NationStates Jolt Archive

I was watching Simon Schama's programme looking at American history. He seemed to be saying that the conditions that lead to the dustbowl in the 1930's are almost happening again. There has been a drought for nearly as long...

Could it happen again? Is water a major limiting factor, likely to make some communities unsustainable (Las Vegas?)?

Was Carter essentially right but people preferred not to listen to realism, voting instead for the unrealistic optimism that Reagan peddled?

A major contributing factor to the dust bowl was lack of sustainable farming. That is no longer the case. Even a prolonged drought wouldn't cause the same massive impact as before. Now in other countries like say China it's certainly possible.

Are you referring to the History Channel show that was on last night? I missed the first 15 minutes of that but saw the rest.

Its argument that the Dustbowl was a largely man-made disaster was persuasive, and while US farmers may have learned the lesson, as the show pointed out at the end, similar conditions are happening in other parts of the world right now. A second -- and possibly a third and a fourth -- Dustbowl is entirely possible, with potentially even worse international effects, even if it doesn't happen in the same place as the first one.

It was this programme - may well be the same one
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dygkw/The_American_Future_A_History_by_Simon_Schama_American_Plenty/

A major contributing factor to the dust bowl was lack of sustainable farming. That is no longer the case. Even a prolonged drought wouldn't cause the same massive impact as before. Now in other countries like say China it's certainly possible.

A drought combined with powerful storms seemed the major factors - once the natural vegetation that held the soil together has gone does it matter if the farming is sustainable or not?

It was this programme - may well be the same one
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dygkw/The_American_Future_A_History_by_Simon_Schama_American_Plenty/
I don't have the right player for that, but apparently, it's a different show: http://mobile.history.com/detail.jsp?key=125147&rc=20081012_sc

The History Channel's show was called "Black Blizzard" and it revolved around the ecological effects of the massive, continent-spanning dust storms that the Dustbowl generated.

It showed how bad land management policies of the government since the 1860s, plus bad farming techniques in the drought-prone high plains, plus a set of anomalous ocean current/weather patterns which caused a longer than average drought period, combined to destroy the topsoil layer of the high plains within a mere ten years, turning it into dust that became virtually atomized into the atmosphere by even relatively mild winds.

The effect of the particulates rising into the air was to energize air movement in such a way that the resulting dust storms (some of which lasted for days at a time) created their own weather patterns that some meteoroligists say actually made the effects of the drought even worse. I have to say, the photos and film of the storms from that period were shocking. I'd had no idea they were that bad -- the oncoming banks of the storms literally looked like photos of oncoming pyroclastic flows from volcanoes; they looked like a giant wall of death rolling towards you.

Effects included not only permanent soil loss, but also widespread public health damage, especially often deadly respiratory problems (particularly for chidren), infrastructure damage, and damaging infestations of insects and animals invading human spaces in search of food and water, with the resulting spreads of disease and further loss of food (there were reports of infants, elderly people, and sick people even dying from such things as spider bites during infestations).

A drought combined with powerful storms seemed the major factors - once the natural vegetation that held the soil together has gone does it matter if the farming is sustainable or not?
Yes, because sustainable farming is farming that holds the soil together.

When Congress finally got it through their heads that what was happening was serious*, they created a special agency to focus on soil conservation. The government help farmers switch to a new kind of plow that turned the soil in a way that broke it up less and in a pattern that could be aligned with prevailing winds, thus reducing erosion. They also instructed farmers to change to contour farming techniques that follow the natural topography and further reduce erosion. And they created a WPA project to plant long sections of trees as wind breaks all across the middle of the country. Within the first few years, farmers reported a more than 60% reduction in soil loss.

And that is why the entire US midwest is not a desert of sand dunes now.


* And how did they get it through their heads? One soil specialist for the Department of the Interior (edit: or maybe it was Agriculture), who had been calling vainly for action for years, made a speech before Congress while the biggest dust storm ever seen was barrelling from the midwest all across the eastern US. He had people scurrying in and out to update him about the storm's progress, and he just kept talking until it hit DC, and the sky went suddenly black, and he was able to point to the windows in the great hall and yell, "Look, gentlemen, there goes the State of Oklahoma!" Dirt from that storm hit NYC, Boston, even ships miles out at sea in the Atlantic.

Yes, because sustainable farming is farming that holds the soil together.

