Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust Bowl: An Analysis of Boise City Historic Drought Events as Compared to the 1930s Dust Bowl

Abstract

The Great Plains Region of the United States is an area both essential to the economy and nutritional survival of the country by being the location where a majority of crops are grown. This region is also water-limited, drought-prone, and has a varying climate that reaches freezing and triple digit temperatures over the year. Those factors, in combination with poor agricultural practices, caused the 1930s Dust Bowl and exacerbated the effects. Farmers were able to offset low rainfall by tapping into the Ogallala Aquifer but after decades of irrigation, its rate of depletion is higher than recharge. More major drought events have happened over time and the period of 2011 to 2016 reached the point that Oklahoma farmers referred to it as a “Second Dust Bowl”. Existing literature looks at individual drought events and stops at 2011 so there is a need to extend this data and analyze the effects of changes that were started during these drought periods. This study compares parameters of interest for these major drought events in Boise City, OK focusing on crop yields of winter wheat and cotton–two of the most valuable crops for Oklahoma—and frequency. In that time there were record-breaking temperature highs but ultimately the intensity was not at the level of the Dust Bowl but lessons can be learned about drought resilience.