A 50-year-old gully reclamation project revisited

Excerpt

Soil erosion problems have again caught the public's eye because of recent media attention. In some cases, the media have given the appearance that they “discovered a new problem.” This attention, however dramatic, is certainly welcomed because an informed public is a necessary ingredient in any political, economic, or environmental decision concerning soil erosion. On the other hand, these reports underscore an inherent problem with soil erosion: It is not necessarily dramatic on a day-to-day basis, but it is damaging in a long-term, cumulative sense.

While there still are many examples of rapid, devastating gully development and soil erosion by sheetwash and wind, the attention-capturing potential that the dust-storms of the 1930s possessed does not exist today. The well-timed arrival of a dust-storm in Washington, D.C., was all that Hugh Hammond Bennett needed to convince politicians of the need for soil conservation measures. Even though the erosion problem is not being neglected, the effectiveness of some measures is a point of debate.

Role of geomorphology

In the preface of their book Geomorphology and Reclamation of Disturbed Lands, Toy and Hadley state that the science of geomorphology concerns the …