400 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Most of the Badlands area is grazed and much of it too heavily 

 grazed for the cover to maintain itself. Where grazing is heavy, 

 erosion is greatly accelerated. Even under light grazing use, many 

 of the steep, unstable clay slopes erode excessively. The soils in- 

 volved, the paucity of precipitation, the alkaline character of the 

 soil, and the character of cover make good management imperative 

 in the interests of watershed protection. Even with good manage- 

 ment, it is doubtful whether erosion can be wholly prevented by 

 vegetation alone. Probably some special measures of erosion control 

 will be necessary. The fact that a very large part of this area is 

 public domain serves to emphasize the fact that public ownership 

 alone is not sufficient to insure good watershed conditions. 



LOWER MISSOURI RIVER 

 GENERAL DESCRIPTION 



The more humid part of the Missouri River drainage is essentially 

 a prairie region well suited to agriculture. About 4 million acres of 

 commercial forest land is included in this region. This forest is in 

 the form of stringers which follow the streams far into the prairie 

 region, of scattered woodlands in farming communities, and of more 

 extensive forest areas on the rougher lands. A scrubby w r oodland 

 type of about a million acres is found towards the western extension 

 of the forest in southwestern Missouri and eastern Kansas and 

 Nebraska. The topography is level to gently rolling. Rough lands 

 occur only in the Ozark region of southern Missouri. In northern 

 Missouri and southern Iowa the terrain is more rolling than on the 

 west side of the river. 



The precipitation varies from 20 inches in the plains section to 45 

 inches in southern Missouri. Most of its comes as rain and the greater 

 proportion in the spring and late summer. During the flood years of 

 1915, 1922, and 1927, spring storms brought between 20 and 30 inches 

 of rain to the Ozark region and the resulting local floods were a mate- 

 rial factor in the flood stages of the lower Mississippi. Torrential 

 rains frequently occur. The Weather Bureau reports a rainfall of 

 6.61 inches in 24 hours at Columbia, Mo., and a fall of 3 inches in 

 30 minutes at Fayette. Such rams are unusual, but numerous rams 

 have occurred in " which more than 2 inches has fallen in 24 hours. 

 Heavy rains result in a high run off particularly from deforested or 

 burned land. 



The Ozark streams contribute markedly to the floods of the 

 Mississippi River. Records of the Mississippi River Flood Commis- 

 sion show that of the Mississippi River flow of 1,850,000 second-feet 

 at Cairo on February 6, 1915, the Missouri River contributed about 

 200,000 second-feet, or 11 percent, of which 150,000 second-feet or 

 about 8 percent of the Mississippi flow at Cairo came from the Osage 

 River, which drains southwestern Missouri. On April 24, 1922, the 

 Missouri River contributed 460,000 second-feet of a total of 1,550,000 

 second-feet; of this the Osage accounted for 30 percent, or 9 percent 

 of the flow past Cairo. On April 20, 1927, when the highest flood 

 peak of the year at Cairo occurred, the Missouri contributed 20 per- 

 cent and the Osage 6 percent of the flow of the Mississippi. 



The streams of this area also contribute heavily to the silt load of 

 the river. Thus, on the basis of data from the University of Mis- 



