The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region.[1][2] The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years.[3] It exacerbated an already existing agricultural recession.
The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works, including John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath; the Dust Bowl Ballads of Woody Guthrie; and Dorothea Lange's photographs depicting the conditions of migrants, particularly Migrant Mother, taken in 1936.
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