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Show which protects against rain impact, promotes in- filtration, and retards the rate of overland flow. Different kinds of plants provide differing degrees of resistance. For example, small grain is more protective than soybeans when both are weeded and grown under similar conditions. Forest, grass, or hay or pasture cover provide much more protection than corn, cotton, or to- bacco, and usually more than small grain. Mus- tard, the small seed of which is an aid in estab- lishing a vegetal cover on bare ground, is a low, broad-leafed plant which provides an excellent cover. It has the additional advantage of act- ing as a nurse crop to a more permanent cover. Wind erosion is particularly active on fallow land. It may be limited by wind-stripping, which alternates fallow strips with strips of vege- tation. A still better remedy is to keep the land under a permanent cover of adapted range and pasture grasses. Why Wait? Effective progress in watershed management is needed for both the preservation of the Nation's soil and for the contribution it can make to such other water resources facilities as dam and reser- voir projects, with their provision for water supply, flood control, navigation, recreation, and power. A striking example of the urgent need for watershed management is found in Decatur, 111. This city depends for its water supply on an arti- ficial reservoir built in the Sangamon River in 1922. At that time the lake seemed to promise the people plenty of water for domestic and in- dustrial purposes as well as an opportunity for boating, fishing, and other forms of recreation. But Lake Decatur is reported to be slowly but surely filling up with sediment washed down from the nearly 600,000 acres of prairie farm lands which constitute the watershed of the Sangamon River. In spite of the employment of conserva- tion experts by the city and the assistance of the State university and the Department of Agricul- ture, only a fraction of the watershed is being properly managed, and, because of unsound farm practices, the lake is today about 30 percent filled with the soil eroded from some of the Nation's best farms. This means that the farms also are deteriorating. This example indicates the importance of watershed management in basin planning, and the need for accelerating erosion control in basin development. The improvement in land and water use which watershed management permits are both large and widespread. Watershed management is the basis for water resources development-the foundation upon which development plans must be built. The Commission is strongly of the opinion that the forest and soil conservation as- pects of basin development plans should be given increasing attention. These conservation phases of the programs, once formulated, should be pushed forward as rapidly as possible. Public Lands and Water Of the 1.9 billion acres of land in the United States, nearly half a billion remain as public lands. Within the 48 States, the Government owns 458 million acres; and these are important and significant watershed lands. They receive much of the precipitation that falls on the land. They are the source of much of the damaging sediment. Most of this Government land lies west of the Mississippi, particularly in the 11 far Western States. Here are 407 million acres, nearly nine- tenths of all Federal lands. Eight Federal agencies administer more than 99 percent of this Government land. Six of them are managing agencies, and the acreage they manage comes to about 80 percent of the total. The following, condensed from a com- plete tabulation of Federal rural landholdings, gives some idea of the multiplicity of manage- ment purposes and methods and the concentra- tion of such problems in the West: 131 |
