Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1910-01-28
Forests Do Not Affect Rain, Says
Weather Chief.

Laying the foundation for great scien-
tific controversy. Willis L. Moore, chief of
the weather bureau, in a report to Secre-
tary Wilson, of the Department of Agri-
culture has attacked the fundamental theo-
ries of former Forester Clifford Pinchot re-
lative to the relations of forest and rainfall.
Teeming with scientific facts and statis-
tics, the result of many years of study,
the chief of the weather bureau asserts, in
his remarkable report, which is now in the
hands of the House committee on agricul-
ture, that there is no relation between the
denudation of the forests and the precipi-
tati0n of rain, or floods, or drOughts.
In their enthusiasm, the weather chief
says, many of the most jealous of the
conservation advocates have confused
cause with effect, attributing droughts and
floods to the inroads that have been made
on the forests of the United States, in
stead of realizing that lack of rainfall
causes the barrenness of the waste lands
CONSERVATION Nor MINIMIzED.
Chief Moore does not minimize the great
Importance of forest conservation, but as
serts that it should not be confused with
questions entirely separate.
The House committee on agriculture has
just received the report. II will raise a
sharp issue between the weather bureau
chief and former Forester Pinchot who
has maintained as one of the most impor-
tant reasons for protecting the forests that
they conserve water flow, and that the
stripping of them brings on floods and
drOughts.
Chief Moore's conclusions are:
|. Any marked climatic changes that
ka.. SnLA ala s,,1
not local, and are appreciable only when
measured in geologic periods, Evidence is
strong that the cutting away of forests
has nothing to do with creating or aug
menting droughts.
g. Precipitation controls forestation, but
fOrestatiOn has little or no effect upon pre-
cipitation.
g. Any local notifications of tempera-
ture and humidity caused by forest cover
ing, buildings in cities, &c, could not ex-
tend upward more than a few hundred
feet, and in this stratum of air saturatiOn
rarely occurs even during rainfall, where
in precipitation is the result of conditions
that exist at such attitudes and on such
grand scale as not to be controlled or af-
fected by the small thermal Irregularities
Of the surface air.
LITTLE CHANGE NOTED.
Dlrina the period of accurate observa-
tons. the amount of precipitation has not
increased or decreased to an extent worthy
of consideration.
S. Floods are caused by excessive pre-
cipitation. and the source of the precipi-
tation over the central and eastern por-
tons Of the United States is the vapOr
borne by the warm southerly winds from
the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic
Ocean. At times spring floods occur from
the rapid melting Of unusually large guam
titles of accumulated winter SHOWS, and
as Chittenden has pointed out such floods
come oftener from the forest than from
the open.
6. The disastrous effects of soil erosion
however caused, appear to have been ex-
aggerated, and erosion is not always an I'M
mixed evil.
T. Compared with the total area of a
given watershed, that of the headwaters
is so small that, except locally in mountain
streams, their run-off would not be sufii-
Cient to cause floods, even If deforestation
allowed greater and quicker run-off Grant
ing for the sake OF argument, that defor-
floods over q watershed II would he neces-
sarv in order to nrevent them m reforest
the lower levels with their vastly Greater
areas an imnossihiltv unless their lands
are 10 he abandoned for.the use If men
FORESTS SMALL FACTOR.
8. The run-off of our rivers is not mate
rally affected by any other factor than
the precipitation, except that the forest,
by facilitating evaporation and entirely
restraining small or moderate rainfalls
during dry weather, may slightly intensity
lOw-water conditions.
8. The high waters are not higher and
the low waters are not lower than for
merly In fact, there appears to be a ten
dency in late years toward better low
water flow in summer
and londer duration ,bar formarIv
In the course of his report, Chief Moore
SAYS:
In the discussion of matters concerned
with the conservation of the natural re-
sources of the nation. some of which NAV
involve the expenditure of hundreds of mill