480 Canadian Forestry Journal, April, ipi6. 



Valuable Tests to Prove Forest's 

 Effect on Streams^ 



Experience has proved that the forest works efficaciously against many- 

 dangers resuhing from the elements let loose, such as avalanches, falls of 

 stones, erosion, earthslides, inundations. These are facts admitted and in- 

 disputable, but how and in what measure does the forest exercise this 

 moderating action upon the destructive power of water? How can it 

 lessen the destruction from inundations? 



It is in order to attempt an answer to this leading qu-estion that the 

 Swiss Federal Station of Forest Research in 1900 installed an observing 

 station in the basin from which two streams of the Bernese Emmental are 

 fed. These streams, tributaries of the Hornbach, are located in the terri- 

 tory of the commune of Sumiswald-Wasen, on the northwest slope of the 

 Napf. The geological formation is fissured pudding-stone which decom- 

 poses readily. One of the basins, with an extent of 140 acres, is completely 

 wooded. The other with an area of 175 acres has only a small average of 

 wooded district, about 30%. The forest is composed of spruce and of 

 alder bushes. The measurement of the precipitation, rain and snow, takes 

 place regularly throughout the year. In each of the basins there have 

 been installed three rain gauge stations at different altitudes. At the 

 junction of the two streams with the Hornbach certain apparatus registers 

 automatically every five minutes day and night the volume of the water 

 flowing. 



The Research Station is going to publish very soon the results thus 

 obtained from these valuable observations. In the meantime if we refer to 

 the provisional statements of the Research Station the two following points 

 seem to have been definitely established : 



1. In case of storms accompanied with heavy rains the maximum out- 

 flow in the wooded valley is from 30 to 50% less than that from the other 

 valley, and there is another beneficial circumstance from the action of the 

 forest, that this maximum flow is produced later in the wooded basin than 

 in the other. 



2. In the long periods of drought (the summers of 1904, 1906, 1908 and 

 1911) the wooded district gave without interruption a flow of water while 

 in the denuded valley the stream dried up and all the springs ceased al- 

 though at a normal time they have an abundant flow. 



These observations seem thus to have demonstrated irrefutably the 

 moderative action of the forest upon the regulation of the stream flow 

 which some have denied. 



• Warning on Licenses against fire be printed on the fishing 



The Department of Colonization, and hunting licenses in future. A 



Mines and Fisheries of the Quebec letter to the Secretary from Mr. E. 



Government has favorably consider- M. Dechene, Deputy Minister of 



ed the suggestion of the Canadian Lands and Forests, states that such 



Forestry Association that warnings action has been decided on. 