When Congress finally got it through their heads that what was happening was serious*, they created a special agency to focus on soil conservation. The government help farmers switch to a new kind of plow that turned the soil in a way that broke it up less and in a pattern that could be aligned with prevailing winds, thus reducing erosion. They also instructed farmers to change to contour farming techniques that follow the natural topography and further reduce erosion. And they created a WPA project to plant long sections of trees as wind breaks all across the middle of the country. Within the first few years, farmers reported a more than 60% reduction in soil loss.

And that is why the entire US midwest is not a desert of sand dunes now.


Thank you, very informative.

A drought combined with powerful storms seemed the major factors - once the natural vegetation that held the soil together has gone does it matter if the farming is sustainable or not?
Also, another fallacy about the dustbowl is that it was primarily due to the drought plus the storms.

In fact, severe drought had been common in the high plains for millions of years, but what prevented the area from becoming a desert was the native grasses, which were strongly drought resistant. Since they survived droughts, their roots remained to hold the soil together, even without water.

But farmers eliminated all those grasses and replaced them with wheat. Wheat is not drought resistant, so when the rains did not come, the wheat died and there was nothing to hold the soil together.

As for the storms, what the History Channel showed was that the storms did not come to the Dustbowl. The Dustbowl generated the storms itself. If the soil had not dried out to powder the way it did, the storms would not have happened. EDIT: If not for bad human management, the Dustbowl would not have happened.

A drought combined with powerful storms seemed the major factors - once the natural vegetation that held the soil together has gone does it matter if the farming is sustainable or not?

Oh, absolutely. Weather plays a marginal role in soil conservation compared to human use; desertification through natural causes is much, much smaller than that caused by human activities. The natural biosphere itself is very tenacious in those regions, mostly due to the millions of years of evolutionary pressure and climate shifts that make the plants and animals in those regions quite resistant to droughts. When the climate shifts again to a wetter environment, they can bounce back with pretty startling speed. Even regions previously and almost completely devastated by human actions can rebound, as evidenced by the ongoing efforts to preserve the Aral Sea region, efforts that are now slowly succeeding thanks to extensive conservation efforts.

However, when humans removed that plant cover, used damaging techniques in an attempt to maintain constant production (and then had to use ever-increasing amounts of artificial fertilizers and chemicals to offset diminishing returns, further worsening the situation), the result was catastrophic. This is a lesson the Soviets learned in Central Asia, and which China and parts of Africa are learning right now.

I was watching Simon Schama's programme looking at American history. He seemed to be saying that the conditions that lead to the dustbowl in the 1930's are almost happening again. There has been a drought for nearly as long...

Could it happen again? Is water a major limiting factor, likely to make some communities unsustainable (Las Vegas?)?

Was Carter essentially right but people preferred not to listen to realism, voting instead for the unrealistic optimism that Reagan peddled?

Didn't he also say it was because the crops were changed and not managed properly, or did I hear him wrong?

think he was on about that the removal of the prairie grass was to blame unless i misheard

The drought in the southeast US has alreday had some birthdays. And more of those cloud to ground lightning bolts like they have in Mew Mexico instead of those arc bolts we usually have.

when humans removed that plant cover, used damaging techniques in an attempt to maintain constant production (and then had to use ever-increasing amounts of artificial fertilizers and chemicals to offset diminishing returns, further worsening the situation), the result was catastrophic. This is a lesson the Soviets learned in Central Asia, and which China and parts of Africa are learning right now.

I agree. I just hope that the technology and understanding of plants stops this from happening. About a month ago there was red dust in my city. I new it came from the wheat belt. It was harldy mentioned. All that erosion I think of as money. Due to stupid farmers not using their land properly they have lost millions of dollars in future production.

I believe any farming slighlty increases erosion as the soil is being used at a higher rate then natural. However with the current populations around the world we cant just pick some odd plants out of forests. Hopefully if there is a dustbowl there will be more money and assistance to help farmers reduce erosion now.

Every anthropogenic catasrophe only gets money once the event has occured

"dustbowls" ARE one of the probable, almost inevitable, consiquences of the combination of global climate chainge and excessive human population, although the proximate direct and imediate cause of them are unsustainable agricultural practices, thank you monsanto, among others. and of course the proximate cause of, or at least motivation for, that, is again of course fanatical economic makiavellianism. (yes, lysencoism was just as bad. i forget for sure, but wasn't it something a bit simular?)