Dust Bowl
by Elizabeth McTaggart
Title
Dust Bowl
Artist
Elizabeth McTaggart
Medium
Digital Art - Fractal Art
Description
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s, particularly in 1934 and 1936. The phenomenon was caused by severe drought combined with farming methods that did not include crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops, soil terracing and wind-breaking trees to prevent wind erosion. Extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains in the preceding decade had displaced the natural deep-rooted grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.
During the drought of the 1930s, without natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it dried, turned to dust, and blew away with the prevailing winds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky, reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. Much of the soil ended up deposited in the Atlantic Ocean, carried by prevailing winds. These immense dust storms�given names such as "black blizzards" and "black rollers"�often reduced visibility to a few feet (a meter) or less. The Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2), centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.
Millions of acres of farmland were damaged, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes; many of these families (often known as "Okies", since so many came from Oklahoma) migrated to California and other states, where they found economic conditions little better during the Great Depression than those they had left. Owning no land, many became migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages.
Uploaded
January 14th, 2013
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Comments (19)
Jim Cook
Terrific! Your work is very compelling!
Elizabeth McTaggart replied:
Thank you Jim! I hope you take a look at the rest of the series. I'm still working on it, so check back (Historical Disasters, Events and People)
Karen Lee Ensley
Very interesting effects, Elizabeth! v
Elizabeth McTaggart replied:
Thanks! Tried to make it look dusty... hope that comes through. Thank you for the vote, Karen!
Edward Fielding
Just saw the Ken Burns Doc on the Dust Bowl. Amazing. Great series here. How about the Boston Molasses Flood? v
Elizabeth McTaggart replied:
Saw Ken Burns doc too. He does an awesome job! I've never heard of the Boston Molasses Flood... I'll have read up on it and add it to my list. Thanks for the suggestion and the vote, Edward!