Word: topsoil
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This season in Adair County has been a ballet of breathtaking intricacy, timing and beauty. In late May and early June, when the plowed land lay naked and vulnerable, there were no pelting rains to rip out seed and carry off precious topsoil. Then, every week with uncanny regularity, gentle showers brushed the new shoots. The temperature never went over 100° F, and every evening cool air formed in the swales and spread protectively over the young plants. The moisture choked the grasshopper hatch. Tornadoes and hail, which can claw the land raw in seconds, never materialized...
...struggles over the MX missile and stock market jitters only muffled sounds on a far, bright horizon, there is the shadow of troubles ahead. Those fields that now are offering up such bounty are so intensively farmed, in their owners' mad race against high costs, that the topsoil is washing away at an alarming rate. When the Adair prairies were broken some 150 years ago, the topsoil was 12-to 14-in. thick. Today it averages 6 to 8 in. And from a small plane in those glistening skies the fields show telltale fingers of light green to yellow...
...dusty Wyoming prairies, where Buffalo Bill Cody ended his pursuit of bison, the black rocker arms of oil wells thump to and fro through the night. In southern Montana, where the proud Sioux won their great victory, bulldozers scrape away the topsoil of cliffs to reveal vast seams of coal below. In western New Mexico, where legends tell of the Spanish explorer Coronado searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola, drills sink into the earth in search of uranium. The Mountain States hold vast deposits of the nation's coal, oil and uranium; they are at the heart...
...commercial exploitation as the denuding of the Amazon rain forest -has meant the annual loss of enough trees to forest half the state of California. One side effect: as the trees are slashed away, the ground loses its ability to retain water, the land becomes increasingly arid and precious topsoil is lost. Shortages of drinking water will become chronic in many parts of the world...
...people of Love Canal got vivid proof that their devil was manmade. Heavy rains turned the former canal into a quagmire of mud, puddled here and there by iridescent pools that fumed and bubbled. The landfill's topsoil began to wash away, revealing Hooker's metal casks, some of them badly corroded and leaking their caustic contents. Says one state environmental official: "It was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting; it really looked like hell...