and skunk oil. It got so bad that they had to close schools and if you were outside too long you could suffocate or get lost in the dust storms(Morgan, Ethan, and Cole).Scholars at the University of Illinois agree with the idea that the Dust Bowl occurred to a combination of human and ecological factors, meaning that it might not of have been 100 percent preventable, but its effects could have been less severe with better farming practices. To prevent another Dust Bowl they use widespread irrigation use, which allows many farmers to buffer the effects of drought more than they would’ve been able to do in the 1930s.

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The Dust Bowl negatively affected people in an economic way. How Drought played a big role in The Dust Bowl “ Federal aid to the drought-affected states was first given in 1932, but the first funds marked specifically for drought relief were not released until the fall of 1933. In all, assistance may have reached $1 billion (in 1930s dollars) by the end of the drought (Warrick et al., 1980). “ ( Source - http://drought.unl.edu/DroughtBasics/DustBowl/EconomicsoftheDustBowl.aspx )

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Donald Worster is an environmental historian and his book Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s helped to define the environmental history movement as it was the first environmental history book published. He breaks the stereotype of how the Dust Bowl was viewed by writing it from an environmental standpoint instead of writing a social history by focusing solely on the people and their experiences. How it helped to define the environmental history movement is that it opened up this avenue for others to write about environmental issues. He is also an anti-capitalist and this book combines his interest in the environment with the effect that capitalism has on the environment.

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77 Words | 1 Pages

During the Dust Bowl some people made the decision to stay at their farms. Huge drifts of dirt piled up on homesteaders’ doors, came in the cracks of windows and came down from the ceilings. Barnyards and pastures were buried in dirt. After about 850 million tons of topsoil was blown away in 1935 alone. The government responded to this by saying “Unless something is done, the western plains will be as arid as the Arabian desert.”

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The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology & agriculture of the U.S. It was caused by over farming the land to the point of making it completely dirt. The soil was light & in the areas affected got little to no rain to keep the soil steady. The areas also lost over 60% of their population. The Dust

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Dust Bowl and Economics of the 1930s The Dust Bowl was a very desperate and troublesome time for America. The southwestern territories were in turmoil due to the arid effect of the drought causing no fertile soils. As the rest of America was being dragged along with the stock market crash and higher prices of wheat and crops since the producing areas couldn't produce. This was a streak of bad luck for the Americans as they were in a deep despair for a quite some time.

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The Dust Bowl was a devastating environmental disaster that occurred during the Great Depression. Severe drought coupled with poor agricultural practices in the Great Plains resulted in massive dust storms that darkened skies and destroyed crops and homes. This disaster had a significant impact on the quality of life for people living in the affected areas. The dust storms caused not only problems to the surroundings but to the people as well, as many suffered respiratory and eye problems making it difficult to breathe or see. This coupled with the fact there was no healthcare due to the market crash it was very difficult for people to get the help they needed.

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The Dust Bowl was an event that occurred in the United States of America during the 1930’s. The Dust Bowl really affected the states of Colorado, Kansas,Texas and Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The Dust Bowl was some of the worst dust storms that has ever happened in the United States of America. The Dust Bowl severely crippled the economy of the United States because a lot of the wheat that was being used was being made is the areas that were affected the worst by the dust bowl. The worst day in the history of the dust bowl was a day called Black Sunday where the entire sky was black with dirt.

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912 Words | 4 Pages

The dust bowl is very serious. “But in the summer of 1931, the rains disappeared. Crops withered and died. There had always been strong winds and dust on the Plains, but now over plowing created conditions for disaster. There was dust everywhere, because the people couldve worried about others than themselves.

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96 Words | 1 Pages

It has been 76 years since the dust bowl had ended. The dust bowl swept across Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas throughout 1930-1940. Before the dust bowl many people traveled to these states for good land. The dust bowl was caused by a drought and strong winds. The dust from the drought was being blown around by the strong winds and covering everything.

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1291 Words | 6 Pages

Nature’s delicate balance of wind, rain, and grass had been disturbed by human settlement. Fifty years earlier, a strong protective carpet of grass had covered the Great Plains. The grass held moisture in the soil and kept the soil from blowing away (Holley).” Before the Great Plains were settled, its geography was covered in lush grasses that made it perfect for farming and raising livestock. As the population grew and more and more people settled there, the grass was removed so that they could farm the land.

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179 Words | 1 Pages

1. Bill and Melinda Gates use basic business principles to run the Gates Foundation by identifying the needs of the society and then by either directly or indirectly fulfilling those needs. In other words, Melinda and Bill Gates found a need in the market place and it is something they both value or are passionate about. They have also prioritized the actions that it takes in order to fulfill those needs. Next, they have hired people to do what needs to be done what they themselves cannot do.

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