More Intense Rains in U.S. Midwest Tied to Farm Mechanization
https://eos.org/articles/more-intense-rains-in-u-s-midwest-tied-to-farm-mechanization
Source: By Bas den Hond, Earth & Space News EoS (AGU)
For Investigation: 10.3
Excerpt: “Rain follows the plow,” or so the pioneers who started farms in the drylands of the American West were told. The 19th-century notion that cultivation will always lead to a beneficial change in the climate turned out to be false. But researchers have previously found that climate does respond to what people do on the ground, like when monsoon patterns have been altered by deforestation. Now a new study has investigated the climate effects of a century-long conversion in the United States, from farmers using animals to do almost all of the plowing and other heavy farmwork to using only machines. An increase in heavy rainfall events in the 20th century in the American Midwest appears to be closely tied to that switch from horsepower to mechanized agriculture, according to Taleena Sines of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, and Raymond Arritt of Iowa State University in Ames....
Source: By Bas den Hond, Earth & Space News EoS (AGU)
For Investigation: 10.3
Excerpt: “Rain follows the plow,” or so the pioneers who started farms in the drylands of the American West were told. The 19th-century notion that cultivation will always lead to a beneficial change in the climate turned out to be false. But researchers have previously found that climate does respond to what people do on the ground, like when monsoon patterns have been altered by deforestation. Now a new study has investigated the climate effects of a century-long conversion in the United States, from farmers using animals to do almost all of the plowing and other heavy farmwork to using only machines. An increase in heavy rainfall events in the 20th century in the American Midwest appears to be closely tied to that switch from horsepower to mechanized agriculture, according to Taleena Sines of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, and Raymond Arritt of Iowa State University in Ames....