| OCR Text |
Show STUDIES OF SOIL EROSION LOSSES MADE BY STATES A measure of the nationwide Interest In-terest in controlling soil erosion and water runoff is found in the latest report of the United States Department Depart-ment of Agriculture on the work of the state experiment stations. With the annual loss from soil erosion estimated es-timated at not less than 5400,000,000, the department, in co-operation with experiment stations and other state agencies, Is attacking the problem along two lines. Research as to the best ways to control erosion Is being carried on in all parts of the United States. Control measures thus discovered -are put to immediate use by Civilian Conservation corps boys who In more than a dozen states are planting plant-ing trees and other soil binding crops, building terraces and building dams to control flood water. Erosion studies at the Alabama and Texas stations show that terraces, ter-races, while necessary on all cultivated culti-vated land subject to erosion, are not alone sufficient to prevent losses of soil between terraces. Fertile soil and needed water are lost by sheet erosion nnd run off. These stations have shown that this loss can be reduced by strips of cover crops supplementing the terraces. The Iowa station has shown by extensive ex-tensive tests that many farms are being be-ing washed away at the rate of 1 foot every 50 years. When corn is grown continuously, the loss takes place at about 1 foot every 8G years. When corn rows run across the slope, the losses are cut In half. Losses from land in alfalfa, clover, and blue-grass blue-grass are very small. When sweet clover was plowed under soil and water losses were strikingly reduced. From the Far West the Washington Washing-ton station reports results of studies on soil representative of large areas in eastern Washington. Winter wheat yielded only one-tenth or one-half as many bushels per acre on land which had lost its topsoil because of erosion. ero-sion. Yields of spring wheat were even less favorable. Mere, too, it was proven that, vegetation, whether of grasses, legumes, or even grain stubble, stub-ble, went a long way toward controlling con-trolling soil nnd water losses. |
