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Agriculture's Contributions to the Nation's Water Resources and Flood Control¹

ABSTRACT

The nation's water resources—in amount, in quality, and in the form of damaging floods—are shown to be intimately related to the practices of agriculture and forestry on the USA landscape. Pathways of waterflow in the land phase of the hydrologic cycle are discussed and some impacts of their modifications upon streamflow are given. The magnitude of annual flood damage is cited, and the potentials for reducing annual flood losses and creating other water resource values by project-type activities in upstream watersheds are indicated. Agriculture's contributions and potentials for the preservation of water quality are pointed out in discussions of its interface in the areas of sediment control, pesticides, plant nutrients, animal wastes, salinity, wastes from processing of food and other agricultural products, and land disposal of sewage effluents.

¹ Paper presented Dec. 28–29, 1970, in Chicago, Ill., at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Section "O" Agriculture Symposium on "Agriculture and the Quality of the Environment in the Seventies."

² Assistant Director for Watershed Engineering, Soil & Water Conservation Research Division, ARS, USDA, Beltsville, Md. 20705.