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Surface Run‐Off and Erosion in Relation to Soil and Plant Cover on High Grazing Lands of Central Utah 1
Author(s) -
Stewart George,
Forsling C. L.
Publication year - 1931
Publication title -
agronomy journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.752
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1435-0645
pISSN - 0002-1962
DOI - 10.2134/agronj1931.00021962002300100005x
Subject(s) - george (robot) , cover (algebra) , grazing , forest cover , citation , relation (database) , ogden , forestry , library science , history , geography , art history , agronomy , ecology , computer science , biology , engineering , database , physics , mechanical engineering , thermodynamics
Erosion seems to be a leak that is almost continent-wide (2)a. It has deserved the important attention given to it for many ears in the southern and southeastern parts of the United States. More recently, its serious aspects in the corn belt and lake states has been recognized (i, 3). Recently, also, the damaging consequences erosion in the western states (4, 5) on forest and range lands, as well as on cultivated areas, has thrust itself upon our attention. Our limited knowledge has in part been responsible for the unhappy, results of little-managed grazing, one o~ the several consequences of which too frequently is the loss of the more productive surface soil. Erosion in the geologic sense is always going on, but it is only of late that it has come to exceed the processes of weathering and the decay of plant parts which make for soil accumulation and soil improvement. This turning of the balance from a slight accretion to a fairly rapid removal of soil is for the present purpose summed up in the word "erosion." Since ’9~5, the research branch of the U. S. Forest Service has maintained at the Great Basin Branch Experiment Station, on the Ephraim Canyon watershed of the Manti Forest in central Utah, a detailed study of the rdation of vegetative cover and grazing to surface runoff and erosion. This is in a locality ~o,ooo feet above sea level, where the annual precipitation, more than two-thirds of which is winter snow, is about 3o inches. Two somewhat equal drainage areas with distinctly different plant cover were placed under control and the water led through covered settling tanks equipped for measuring the water and the eroded material. Rain gauges on the two areas measure the rainfall from each summer storm, and in later years tipping-bucket gauge records have been obtained to determine the rate of fall as well as the amount. The two watersheds, 88e feet apart, are subject to the same climatic influences. One area designated as "B" has had tl~roughout a plant cover occupying 40% of the surface of the ground and the other from to ~9~9 had a cover of ~6%. The second area, designated as "A,"