Drought

Many of us are at times under the assumption that drought is defined as lack of rainfall but the real in core definition of drought is lack of rain over a long period of time. Heat evaporates the small amount of rain. This means rain does occur but it not sufficient enough for the living organisms to survive.

Droughts usually occur in hot dry areas of land. In most cases the area is dry because there is very minimal rainfall. The rain that does fall will be quickly absorbed into the ground. Therefore the land is very dry and not many plants and animals can live in condition as a result to thirst and starvation.

These are some of the major places where drought has occurred in the 90’s: 

Year	Place	Cause	Destruction
1931-1938	Great plains of the USA	Serve wind storms dried out the land and blew the top layer of the soil.	Cars, homes and farms destroyed in dust storms
1982-1983	Australia	No rain for more than one year	60% of Australia sheep and cattle dies
1972-1974	Africa	Decreases rainfall	The countries financial business went down
1976	Britain	It did not rain from June 1975 to September 1976. Drought are very rare in England	Water rationing was greatly needed in the larger cities of Britain

Most droughts tend to occur during summer, as the weather is hot and water is quickly evaporated. Droughts can last for years in most extreme cases. These types of droughts can devastate crops and livestock. This also affects the economy; if a farmer has lost his crop due to drought he will get no money to pay for the next seasonal crop.

Drought has a great effect on the food chain. This reason is supported by the fact, because drought dries the land and makes the conditions unfavorable for plants to survive without water and animals cannot survive without plants, water and other living creatures are very much linked. If drought is really long, measures are taken to help save the water. When a drought is too bad drastic measures such as never washing your car or only having one shower per day are not much fun and can sometimes lead to uncleanly environments which can cause bacterial related diseases and infections. Elderly people have trouble with living in very hot and dry environments.

So drought has its own effect on every one. Drought causes the land to be unhealthy as well as dry it out so much that large cracks in the earth's crust and no plants live within the dry climate it means that plant roots cannot hold the soil together. This is the effect that causes wind erosion.