What Caused the Dust Bowl?
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What Caused the Dust Bowl?
Imagine experiencing the panicked and startled feelings knowing that the next time you step out of your house, it will feel and look different. The wind that blows on the top of your skin is now mixed with dust and dirt particles. The destructive dust storms have struck leaving the people with their destroyed lands. The three main reasons that caused the Dust Bowl were the shortgrass, heavy machinery, and dry climate.
The short grass prairies were what people depended on. It provided the humans with fields for crops and held the earth into one form. As the grass provides for human, they take the advantage of using whats beneath the grasses which lead to cropping and a reason to remove the grass. By removing the grasses it created more of a mess and soon all the dirt is part of a dust storm. The prairies held excess topsoil from the ground. These prairies have shorter grass, nothing tall would be able to protect the mammals and the dirt would directly go towards the faces.
During the years mechanization changed everything. Many tools have been enhanced such as the plows. The plows later became the horse-drawn plows. The plow cuts the grass and prepared it for seeding. When these tractors were invented the production and harvesting of crops increased. This way farmers can harvest crops faster while getting millions of acres done. Although it made lives easy, it did have devastating impacts. The plow loosened the topsoil and was easier for the wind to pick up.
The weather had a major impact on the Dust Bowl as well. The Dust Bowl took place mostly around Oklahoma and Kansas which is where not much rainfall occurs. Annually at the most is twenty inches of rain which was successful for farming on the plains but not for more than a season. Low rainfall caused the topsoil to dry out and the outcome of this was the dirt becoming more of a powder which