Despite periodic failures of farms and ranches in semi-arid regions like the American Great Plains, a variety of factors seem to encourage people to extend agricultural activities into environments where such activities cannot be permanently sustained. Some scholars have formulated a theory of interactions called the "drought follows the plow" hypothesis to characterize the ways that population pressure, the shortage of arable new farmland, and other social and economic factors stimulate the expansion of agriculture into marginal areas with low rainfall, thereby increasing the vulnerability of those areas to drought. This project will assess the validity of those relationships by examining factors related to incidences of drought in Morocco in recent decades. Among the variables that will be examined are the spatial and temporal patterns of agricultural expansion and intensification; the changing mixes of cropland in drought-prone areas; the demographic, social, political, governmental, economic, and environmental factors related to agricultural change; and the socio- economic impacts of specific episodes of drought. This project will provide valuable new insights about the dynamics of human impacts on and responses to changing natural environmental conditions. Of special value will be perspectives on the dynamic ecological interactions among human activities and environmental conditions, including drought; critical distinctions between the physical and societal "causes" of drought; and variations in localized (micro-scale) environmental interaction as opposed to more regional and global (macro-scale) changes. This project also will facilitate collaboration between skilled young American scientists and scholars in Morocco.
