Land clearing

“ If the problem is to be solved we must cease to accelerate surface run-off by burning the forests and brush fields, overgrazing the range, clearing steep slopes for agriculture, and practicing antiquated methods of cultivation. On the contrary, the farmer, the forester, and the stockman must cooperate in seeing that the land is so used that surface run-off, particularly at the higher elevations, is reduced to a minimum. ”

“ One phase of national security is contingent upon the effectiveness with which these practices are applied by all who work with farm, range, and forest resources. The record will prove that nearly 300,000,000 acres of land have been practically destroyed by erosion in the United States. Twice that acreage is rapidly deteriorating under the same forces.
Remember, that it was only a century ago when Americans received their first rudimentary lessons in exercising a little common sense in the exploitation of resources, whether for crops, lumber, mineral, livestock, or recreational opportunities. ”

“ The preservation of the forests means the preservation of the soil, and the destruction of the forests means the destruction of the soil. This is the universal law. First the forests were cut down and the hillsides left bare. Then the streams wore great ravines down the unprotected hillsides. Steadily the work of destruction by erosion has gone on, until time beyond our possibility to comprehend must pass before the land can be made productive again. ”

“ The necessity for irrigating the soil to make it productive seems to require that some system for disposing of the public lands should be devised by which the water of the streams can be made available to those who may desire to cultivate lands by irrigation. Under the present system the whole Territory will, in time, virtually be in the possession of those few persons who may own strips of land along the streams. ”

“ There are said to be fifteen or twenty million acres of land in the West, at present arid, for whose reclamation water is available, if properly conserved. There are about two hundred and thirty million acres from which the forests have been cut but which have never yet been cleared for the plow and which lie waste and desolate. These lie scattered all over the Union. And there are nearly eighty million acres of land that lie under swamps or subject to periodical overflow or too wet for anything but grazing, which it is perfectly feasible to drain and protect and redeem. ”

“ IRRIGATION.—Another matter urged on the attention of Congress by the President was the irrigation [11] of arid public lands in the West in order that they might be made fit for settlement. Great reservoirs for the storage of water should be built, and canals to lead the water to the arid lands should be constructed at government expense, the land so reclaimed should be kept for actual settlers, and the cost repaid by the sale of the land. ”

“ Marl, clay and sand beds are likely to slip when they are superimposed, and there are some districts in which sandy soil is so charged with water that, unless the drainage of the slopes and formation suffices to drain for some distance the land outside a cutting, the sand will become overcharged with moisture and will act as a fluid and slip, the lateral support being removed by the act of excavation and its normal condition altered. ”

“ It is seldom that a small settlement can do this successfully. I have been pleased with the suggestions offered by President Hyde in relation to the better cultivation of the soil; for when we go to the expense of taking out water, of keeping up dams, making requisite canals, repairing tunnels and smaller ditches and water sects, it would seem really sound policy that every foot of land thus watered, in order to make it effective, should be cultivated in the best possible manner. ”

“ Then they tax themselves, and hire engineers and contractors to dig a huge system of ditches, and to build levees and dikes, to guard their fields against high water. You see, an Illinois farmer may own a thousand acres of the richest alluvial land. But if half that land is swamp, and the other half lies so low that the creeks near by may overflow and ruin his crops any day, then his thousand mellow acres aren't much more use than ten acres of hard-scrabble here in New England. To be sure, he can cut his own ditches, and build his own levee, without consulting his neighbors. ”

“ When the timber is cut, naturally the land remains. Either the company must pay taxes on it, sell it, or allow it to revert to the state. It may be very good land, but it is encumbered with old slashing, probably much of it needs drainage, a stubborn second-growth of scrub oak or red willows has already usurped the soil, and above all it is isolated. Far from the cities, far from the railroad, far even from the crossroad's general store, it is further cut off by the necessity of traversing atrocious and—in the wet season—bottomless roads to even the nearest neighbour. ”

“ These are estimates made upon lands that had already been under cultivation. In addition to such lands as are merely rendered less productive by surplus water, we have, even on our hard New England farms—on side hills, where springs burst out, or at the foot of declivities, where the land is flat, or in runs, which receive the natural drainage of higher lands—many places which are absolutely unfit for cultivation, and worse than useless, because they separate those parts of the farm which can be cultivated. ”

“ No other region more tragically suffers the vicious cycle of poverty leading to
If people destroy vegetation in order to get land, food, fodder, fuel, or timber, the soil is no longer protected. Rain creates surface runoff, and the soil erodes. ”

“ At an early stage in its erosion history, before an upland has been dissected by valleys, nearly all of it may be arable. Later, when drainage is at its maturity, and when hillsides and ridge slopes constitute a large part of the area, there is probably the least acreage of arable land. This is especially true if the slopes are so steep as to allow the soil to be readily washed away. At a still later stage, when the valley bottoms have become wide and the slopes of the ridges and hills so reduced as to be available, the area of cultivable land is again increased. ”

“ Here then is a location destined to attract and support a large population, for which place can be made only by steady encroachment upon the water of both river and sea. Diking is necessitated not only by the demand for more land for the growing population, but also by the constant silting up of the drainage outfalls, which increases the danger of inundation while at the same time contributing to the upbuilding of the land. ”

“ Deforestation, cultivation of the land especially, and mining operations, are vitally important in the question of soil washing, surface erosion and the amount of sediment in the streams.
The project for a deep waterway for commercial purposes, therefore, is confronted with these serious problems which must be solved before the government can afford to spend one or two hundred million dollars in river improvement. Some system of control must be devised to insure to water fronts and terminal facilities a reasonable degree of permanency through protection against erosion of the banks. ”

