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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  • 134 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. nature, and hence its capacity for absorbing water; and the rains being unable to soak into it wash it away. Thus, the lumberman, the forest fire, and the farmer cooperate in the work of forest destruction and the consequent disturbance of the regularity of the flow of the streams. This increases the floods which destroy the valley lands below, and as the irregularity of their flow increases the streams lose their value for water powers during the dry season, and during the season of rain the floods wash away^ the farming lands in the valleys and carry destruction along their courses across the lowlands. As the rains wash away the cleared fields on the mountain slopes and the farming lands in the valleys, these soils on their way toward the sea incidentally silt up the river channels and the harbors. Hence, it is strictly true that in destroying forests these agencies are removing the soils, ruining the rivers, and destroying the mountains themselves; and along the lower courses of these streams they arc thus destroying agricultural and manufacturing interests, and incidentally seriously affecting important navigation facilities. ti<u.heoipru?e™e In New England and many of the Northern States the steeamsVforestnumerous lakes and glacial deposits of sand and gravel, spread out over the bills and valleys, serve as storehouses for the water and help materially to preserve uniformity in the flow of the streams. In this respect they cooperate largely with the forest cover in that region; and indeed they would accomplish much in that direction were the forest cover entirely removed. But in the southern Appalachian region there are no lakes and no glacial gravels and sands; the forest and the soil are the factors upon which the solution of the problem of water storage depends. And that the problem resolves itself largely into one of forest cover, with its undergrowth and humus, is seen by the fact that in the streams of the Piedmont Plain of the South Atlantic States the irregularity in flow, as observed for a number of years, has been almost directly proportional to the extent of forest clearings. Observant his and measurements of the southern Appalachian mountain streams made during the last few years show that the same is true in that region. Hence, here the water problem is a forest problem.
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