A development of this sort, together with new power sources to replace the fossil fuels on which factory, home, and vehicle now depend, might also all but eliminate the growing smog and air-pollution blight.
Water shortage
A direct result of the population increase, multiplied by the many new uses for which water is being used in home appliances, etc., and plus the greatly increased demand for standard uses such as indoor plumbing, irrigation, and factory processing, is the likelihood that water shortage will be high on the list of future problems. Ways to conserve and reuse water, together with economical desalting of sea water, will be essential in the decades ahead. Space research may provide part of the answer here, too. (See New Water Sources and Uses, sec. III.)
Soil erosion
The Russian steppes of Kazakhstan are providing the world with a great contemporary dust bowl, reminiscent of the middle 1930's when dust from the Great Plains stretched from Texas to Saskatchewan. Questionable agriculture policies, drought, and strong easterly winds are among the forces blamed for the trials of southern Russia.[74] So great is the extent of this disturbance that the dust cloud has been identified in photographs taken by American weather satellites.
Of course, "wind erosion is only one of the processes whereby the Earth's arable land is diminishing and the deserts increasing; erosion by water can also sweep away the soil."[75] But insofar as the current dust bowl of the Soviet steppes has "diminished food resources at a time when the number of mouths to feed is increasing so rapidly, the world is the poorer."[76]
What can space research do about this vital trend, which again seems destined to accelerate in the future?
While we cannot be sure, we can conjecture that improved soil conservation might turn out to be the greatest benefit of weather understanding and modification. Agriculture policies might be adapted to the long-range patterns uncovered by weather satellites and, eventually, through better understanding of the making of weather, it may be possible to modify weather forces in a manner which will preserve the soil.
In a more remote vein, it may be that knowledge gained from a first-hand study of the Moon or other planets in the solar system will eventually contribute to the conservation of soil on Earth in ways as yet unimagined.
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