Final answer:
The Dust Bowl, a severe environmental disaster in the 1930s Great Plains, resulted from a combination of overfarming, drought, and poor soil conservation practices. It led to catastrophic dust storms and significant agricultural and health challenges for the affected populations.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Dust Bowl was an ecological catastrophe that occurred during the mid-1930s, largely impacting the Southern Great Plains of the United States. Factors such as overfarming, drought, and erosion combined to create conditions where the topsoil of 100 million acres turned to dust and was blown away by intense windstorms.
This extreme environmental damage was exacerbated by years of agricultural practices that did not account for soil conservation, such as inadequate rotation of crops and the absence of fallow periods for the land to recover. The already horrendous situation was magnified by a massive drought beginning in 1931 that persisted for eight years, further drying the soil and causing massive dust storms.
As a result, this period saw sweeping 'black blizzards' that caused tremendous hardship, including crop failure, economic ruin for farmers, and health issues like 'dust pneumonia.'