The Stream-Flow Controversy: A Conservation Turning Point

Dodds, Gordon B.

doi:10.2307/1902063

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Kittredge (1948) describes this as a 'period of propaganda' by forest protection advocates and their opponents. Dodds (1969) shows how friction between American foresters and engineers centered on the efficacy of watershed forests as regulators of stream flow and flooding. Foresters argued that deforestation increases flooding level and frequency, accelerates soil erosion, and alters precipitation, negatively impacting electricity generation, agriculture production, commerce, and natural beauty.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature as infrastructure: Making and managing the Panama Canal watershed

2012

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The Panama Canal requires an enormous volume of fresh water to function. A staggering 52 million gallons are released into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with each of the 35-45 ships that transit the canal daily. The water that facilitates interoceanic transportation and global connection falls as rain across the watershed surrounding the canal and is managed by an extensive system of locks, dams, and hydrographic stations. These technologies -which correspond with the popular understanding of infrastructure as hardware -were largely constructed during the early 20th century. Since the late 1970s, however, administrators and other concerned actors have responded to actual and potential water scarcity within the canal system by developing a managerial approach that integrates engineered technologies and new techniques of land-use planning and environmental regulation across the watershed. Through this process, techno-politics and environmental politics have become increasingly inextricable in the transit zone. Whereas canal administrators previously emphasized the control of water in its liquid state, watershed management emerged as an attempt to manipulate water flows through the legal protection of forests and restriction of agriculture. As forested landscapes have been assigned new infrastructural functions (water storage and regulation), campesino farmers have been charged with a new responsibility (forest conservation) often at odds with their established agricultural practices. Consequently, I bring together scholarship on infrastructure in science and technology studies and political ecology in anthropology and geography to examine why, how, and to what effect landscapes around the canal have been transformed from agricultural frontier to managed watershed. I suggest that the concept of infrastructure is a useful theoretical tool and empirical topic for analyzing the politics of environmental service provision. By paying attention to the contingent history of engineering decisions and the politics embedded in the changing socio-technical system that delivers water to the canal, we can better understand the distributional politics of environmental service provision in Panama today.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature as infrastructure: Making and managing the Panama Canal watershed

2012

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“…In the early 1900s the American Society of Civil Engineers Special Committee on Floods and Flood prevention rejected the opinion of many of its members that forests reduce the frequency and severity of large floods in its final report commissioned by the US Government on the practical benefits of reforestation because of the lack of quantitative data [ Hoyt and Troxell , 1932; Dodds , 1969]. In response to an obvious need for scientific studies the first experimental watershed in North America, Wagon Wheel Gap, Colorado, was established in 1910 specifically to address the lack of quantitative data on the influence of forests on the frequency and magnitude of floods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A paradigm shift in understanding and quantifying the effects of forest harvesting on floods in snow environments

Green

Alila

2012

Water Resources Research

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[1] A well-established precept in forest hydrology is that any reduction of forest cover will always have a progressively smaller effect on floods with increasing return period. The underlying logic in snow environments is that during the largest snowmelt events the soils and vegetation canopy have little additional storage capacity and under these conditions much of the snowmelt will be converted to runoff regardless of the amount or type of vegetation cover. Here we show how this preconceived physical understanding, reinforced by the outcomes of numerous paired watershed studies, is indefensible because it is rationalized outside the flood frequency distribution framework. We conduct a meta-analysis of postharvest data at four catchments (3-37 km 2 ) with moderate level of harvesting (33%-40%) to demonstrate how harvesting increases the magnitude and frequency of all floods on record (19-99 years) and how such effects can increase unchecked with increasing return period as a consequence of changes to both the mean (þ11% to þ35%) and standard deviation (À12% to þ19%) of the flood frequency distribution. We illustrate how forest harvesting has substantially increased the frequency of the largest floods in all study sites regardless of record length and this also runs counter to the prevailing wisdom in hydrological science. The dominant process responsible for these newly emerging insights is the increase in net radiation associated with the conversion from longwave-dominated snowmelt beneath the canopy to shortwave-dominated snowmelt in harvested areas, further amplified or mitigated by basin characteristics such as aspect distribution, elevation range, slope gradient, amount of alpine area, canopy closure, and drainage density. Investigating first order environmental controls on flood frequency distributions, a standard research method in stochastic hydrology, represents a paradigm shift in the way harvesting effects are physically explained and quantified in forest hydrology literature.Citation: Green, K. C., and Y. Alila (2012), A paradigm shift in understanding and quantifying the effects of forest harvesting on floods in snow environments, Water Resour. Res., 48, W10503,

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“…Marsh proposed in "Man and Nature" that fl ooding is affected by forest clearing (Hewlett and Doss 1984). The controversy over the infl uence of forest harvesting on streamfl ow regulation continued into the early part of the 20 th century (Dodds 1969). Despite a dearth of scientifi c evidence at the time, conservationist Gifford Pinchot, when asked at a Congressional hearing whether fl oods along southern Appalachian rivers were traceable to the denuding of forests, replied: "Directly, directly…It is a perfectly clear cut proposition" (House of Represent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the controversy surrounding the degree of control that forests exert on streamfl ow would continue for many years (Dodds 1969, Anderson et al 1976), on March 1, 1911, Congress passed the Weeks Law, which authorized "the purchase of forested, cut-over, or denuded lands within the watersheds of navigable streams necessary to the regulation of the fl ow of navigable streams." This law authorized government agencies to purchase land after state consent, which eventually became the national forests of the Eastern United States.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting large peakflows on Appalachian watersheds: lessons from the Fernow Experimental Forest

Kochenderfer¹,

Adams²,

Miller³

et al. 2007

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Data collected since 1951 on the Fernow Experimental Forest near Parsons, West Virginia, and at a gaging station on the nearby Cheat River since 1913 were used to evaluate factors affecting large peakflows on forested watersheds. Treatments ranged from periodic partial cuts to complete deforestation using herbicides. Total storm precipitation and average storm precipitation intensity were the most significant variables affecting peakflows, and were far more important than timber harvesting activites. Since January 1913, of the 20 highestranked peakflows on the Cheat River at the Parsons gaging site, 11 have occurred since 1984 during a period of limited timber harvesting. These results support earlier findings that forests do not prevent floods and that prudent forest harvesting operations do not increase large flood peakflows.

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The Stream-Flow Controversy: A Conservation Turning Point

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Nature as infrastructure: Making and managing the Panama Canal watershed

Nature as infrastructure: Making and managing the Panama Canal watershed

A paradigm shift in understanding and quantifying the effects of forest harvesting on floods in snow environments

Factors affecting large peakflows on Appalachian watersheds: lessons from the Fernow Experimental Forest

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