MAINTAINING THE CLIMAX 93 



Erosion: There are roughly 2,000,000,000 acres in the United 

 States. Of these, 282,000,000 have been ruined or severely damaged 

 by erosion. Moderately damaged are 775,000,000 acres. Neither of 

 these figures includes mountains, mesas, or badlands. Of our most 

 valuable acres, the croplands, nearly one-half (200,000,000) have lost 

 at least half their topsoil by erosion. 1 For comparison, erosion has 

 cut the living skin off lands which total more than 10 times the size 

 of Ohio. 



Floods: We have always had floods, but records show increasing 

 frequency and height. The river gage at Memphis over a 47 year 

 period (1890-1937) has shown a gradual rise of 15 feet in flood crests. 2 

 The hundreds of millions of dollars these 15 feet have cost is less im- 

 portant than the human suffering. The causes of flood increase are 

 losses of sod, forest, and topsoil with their water holding capacity. 3 

 Floods and erosion are intimately related. Our annual flood bill 

 averages around $250,000,000. 



Water Table: The underground water table of Ohio has been 

 falling an average of one foot per year for some 25 years or more, 

 according to the Ohio Geological Survey. Many industries depending 

 on well water are alarmed. New factories of many types requiring 

 abundant water cannot come into some areas because of the water 

 table situation. Farm springs and wells fail in every dry period 

 in many parts of the country. Many streams and farm ponds dry up 

 periodically, forcing water hauling, (Fig. 46) adding to the cost of 

 livestock production and reducing its quality. The same thing is 

 happening in most eastern states, in the plains region, in California's 

 Central Valley. In the west, artesian wells have rather generally 

 ceased to flow and, motor driven pumps have been installed by the 

 thousands; they draw down and are exhausting some of the great 

 artesian basins fed by mountain waters. 4 The supply is fed in by cli- 

 mate and is limited, but man tends to recognize no limit until forced 

 to do so by threatened bankruptcy. Denuding the watershed by forest 

 destruction and overgrazing encourages surface runoff and floods, 

 and reduces even the natural recharging rate of underground water. 



Drainage: Extensive swamp and marsh drainage has destroyed 

 biologic values such as aquatic and terrestrial wildlife, stopped ground 

 water recharging in some cases and stream flow in others. The pur- 

 pose of such drainage usually has been to Drovide farm land, but in 

 a large per cent of cases only alkali or acid deserts have resulted. 

 Two-thirds of the 80,000 drained acres of Wisconsin's Great Swamp 

 turned out to be unprofitable for farming. Similar results have 



1 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Soils and Men, Yearbook, 1938, p. 593. 



2 Eenner, G. T., Conservation of National Resources, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 

 New York, 1942, p. 91. 



3 Wales and Lathrop, Conservation of Natural Resources, Laurel Book Co., Chi- 

 cago, 1944, p. 226. 



4 Chase, Stuart, Rich Land, Poor Land, McGra-y-Hill, New York, 1936, pp. 

 140-142. 



