(urth) Seven American Nights question

[Russ Allbery]

Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> writes:

> And the captain isn't kidding about the bleeding to death thing. I
> remember the phrase 'soil erosion' popping up a distressing number of
> times in Jared Diamond's ''Collapse'' (usually in reference to something
> like the Mayan collapse, or the Fertile Crescent becoming unfertile, or
> Australia's environment...) and other places. It's still a little odd in
> America though - I personally associate yellow effluvium with more China
> and the Yellow River and company.

Ah, but see the Dust Bowl.  Soil erosion has happened before in the US on
a massive scale due to poor agricultural practices or use of land for
things it just can't sustain.

See http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/DustBowl/ for more information,
and there are many other interesting pages via Google.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>