According to an article in the Kansas Farmer, “At the height of the 1930s Dust Bowl, the federal government invested $13.8 million to establish more than 200 million trees and shrubs in windbreaks throughout the Great Plains. Today, those important conservation tools are in decline, due to age and climate challenges…” The windbreaks helped keep the soil in place instead of eroding away in the giant dust storms that marked the Dust Bowl era by reducing wind speeds upwind and downwind of the line of trees. As they decline, the chance of erosion is increasing again and so there is a new initiative to improve these historical windbreaks and rehabilitate them.
