Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
to develop more efficient irrigation systems. indeed,
people from all walks of life are striving to reduce the
amount of water they use.
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Multiple Use on Public Lands
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For many years, little attention was given to land man-
agement activities on federal lands administered by
the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Manage-
ment. However, by the late 1950s, concerns were being
expressed about excessive timber harvesting and live-
stock grazing. Responding to public sentiment in 1960,
congress passed the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act,
a law that emphasized the importance of recreation,
watershed, and fish and wildlife values on national
forest lands as well as that of timber, livestock forage,
and other commodities. A similar philosophy was even-
tually adopted by the Bureau of Land Management,
though congress did not formalize it until passage of
the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976.
Many are comfortable with the multiple use concept.
timber harvesting and the extraction of minerals and
fossil fuels are still possible, but public lands are now val-
ued for more than these resources alone. At times, some
stakeholders believed that the mandates of the Multiple
Use-Sustained Yield Act were being abandoned, such as
when the Wilderness Act of 1964 was passed. However,
as the 1960 law states, multiple use is “not necessarily
the combination of uses that will give the greatest dol-
lar return or the greatest unit output.” Multiple use does
not require resource extraction everywhere.
Much of the current debate over public land manage-
ment centers on the loss of wildlands, whether from oil
and gas development, mining, or timber harvesting, and
the roads associated with these activities (fig. 18.4). tim-
ber harvesting was the primary concern 20 years ago,
but now controversy over fossil fuel extraction is in the
news more often. oil and gas developments are promoted
because of their high economic value and the potential
for less dependency on other nations; timber harvest-
ing is promoted because it, too, contributes to the local
economies, and sometimes tree cutting can be used to
improve wildlife habitat (see chapters 11 and 12). How-
ever, others maintain that the remnants of wildlands
now cover a very small area and that the best use of such
areas is for wildlife habitat, dispersed recreation, and
solitude—amenities that attract many people to the area.
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1890
1910
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1950
1970
1990
2010
YEAR
Fig. 18.3. Water storage capacity in Wyoming reservoirs has
increased very little during the past 50 years. the last major
project was the High Savery Reservoir on the Little Snake
River, completed in 2004 and located northwest of Baggs.
though locally important, it added only 22,433 acre-feet of
storage capacity. one acre-foot is the volume of water required
to cover one acre of land with one foot of water. Based on data
from ostresh et al. (1990) and recent public records.
concerns have emphasized the potential impact of
toxic hydraulic fracturing fluids, used in a process
known as fracking to extract oil and gas that previ-
ously was inaccessible.
the demand for water has led to the consideration
of cloud seeding with silver iodide and other nucleat-
ing agents as a means of increasing precipitation. Some
observations suggested that seeding might increase rain
and snowfall by 15 percent or more, at least during some
years. if droughts caused by climate change become
more common, augmenting water supplies in any way
is attractive. to be effective, however, the seeding must
happen when moisture-laden clouds exist, which are
less common during drought. thus, at the time extra
water is most needed, the likelihood of producing more
rain or snowfall is low. A committee of scientists orga-
nized in 2003 by the national Research council, an arm
of the national Academy of Sciences, concluded there is
no convincing evidence that cloud seeding is effectiv e. 7
this committee also doubted that the cost-to-benefit
ratio would be low enough to justify such a herculean
effort to increase water supplies.
Desires for more water are easily rationalized, but
learning to live with the amount provided by natural
weather and hydrologic patterns is likely more sus-
tainable. in this spirit, agriculturalists are working
 
 
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