Fluvial Response to Land-Use Change in The Southern Appalachian Region: A Century of Investigation

Abstract

Land-use change in the Southern Appalachian region has followed broader social and economic trends over the past century, from unregulated resource exploitation to economic development and conservation. In the early 20th century, land degradation resulting from exploitative land uses in the Southern Appalachian region provoked "corrective" conservation measures and contributed to the emergence of national and regional institutions, including national forest lands in the eastern United States and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Systematic studies of fluvial system responses to forest clearing and mining in this region began in the 1930s at the U.S. Forest Service facilities in North Carolina. Mid-century research consisted of watershed monitoring, principally in projects by the U.S. Forest Service and TVA, to compare the effects of different silvicultural and agricultural practices, while more recent studies involve a range of agencies and institutions and reflect public policies to restore water quality. As research paradigms have changed, the landscape has also changed, thus creating new opportunities to study fluvial responses in landscapes with increased forest cover and/or increased urbanization and to document the persistence of those responses.