Dust Bowl Impact

During the 1930s, the American Dust Bowl was one of the worst environmental disasters that caused severe droughts and wind erosions. The Dust Bowl widely influenced soil productivity for farming, air quality in daily life, and human health in long term. It not only caused serious impacts on the environment of the United States, but also worsened the economic conditions after the Great Depression’s destructions in the late 1920s. The Dust Bowl took place on the Great Plains where severe dust storms and large exodus happened. However, on the other hand, it was a beneficial historical event because it raised the government 's awareness on environmental conservation and agricultural technology issues, which provided the basic corresponding solutions …show more content…
The Dust Bowl was such an influential catastrophe to many people on the Great Plains that approximately 2.5 million people abandoned the plains and moved to other regions. These destructive droughts and dust storms lasted about a decade in the 1930s, which gave the government a very hard time, especially after the Great Depression in the late 1920s. The Great Depression along with the Dust Bowl forced the government to come to realization of the importance of having a complete set of emergency measures in order to overcome the difficulties. These two historical events were never seen before in the United States, which again alerted both the people and the government to be prepared for similar cases in the future. Many organizations that were established during the Dust Bowl time periods remained to this day. For instance, the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) was established in 1935, passed by the Congress, and it provided a significant amount of assistance not only in the Dust Bowl, but also after the World War II in order to consolidate the soil conservation programs as a lesson from the Dust Bowl. In 1952, Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan merged the Soil Survey into SCS, which switched most of the SCS 's researches to the Agricultural Research Service. Meanwhile, the …show more content…
Not only the SCS maintained long-term conservations, but also more new organizations and acts came out to enhance the environmental conservations. For example, the Agricultural Appropriations Act of 1953, the Flood Control Act in 1954, the first Earth Day demonstration in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act in 1970, the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments in 1972, the Clean Water Act in 1977, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in 1994, all these organizations and acts continued the conservation program after the Dust Bowl. Although the Dust Bowl ended, the progress of the conservation program did not stop. This showed the advantage that the Dust Bowl had on the environmental conservation program in the United