Hydrologic Values
Water and water supplies are among the worlds most threatened and precious natural resources. Forests play a key role in maintaining the quantity and quality of water supplied by watersheds throughout the South because such a large portion of the landscape is forested. Forest management operations directly affect many of the forest ecosystem components that in turn determine the amount and quality of water draining from forests, through such actions as the use of fertilizers and chemicals to control weeds, insects, and diseases, the number of trees per acre, harvesting equipment, and soil quality. Therefore, forest managers need to understand how forested watersheds function, and, in turn, how management operations have the potential to affect water that is critical habitat for fish and other wildlife, as well as important for supplying Southern rural and urban populations with drinking water.
Specific topics in this section include:
While the information presented in this section of the Encyclopedia of Southern Bioenergy is applicable across the Southern U.S., readers interested in finding out more about water resource management in the Southern Appalachain Mountain region of the Southeast should visit sections of the Encyclopedia of Southern Appalachian Forest Ecosystems. Relevant materials include Aquatic Resource Management and Aquatic Ecology. Readers interested in identifying how the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) classifies the water resources associated with their land should visit the page on USGS Hydrologic Units. For further reading, we direct readers to a comprehensive summary of forest and wildland watershed research published by the Society of American Foresters (Ice and Stednick 2004).
Encyclopedia ID: p1269
