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Show TABLE 3.-Land holdings by Federal agencies (Top figure for 11 Western States, second figure for Nation as whole) Agency Department of Agriculture: Acres Forest Service____________________135,582,000 157, 880, 000 Soil Conservation Service__________ 4, 445, 000 7,476, 000 Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management_______179,539,000 180, 504, 000 National Park Service______________ 11, 575, 000 13, 602, 000 Bureau of Reclamation____________ 9,812,000 9, 882,000 Office of Indian Affairs____________ 45, 058, 000 56, 577, 000 Fish and Wildlife Service__________ 2, 732, 000 4, 657, 000 Department of the Army_______________ 16, 600, 000 23, 435, 000 Other agencies________________________ 1,444, 000 3, 725, 000 Total in 11 Western States________406, 787, 000 National total___________------------457, 587, 000 Source: Munns, E. N., Public Lands and the Water Resources, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1950. The Federal lands of the West include all kinds of land. The national forests generally occupy the higher mountain areas. The Indian reserva- tions include some forest land, but mostly lie at lower elevations and in drier sections, hence a larger area is more often in grass or may have little cover. The area under the Bureau of Land Management is made up primarily of the rem- nants of the public domain lands which no one else wanted; it is largely desert or range land, though there are scattered forest areas as well. Lands held by defense agencies are chiefly semiarid lands used as bombing ranges, airfields, and related activities. The national park lands are, of course, national parks and monuments; they encompass all types of land from high mountain to desert. Soil Conservation Service lands were purchased under a program of re- tiring submarginal agricultural lands and are chiefly grass lands that were dry farmed. The Fish and Wildlife Service administers western lands primarily to maintain waterfowl. Nearly half of all its area in the Western States is in a desert game refuge in Nevada; the rest of the lands involved are chiefly marsh land. The character and condition of all these public lands profoundly and variously affect water re- sources. They affect the volume of stream flow and ground water; the manner and rate at which the water is delivered to the streams; the quality of the water; and the amount of sediment moved. Many of these public lands are a primary source of water. These are the lands at higher elevations in the mountains and plateaus. At these higher elevations, they receive from 2 to 10 times the precipitation of the lowlands. Further- more, the greater part of this precipitation comes as snow, so that for a period of from 4 to 6 months they hold most of the precipitation they receive, releasing it in the spring to feed the rivers and streams, and to replenish underground reservoirs. The area of these humid high elevation islands of the semiarid West is relatively small, consti- tuting perhaps 15 to 20 percent of the gross area. They supply, however, about 80 percent of the total available water resources for the West as a whole. Most of this source area (about 200 million acres) is in forest or chaparral, and a consider- able part (136 million acres) is in federally owned national forests. About 10 million acres are in other Federal lands, about 8 million in State lands, and another 10 million in railroad owner- ship. Most of these last 18 million acres are intermingled with Federal ownership and lie within the boundaries of the national forests. The nonforested public lands of the West also greatly affect the water resources, the volume of water available, its delivery, and its quality. These nonforested public lands amount to con- siderably more than 200 million acres. Because they are on the average more arid than private nonforested lands, they produce only about 60 percent of the average water supplied by the nonforest lands. Thus it is estimated they pro- duce about 2 inches of water for the West as a whole instead of 3.3 inches for all nonforest lands. The volume of water produced by the area is less important than the volume of sediment it originates. It is not true, as often stated, that 20 percent of the area produces 80 percent of the 132 |