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| After watching the first of the two Dust Bowl films, I'm wondering if farming that took the rap was as much of the cause as blamed. I'm thinking that farming may have sped up the drying, but that a drought that long would have killed off the native vegetation (eaten back and trampled by millions of bison had they not been overly thinned 3/4 century earlier), and lightning ignited wild fires would have cleared off the burned vegetation down to the bare dirt. Which then gets powdery and loose as it gets dryer to blow just as much as if tilled.
Remember the Loess hills of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa are blown dirt from glacial times, they are several hundred feet deep, that's lots of dirt to have blown there. And it moved long before the plow as we know it was invented.
I think agriculture took a bum rap in the 30s. Watch out for it to happen again.
Gerald J. | |
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2004 NASA Study on cause of Dust Bowl
