Word: silts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...event, parts of the Great Plains have received so little rain that they are actually drier than at the onset of the great drought of '34. Starved for moisture, the rich topsoil in hard-hit areas of the Great Plains is turning into a fine brown silt. Winds hurl the dust particles against the still-growing sprouts, until they lose their color...
...also suffering. In parts of the once lush wheat-growing belt that extends from New Mexico and Texas into Kansas and Iowa, the wheat shoots are stunted. Many farmers are choosing to sacrifice their crops in an effort to save the topsoil. By plowing their fields to turn the silt beneath less fragile clods and by planting soil-gripping crops, the farmers hope to conserve their valuable topsoil that otherwise may be swept away. Complicating the problem, unseasonably warm weather in some areas has produced an early infestation of cutworms and green bugs that attack the weakened plants...
Egypt, wrote the Greek historian Herodotus, is the gift of the Nile. He was right; Egypt-or at least its most populous and fertile area-was formed by the rich silt washed down from the East African highlands by the waters of the Nile. But which Nile? According to Egypt's leading geologist, Rushdi Said, 55, the present-day Nile is a relative newcomer to Egypt, having been around for only 30,000 years. Before that, he says, at least four different Niles had flowed through-and then disappeared from-the river basin...
...Paleonile, or second Nile, followed, emerging around 3.3 million years ago. The biggest and longest-lived of the five rivers, the Paleonile probably rose in the western Sudan after a prolonged rainy period, filling the Nile Valley with silt that eventually pushed the Mediterranean back out of Egypt. Then, around 1.8 million years ago, a 1-million-year drought dried up the Paleonile, gave birth to the Sahara and turned much of Egypt into a desert that Said says must have resembled the arid "Empty Quarter" of Saudi Arabia...
...element has recently been injected into this depressing scene: hope that things can be better. For the first time in El Bahu's history, there is a water faucet in the village and the people have clean water to drink instead of the silt-heavy Nile. Only a few hundred yards away, the people can see power lines bringing electricity generated by the Aswan High Dam 500 miles to the south. Within a year they too will have light for their houses. As a result, there is a new kind of farmer in the Nile delta, who buys...