“ Aside from the limited amount of land suitable for agricultural purposes still remaining in the ownership of the government, the lands that may become valuable for agricultural purposes are of two kinds—the swamp lands that may be reclaimed by drainage and the arid lands that may be reclaimed by irrigation. The United States Geological Survey estimates that 75,000,000 acres can be made valuable for agriculture by draining swamps. ”

“ As drainage is the basis of all agricultural improvements, so there are usually associated with undrained estates the cognate evils of bad tillage, inefficient manuring, small fields, irregular fences—which not only occupy one-fifth of the total area, but also harbour vermin, shade crops, and extract nourishment from the surrounding soil—inferior road accommodation, dilapidated buildings, and, in short, land whose resources are not half developed. ”

“ If continued soil depletion is practiced, ultimate failure is the only future for such investments.
That vast areas of land once cultivated with profit in the original thirteen states now lie agriculturally abandoned is common knowledge; and that the farm lands of the great Corn Belt and Wheat Belt of the North-Central states are even now undergoing the most rapid soil depletion ever witnessed is known to all who possess the facts. ”

“ The holding back of these flood waters in the upper part of the rivers, and so preventing these overflows, is termed storage of waters.
In still other regions the rainfall is abundant, and the land low-lying. Large areas are always covered with water. Such lands are called swamps or bogs, and when drained, they become the richest of agricultural lands. Irrigation, storage and drainage are the three methods employed to make waste lands valuable and useful. The land is saved or reclaimed, so all these methods of balancing and distributing the water supply are called reclamation. ”

“ Nations rise and fall; so does the productive power of vast areas of land. Better drainage, better seed, better implements, and more thorough tillage, all tend toward larger crops, but they also tend toward ultimate land ruin, for the removal of larger crops only hastens soil depletion. ”

“ The location of the sump should be at or about the lowest level of the ground well away from any wall or the dock area, and on the line of the greatest flow of the land waters or natural watercourse, thus, dealing with them before they reach the site of the works.
In loose and almost all earth the foundations should be covered up quickly so as to preserve the natural condition of the soil. It is also important to offer every possible support to the earth to prevent initial movement, and slight assistance may afford the required strength. ”

“ Water is to be furnished both to public and private lands. Before the beginning of survey for contemplated works, the Secretary of the Interior is to withdraw from entry, except under homestead laws, any land that may be irrigated from such works. In anticipation of the rise of land values through national irrigation, there was a rush of speculators who, through a perversion of the intention of the Desert Land Law, the Timber Law, and the commutation clause of the Homestead Law, acquired large areas without actual settlement. ”

“ The trees being dead, vegetation rapidly springs up, and there is soon abundance of food for cattle. Clearing the ground of trees and stumps is a very costly operation, and takes many years to finally accomplish. The Government with a view of preventing the accumulation of lands in a few hands, refuse to sell more than 320 acres to one person, but of course this is easily evaded. ”

“ The same forces have meant that traditional shifting cultivators, who once cut forests, grew crops, and then gave the forest time to recover, now have neither land enough nor time to let forests re-establish. So forests are being destroyed, often only to create poor farmland that cannot support those who till it. Extending cultivation onto steep slopes is increasing soil erosion in many hilly sections of both developing and developed nations. ”

“ Uncontrolled logging and fire can strip the land of its porous cover, leaving it unable to absorb water. The disastrous consequences are soil erosion, flash floods, and muddy streams. Thus, as soil conditions require, the forester may plan light to moderate selection cuttings. ”

“ Where waste sources are too diffuse to be channeled into collection systems—as along many agricultural streams heavily polluted through land runoff and drainage, and also in some urban situation—present tools are extremely limited. Soil conservation practices aimed at cutting down erosion—to be discussed within a few pages—tend to keep not only silt but nutrients and other substances on the land to some extent. ”

“ People's governments at all levels shall, in a planned way, organize the restoration of cultivated land to forest or grass for the cultivated land that needs ecological restoration, in the forms of sloping land, heavily desertification land, severely rocky desertification land and heavily polluted land, as determined by the State Council. ”

“ The trouble is, however, that as understanding of the interrelationships between land and water and the other elements of the landscape, even on a Basinwide scale, has grown, it has become more and more obvious that there are only a few strictly local landscape problems. Most local jurisdictions have within their boundaries critical watersheds, unique scenic assets, flood plains whose unwise use will require elaborate and costly structural protection later on, and other such features. ”

“ The sluggish river is only acting as a carrier for the removal of the land washes. the sides of the valleys, which are thus widened into broad flats, and in their later stages great plains. Such a formation of base planes of erosion is illustrated in Fig. 2.
Applying this process of denudation to the lake region, it becomes evident that the land must have stood high enough above the sea for the rivers to remove the débris washed into them by the millions of little streams—that is to say, the continent was sufficiently high for the excavation of the deepest valleys now beneath the lake waters. ”

“ The soil must be constantly renewed and enriched by manure in the same way, and the masonry of the retaining walls kept in repair. Whenever possible these costly terraced fields are located by preference on southward facing slopes, where the tilt of the land makes the fields catch the rays of the sun almost at right angles and thus counteracts the chill of the higher altitude, while the mountain behind protects the growing crops from cold northern winds. Good arable land, being limited in amount, commands a high price ”