Seven American Nights question

Russ Allbery · 16 Jul 2007, 16:30 · from 2007-July.txt.gz

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From: rra at stanford.edu (Russ Allbery)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:30:24 -0700
Subject: (urth) Seven American Nights question
In-Reply-To: <20070716124101.GA8496@localhost> (Gwern Branwen's message of
	"Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:41:01 -0400")
References: <ecbb2eb0707150036g5ac23bfdg594d74fb831bc643 at mail.gmail.com>
	<1f7617370707150926y297abec6hac1789436c251c76 at mail.gmail.com>
	<a0dc3dcf0707160442t5d597511m320f9af3f3b41db6 at mail.gmail.com>
	<ecbb2eb0707160506n39d2602bg345319db7ff6344c at mail.gmail.com>
	<20070716124101.GA8496@localhost>
Message-ID: <87tzs4s44f.fsf at windlord.stanford.edu>

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/>

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