What we learned from the Dust Bowl: lessons in science, policy, and adaptation.
This article provides a review and synthesis of scholarly knowledge of Depression-era droughts on the North American Great Plains, a time and place known colloquially as the Dust Bowl era or the Dirty Thirties. Recent events, including the 2008 financial crisis, severe droughts in the US corn belt, and the release of a popular documentary film, have spawned a resurgence in public interest in the Dust Bowl. Events of the Dust Bowl era have also proven in recent years to be of considerable interest to scholars researching phenomena related to global environmental change, including atmospheric circulation, drought modeling, land management, institutional behavior, adaptation processes, and human migration. In this review, we draw out common themes in terms of not only what natural and social scientists have learned about the Dust Bowl era itself, but also how insights gained from the study of that period are helping to enhance our understanding of climate-human relations more generally.
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 Canada.
Robert A
RA
McLeman
Department of Geography, Burnside Hall, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, QC H3A 0B9 Canada.
Juliette
J
Dupre
Department of Geography, Burnside Hall, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, QC H3A 0B9 Canada.
Lea
L
Berrang Ford
Department of Geography, Burnside Hall, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, QC H3A 0B9 Canada.
James
J
Ford
Department of Geography, University of Ottawa, Simard Hall Room 047, 60 University, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5 Canada.
Konrad
K
Gajewski
Canada Research Chair in Public Policy and Economic History, Johnson-Shoyama School of Public Policy, University of Regina, 110-2 Research Drive, Regina, SK S4S 7H1 Canada.
Gregory
G
Marchildon
Climate adaptation; Dirty Thirties; Drought; Dust Bowl; Great Depression; Great Plains