Dust Bowl
By: Kaylee, bailey, & victorya
For some people the dust bowl is just a thing of the past, but could it be in our presents as we speak?
why did the first dust bowl occurr?
In the 1930s the first dust bowl occurred. This happened because, there was a drought. Farmers were trying to plant as much as they could because they weren’t able to grow enough with the drought. “Much of the Plains had been plowed up in the decades before the 1930s as wheat cropping expanded west… while natural prairie grasses can survive a drought the wheat that was planted could not and, when the precipitation fell, it shriveled and died exposing bare earth to the winds. This was the ultimate cause of the wind erosion and terrible dust storms that hit the Plains in the 1930s.” (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/dust_storms.shtml). Many famers in the south were devastated by this. This was all they had, and it died.
AZ Dust Storm
Effects of the AZ dust storm
AZ dust storm, 2013
how could another occurr?
The dust bowl was a tragedy for all of Americans in the 1930s and it could happen again. We just have to be cautious about what we do, or what our actions are. “As of November 6, 59.5 percent of the contiguous U.S. was experiencing persistent drought conditions that are most severe in the Great Plains” (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-threatens-second-dust-bowl). If this continues, it would be just like the first drought that occurred in the 1930s. The crops would all dry up, there would only be dust. It would be dust where fertile should be. The winds would pick up, and then all we could see would be dust. And that is how another dust bowl.
do we have a plan of action for the next dust bowl?
Sometimes people don’t really think about what we would do if there was another dust bowl was to happen. If one was to happen, we would have to take immediate action. There are many ideas we could take and mix together and make it best. But if I were to make a plan, it would very simple and have a huge impact. Everyone would have to be involved. Students, farmers, business men and women, everyone. We would recycle more; get solar panels, and wind mills. We would use as many electric cars as possible, because I know that not everybody can afford that. Everywhere we will be going green. The change in actions will be so dramatic that it will possibly save enough energy. And we could save the energy to pump more water for the crops in the drought areas that have been badly affected. And this could save America, possibly the biggest bread basket of the world.