The Great Dust Bowl of the 1930’s The great dust bowl of the 1930’s was a very traumatic disaster that affected the lives of many. Not only did the dust bowl affect humans but it also affected animals and their homes too. The type of biome where dust bowls are known to occur is in the temperate grasslands. The typical climate in a temperate grassland biome includes very cold winters that drop below -40 degrees Fahrenheit and very warm summers that exceed over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The precipitation level ranges from 10 to 35 inches per year. Most of the precipitation in this biome occurs during late spring and early summer. Temperate grassland biomes can be found in North America, Africa, the pampas of South America and many parts of Eurasia. Grass is the main plant in Temperate Grassland biomes, trees and shrubs are rare to see in this type of biome. Temperate grasslands also have an extremely high abundance of wildlife. The wildlife living in this biome includes bison and pronghorn sheep, but mainly the animals most affected were the cattle and horses that lived on the surrounding farms. Some of the many contributing factors that cause a dust bowl include poor agricultural practices, extended periods of drought, high temperatures and wind erosion. The main contributor to the dust bowl was the poor agricultural practices. Farming and agriculture was such an important task for farmers to keep up with because if farmers failed to keep up with their land and crops, then the crops and land that was growing would begin to deteriorate into compost. Once broken down into little grains of dirt and dust, the wind would pick it up in bulk amounts and travel throughout the country gathering more and more as it goes on. Finally, a huge ... ... middle of paper ... ...could be a rerun of the dust bowl though. This would be possible if there were worse weather conditions and the wind picked up on the plains again. This would create a lot of major conflict again. The residents would have to up and leave all of their belongings and move away from their familiar homes. This would result in another loss of farms, crops, animals, and even some people’s lives. Overall, many humans and animals were impacted severely, even killed from the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. This included several cattle, sheep, horses, chickens, and many other farm animals. The crops and farms all suffered a great loss and the homes and the people that lived inside of them also suffered a great upheaval of their familiar lives. This ruined many people’s jobs and ways to make a living. All together, this was a very traumatic experience for all of the people involved.
The farmers had torn out millions of miles of prairie grass so that they could farm there. Without the grass, dust began to kick up and storm around the air causing dust storms.
What is a biome? Biomes are major life zones characterized by vegetation type or by the physical environment. Climate plays a role in determining the nature and location of Earth’s biomes. Texas has 10 different ecosystems with lots of diversity. Minnesota has 4 different ecosystems which are also quite diverse. Regardless of the size of the biomes or the number of biomes in each state, they are all important not just to the locate environment but on a global level because of the life they support. We are going to take a look at the different biomes, comparing climate and rainfall, as well as vegetation fauna.
The Dust Bowl over its time that it occurred affected many things living or nonliving.
The Dust Bowl in the 1930s was a very horrific event in the Southern Plains region of the United States. This was a period of severe windstorms & dust-storms that would blow over hundreds of miles. This stripped the soil of nutrients, and damaged the ecology and agriculture of these American lands. The 2012 drought in the Central Great Plains was a period that lasted only 4 months, through May to August, that eclipsed the record of the Dust Bowl, for the driest period. The Dust Bowl and the 2012 drought compare and contrast in many ways.
For various reason the Dust Bowl was deadly for livestock, including choking on dust, and starvation or mass culling of jackrabbits and later cattle to stabilize prices (The Great Plow Up). FDR 's New Deal unintentionally made society and especially farmers begin to rely on government in times of crisis. The Dust storms only got worse as the 1930s progressed. They were particularly demoralizing and frightening for many people but for the children the dust particles often lead breathing issues such as pneumonia. Women in particular were in a constant losing battle as the dust always came inside building and covered everything. In the garden which they needed to feed their family it was almost impossible to grow anything. Face coverings became a necessity to escape the blinding, unbreathable air found especially in the worst of storms. Depression both psychological and economic became commonplace, leading to many outstanding debts, foreclosures, and
A lack of food would seem to be the bottom line where families finally understood that there was nothing in the Great Plains except for hardship and death of crops along with livestock. In the Ken Burns documentary it states “convinced that the storms were a freak accident, that the rains would soon return, residents could not imagine that they had entered a battle that would last a decade.” This was the mind set of many farms during that time, that the storms was an accident and that it would not last, however, they were proved to be wrong and the issues
Natural conditions contributed to the cause of the Dust Bowl. During the year of 1936, North America was dealt an extreme am...
