Soil Conservation and Floods

What can be done to prevent the staggering losses in crops, soil, property, even human life, will depend to a very considerable degree on the wisdom and timely efforts of the people and their leaders. In any clear presentation of the problem several points should be emphasized at the outset: 1. We can be certain that costly floods will strike again next year, or the next, somewhere in the country. 2. Our experience shows that it is possible to control or greatly reduce floods. It shows that the smaller, more localized floods along the upper tributaries or waters can be eliminated almost completely; and indicate that substantial reduction of flood flows along the major streams is also practicable. 3. Soil erosion is part of the flood problem-the result of the rains that produce floods and the source of the silt that reduces the carrying capacity of streams and the water-retention capacity of reservoirs. 4. Soil conservation is an indispensable and co-ordinate part of flood control and silt control. No single method of flood control can do an adequate job. We have seen in the recent Midwestern flood, for example, that levees high enough to withstand the largest previous floods on record were overtopped. We have also seen that the soils of fields and pastures became so nearly saturated after weeks of heavy rains that they could absorb but little more from the final big rains. To meet all kinds of flood conditions

Agriculture · Cartography · Erosion · Erosion control · Flood control · Flood myth · Floodplain · Geography · Geotechnical engineering · Hydrology (agriculture · Levee · Silt · Soil conservation · STREAMS · Surface runoff · Tributary · Water resource management · Ecology · Environmental Science · Geology · Hydrology and Watershed Management Studies · Soil erosion and sediment transport

• Hydrological consequences of land use/land cover change in Indonesia

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