ABSTRACT
In many parts of the United States cultivation of fertile bottomlands and gentle alluvial slopes is being menaced by erosional debris swept down in storm run-off from adjacent denuded mountains and steeply sloping uplands. This chapter describes one solution of this problem, and lays a partial basis for appraising its merits. It is based on a survey made by the Section of Sedimentation Studies, Division of Research, in June 1937. Treatment of a watershed of sloping upland solely to protect valley agricultural land to which it is tributary can often be justified from an economic standpoint. Debris basins alone frequently offer a successful method of protecting valley agricultural lands, and adaptions of this practice may prove useful in operation work, under some circumstances, as a relatively cheap and expedient method of protecting bottomlands until soil-conservation treatment of tributary watersheds can be completed.
