Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

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Report of the Secretary of Agriculture in relation to the forests, rivers, and mountains of the southern Appalachian region

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  • SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. 31 the lands have not been cleared nor have forest tires destroyed the humus cover from their surface. The raindrops are battered to pieces and their force broken by the leaves and twigs of the trees, and when their spray reaches the ferns, the grass, and the flowers below, instead of running away down the surface slope it passes into the spongy humus, and thence into the soil and the crevices among the rocks below. As much of this supply as is not subsequently used by the growing plants emerges from this storehouse weeks or months later in numberless springs. (See PI. XXXI.) The rain must be extremely abundant or long protracted to produce any excessive increase in the flow of the adjacent brooks. The rainfall in this Southern Appalachian region, as shown in Appendix D (p. 143), ranges from 00 inches for the year in Georgia to 71 inches in North Carolina. Heavy Heavy rainfall * o * renders forest rainfalls during short periods are common. Even in an cover necessary. arid or semiarid region, where the rainfall for the year may be 10 inches or less, the absence of the forest cover results in a slow but sure removal of the soil from the mountain slopes. Much more in a region of heavy rainfall, like that of these southern mountains, when the forest cover has been destroyed, will the soil removal be certainly and rapidly accomplished. In studying the streams of the more northern States itansd0"„f,1rt"1,r'''^i,','" is seen that the numerous lakes and the deposits of sand J^J^SeJj? and gravel spread over the hills and valleys of that region by the glaciers serve to store the water and to preserve the uniformity in the flow of the streams, and would accomplish much in this direction even were the forests in that region entirely removed. In this southern region the preservation of the soil and the streams is a task which the forests alone must accomplish, and to that end they must be effectively protected. The proportion of cleared and forest-covered land in Proportion of t t cleared land m each of the great river drainage basins of the region is Appalachian re e » fe gJon increasing. given on page 69, and as will be seen there, this proportion, though generally small, varies considerably in the different basins. Taking the region as a whole, at the present time about 24 per cent of the area has been cleared. (See PI. XII.) This proportion is an ever-increasing one—increasing the more swiftly for the reason that new fields are constantly being cleared and the abandoned fields are being eroded so rapidly that they are seldom reforested. (See PI. XXI.)
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).