The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-03-04

Or more;
 Zealand River basin, comparable in size and slope with the upper Amme- noosuc at one time completely cut over. then severely burned by fire, and now covered with a growth or small trees, largely birch, alder and cherry.
 It will be seen that the foregoing basins present almost every conce1v- able condition between that of virgin forest and that of complete denuda- tion. Rain gages have been set up a. numerous points all over the several basins and they receive the close at tention of observers hired for that purpose; 1O7 snow gages have also been installed, and at these the ob- servers not only. make weekly meas urements of the depth Of accunulat- ed snow, but with suitable apparatus make determinations of the equivalent of water that the snow represents. With this information 1t will be pos sible when the snow melts in the spring to show the amount of water that has descended upon the ground during the winter season, and to de- termine it's effect upon flood cond1- tions in the rivers. In addition to this. evidence will be afforded in the spring by ocular demonstration con corning the time at which the snow disappears from the several 6rainage areas, thereby giving very valuable information concerning the effect of forests upon snow melting. To accur- ately determine the stream flow re- sulting from rainfall and snoW melt ing measurement stations have been established on the streams and equip ped with automatic recording gauges which give a continuous record from hour to hour of the amount of water flowing in the stream channels throughout the entire period of in> vestigation. It will be seen that the effort is to determine the effects of single storms and to show the rela- tive rapidity with which given amount of precipitation runs off the several areas into the rivers. In con- nection with all of this, there will be taken into account the slope of the drainage areas, their exposure, and all the related phenomena that nec- essarily enter into consideration"
 An interesting difference exists be- tween the Geological Surveys presen! investigation and previous work of this character. The usual method of discussing forest effects on stream flow has been to assemble rainfall and stream-flow results covering & long period of years, the effort being to show by average results g. genera effect of deforestation. The present l0EoSC1Sd CALCULUS III GAC OtACt oA- rection and reduces the problem to the consideratio of single storm un- it's. thereby affording direct and sim ultaneous comparison of precipitation and stream flow with respect to def mite areas The White Mountain work as at present carried on has been criticized by some persons be- cause of the belief that investigations of this kind must be continued for a hundred years or more before any def mite results can be secured. The Geo. logical Surveys contention however, is that the grouping Of average re- suits from annual summaries covering many years will mask any local vari- ations that might be due to deforesta- ton; therefore. no matter how close ly forests might a ect stream flow
 it would only be accidental if the ac- tual relation should be indicated even by long period of observations.