The “Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s”, was written by Donald Worster, who admits wanted to write the book for selfish reasons, so that he would have a reason o visit the Southern Plains again. In the book he discusses the events of the “dirty thirties” in the Dust Bowl region and how it affected other areas in America. “Dust Bowl” was a term coined by a journalist and used to describe the area that was in the southern planes in the states of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, between the years of 1931 and 1939. This area experienced massive dust storms, which left dust covering everything in its wake. These dust storms were so severe at times that it made it so that the visibility in the area was so low to where people
Many believe the Dust Bowl was caused solely by bad weather, but Egan shows a multitude of factors that led to the catastrophe. In Timothy Egan’s book, The Worst Hard Time, Egan believes that the syndicate and government, overproduction of the land, and drought were all factors that caused the Dust Bowl.
At the core of understanding the Dust Bowl is the question of whose fault it was. Was it the result of farmers tilling land beyond what the environment could bear, or is it just a natural fluctuation in the atmosphere? These questions have intrigued historians and started a new evolution of theories. The Dust Bowl grazed across the Midwest of the United States, destroying the ecology and agriculture of the United States and Canadian Prairies"1.
Farming was the major growing production in the United States in the 1930's. Panhandle farming attached many people because it attracted many people searching for work. The best crop that was prospering around the country was wheat. The world needed it and the United States could supply it easily because of rich mineral soil. In the beginning of the 1930's it was dry but most farmers made a wheat crop. In 1931 everyone started farming wheat. The wheat crop forced the price down from sixty-eight cents/ bushels in July 1930 to twenty-five cents/ bushels July 1931. Many farmers went broke and others abandoned their fields. As the storms approached the farmers were getting ready. Farmers increased their milking cowherds. The cream from the cows was sold to make milk and the skim milk was fed to the chickens and pigs. When normal feed crops failed, thistles were harvested, and when thistles failed, hardy souls dug up soap weed, which was chopped in a feed mill or by hand and fed to the stock. This was a backbreaking, disheartening chore, which would have broken weaker people. But to the credit of the residents of the Dust Bowl, they shouldered their task and carried on. The people of the region made it because they knew how to take the everyday practical things, which had been used for years and adapt them to meet the crisis.
The dust bowl was the worst environmental disaster in the U.S history. Farming practices changed as a result of the Dust bowl. Farmers changed how they plow / take care of their field.There are also many conservation programs and measures implemented as a result and many farmers have fixed drought problems so their soil does not get to dry.
He will maintain that the criterion of right interpretation is its own suitability to some present purpose (Carr, 1961, p. 31). A number of prejudices, assumptions, and beliefs contributed to not seeing the bigger picture. The wisdom of the time suggested that the Dust Bowl affected all of Oklahoma. Removing that assumption and looking at the facts, it shows that the affected area was the panhandle of Oklahoma.
Warsaw, Missouri holds the record for both the coldest and the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Missouri ("Missouri Facts and Trivia"). The temperate deciduous forest is home to unique ecosystems and plentiful wildlife and vegetation. The temperature and precipitation in this biome is not too high or too low, hence the word temperate in the name. The terrain in the temperate deciduous biome has a great effect on the adaptations of the living organisms in the area. Missouri belongs in the temperate deciduous forest biome because both regions have similar climate, locations, terrain, flora, and fauna.
...ture. So, in my opinion, the only way for the Dust Bowl to have been curtailed sooner would have been for the people there to stop "breaking" the land all together and let mother nature take over and fix herself. Of course, that would be asking the impossible since it would mean the plains people would have to give up, and lose to the capitalistic society of which they were trying to keep up with. Ultimately, every remedy that was attempted merely assisted in the growth of the Dust Bowl and of consumerism itself. Droughts and famine will come and go during our time here on earth, but we must learn to look to the earth for the remedy and give back to the earth what is rightfully hers-for capitalism cannot fill the needs of human life without the resources of the land.