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5 December 2007
Sensing Our Planet: NASA Earth Science Research Features now available
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by Laura Naranjo
December 5, 2007
During and after World War I, American farmers fanned out across the Great Plains to grow wheat. They plowed up the native grasses, exposing fertile topsoil and straining the sensitive grassland ecosystems. Then, in the early 1930s, Dust Bowl storms ravaged the stripped and drought-weakened Plains. Blizzard-force winds billowed tons of loose soil into the air, forming giant dust clouds that buried entire farms and ultimately blew all the way to the east coast of the United States.
Humans have long relied on crops and vegetation for survival. In more recent human history, scientists have uncovered the larger role of vegetation in the health of the complete ecosystem of our planet. But understanding the complex needs of an ecosystem requires a lot of information. Farmers and scientists now rely on ground instruments and satellite data to determine what will keep an ecosystem or a cropland healthy. Different ecosystems require varying amounts of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. These requirements are characterized by exchanges, or fluxes, between the ecosystem and the atmosphere. If scientists can investigate the relationship between ecosystem health and the fluxes of carbon dioxide, water, and radiation, they can better understand global vegetation cycles and assess human impact in ecosystems around the world.
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