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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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  • 56 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. tion of the timber, but the greater aggregate damage has been done by lighter fires creeping through the woods year after year, scorching the butts and roots of timber trees, destroying seedlings and forage plants, consuming forest litter and humus, and reducing that thatch of leaves which breaks the fall of raindrops. Evidence of such fires is found over Approximately 4,500,000 acres, or 80 per cent of the entire area. (See PI. XLVI.) The effect of forest fires is seldom appreciated, especially in this region, where so few timber trees are killed. The killing of mature timber trees is, in fact, from the nation's point of view, the least damage of all; for were only the mature trees killed a dozen saplings would stand ready to fill the place of each, but the fires affect the saplings much more than the large, thick-barked trees, and, too, where spring fires are habitual seedlings can not grow, prevented.ctionas they are killed when very small. A forest under Mich conditions can not reproduce itself. The timber trees die out and are replaced by brush that sprouts from the roots. One who studies these effects can see everywhere the damage by fire in dead trees, scorched butts, hollow trees, dead saplings and seedlings, in clumps of sprouts from roots of fire-killed trees, in the openings, the half-forested land, and in the annual weeds that occupy the burned areas, nature using their humble efforts to cover the nakedness of the misused land. v fo^eVeT^o 1 ^ne damage by fire causing a loss of the earth cover floods. does not end with erosion, for it also prevents water from penetrating and being stored in the earth. The roots of trees penetrate deeply into the subsoil, and as they decay leave a network of underground water pipes. The mulch of forestleaves encourages numerous ground-boring worms and beetles that keep the soil of an unburned forest porous, not only favoring the absorption of water, but also retarding the capillary rise of moisture to the surface and its loss by evaporation. The mosses and humus of a well- conditioned forest form wet blankets, often a foot thick, the function of wrhich is so evident that it need not be Fires impover-explained here. The dissipation of the chemical elements ish the soil. ,. ... , ,. of plant food into the atmosphere by fire and the rapid leaching away of the slight residue contained in the ashes is another injurious effect of the forest fires. Pires in tins The experience of the older countries should serve us region best pre- „ . , . . ... . , „ vented by Gov-sufficiently to prevent our making a similar mistake of vision. policy concerning our mountain lands. That the same
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