Historical Changes in Soil Erosion, 1930-1992: The Northern Mississippi Valley Loess Hills

By M. Scott Argabright, Roger G. Cronshey, J. Douglas Helms, George A. Pavelis, H. Raymond Sinclair, Jr.

In the 1930s, Soil Conservation Service, operated a soil conservation demonstration project on the Coon Creek watershed of southwest Wisconsin. On the Coon Creek Project, SCS staff worked with local farmers to plan conservation measures for their farmland such as strip cropping, contouring, fencing woodlands, controlling gullies, and preventing streambank erosion. The main objective of this study was to quantify how effective such efforts have been in reducing soil erosion over time by comparing changes in soil erosion in the "Driftless Area" of the Coon Creek watershed during the 1930s to conditions there in the 1990s. In doing so this study illustrates a methodology for determining long term changes in erosion conditions that can be applied to other regions.