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And a River Runs Through It
Landscape Conservation
on the Upper Iowa River Watershed
by Andrew Pablo Johnson
2
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science in Natural Resources
(Conservation Biology and Ecosystem Management)
at the
School of Natural ReSourceS,
University of Michigan
April 1993
Thesis Committee:
Professor Burton V. Barnes, Chairperson
Professor David Allan
Table of Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction
Aldo Leopold Revisited
Conservation and Science
The Upshot
Chapter 2: The Basement of Time
The Storm Before the Calm
Iowa Underwater
Thank GOOdness for the Fish
Chapter 3: Water the Artist
Iowa Under Ice
Resistant Rock
Valleys in Time
Chapter 4: A Window in Time
Firm Footing
After the Ice
AmericanS
What Did They See?
Chapter 5: A Legacy of Change
Watersheds, Streams, and People
DOWn the River
Peopled Landscape
Chapter 6: Making Room?
Protecting the River
Conserving Soil and Water
The Upshot
Chapter 7: Summary
Literature Cited
ii
iii
14
29
41
66
82
108
1 11
Figure 1.1.
Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.2.
Figure 2.3.
Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.2.
Table 2.1.
Table 3.1.
Table 4.1.
Table 4.2.
List of Figures
The Upper Iowa River watershed, Iowa and Minnesota
Surficial bedrock geology of Iowa
Generalized Stratigraphic column of northeastern Iowa's
Paleozoic rock sequence
Continental drift and world geography since the Paleozoic
Limits of major glacial advances in the Upper Midwest
Landform regions of Iowa
List of Tables
The geologic calendar, and major biological and geological events
Glacial and interglacial stages of the Quaternary
Generalized archaelogical Sequence in Iowa
Public lands survey witness tree data for Allamakee County
11
21
22
27
31
34
16
32
48
60
ii
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Burton V. Barnes for support and
guidance during my two Michigan years, for the opportunity to participate both
as student and teacher in the tradition of Woody Plants, and for tolerating my
untraditional thesis attempt; good luck in your many years of teaching still to
come! I extend similar thanks to Dr. David Allan on this point of tolerance,
and for his honest opinions and encouragement. I was assisted financially as
an Edna Baily Sussman Fund intern, thanks to sponsorship by Lyle Otte and
the Palisades Chapter of the Izaak Walton League. And finally, my gratitude
extends to all those who donated their time, information, and ideas to me
during the summer of '92, which appear both visibly and invisibly throughout
this paper.
iii
Dedicated to my parents,
whose choices gave me a place I still call home
Tventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The
river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the
basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. (Inder the
rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
9Norman Maclean
Chapter 1: Introduction
That there is some basic fallacy in present-day conservation is shown by our response to
it. Instead of living it, we turn it over to bureaus. Even the landowner, who has the best
opportunity to practice it, thinks of it as something for the government to worry about.
I think I know what the fallacy is. It is the assumption, clearly borrowed from modern
Science, that the human relation to land is only economic. It is, or should be, aesthetic as well. In
this respect our present culture, and especially our science, is false, ignoble, and self-destructive.
If the individual has a warm personal understanding of land, he will perceive of his own
accord that it is something more than a breadbasket. He will see land as a community of which he
is only a member, albeit now the dominant one. He will see the beauty, as well as the utility, of
the whole, and know the two cannot be separated. We love (and make intelligent use of) what we
have learned to understand.
Hence this course. I am trying to teach you that this alphabet of "natural objects" (soils
and rivers, birds and beasts) spells out a story, which he who runs may read - if he knows how.
Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And I know
many pleasant things it will do to you.
Aldo Leopold, describing course objectives to his Wildlife Ecology students
University of Wisconsin, Spring 1947
This introduction is meant to explain why I did what I did in this project. 'Aldo
Leopold Revisited’ reviews some of Leopold's ideas on people, conservation and land-
relations, and provides a philosophical framework. "Conservation and Science’ discusses
where we have been going since Leopold. The Upshot' outlines this study.
Aldo Leopold Revisited
Those who study human evolution often claim that our greatest evolutionary Step was
bipedality, adopted by our hominid ancestors some seven million years ago, two to three
million years before the dramatic brain expansion which led to our genus, Homo.
Evolutionarily, this may be so. But ecologically, it is our tools, directed by Our intelligence,
which facilitated the transition from our responsorial role as hunter-gatherers to our creative
and exploitive role as 'civilized’ peoples; first agriculturalists, recently industrialists. And it is
in this role that we have come to dominate and transform the ecoSphere.
Lynn White, in his classic paper The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis (1967),
recognized that this exploitive role has climaxed within the last couple of centuries with the
marriage of science and technology, and under the worldview of western Christianity.
"Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia's religions ... not only
established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God's will that man exploit
nature for his proper ends." Once science and technology were merged, the capacity for said
exploitation became immense and could be checked, not by more science and technology, but
only by a rethinking of our ideas on the man-nature relationship, a change in the "Christian
attitudes toward man’s relation to nature".
Unfortunately, to Aldo Leopold and many others, this exploitive capacity blossomed at
just that time in history when a new world was being discovered and Subdued, and nowhere
did the machine age experience such fertile ground as in the burgeoning United States of
America. Combine this machine age with the rugged individualism of the young political
democracy, and the result was a lethal weapon wielded against the wilderness, the iron-heel
mentality which Leopold so lamented. To Leopold, like White, it was not the machine-tools
that were the great problem, it was the mentality behind their creation, the attitude which
directed their use: "our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster that we do. They
Suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides. But they do not suffice for the oldest task in
human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it." (1939a)
No, Leopold was not one to reject tools outright; his philosophy was actually a product
of his life-long use of tools - as a hunter, a forester, a farmer, and a writer/professor. To the
dismay of many a conservationist, he was a hunter throughout his life, many of his most
enjoyable and observant times were spent hunting, and references to it pepper his well-known
Sand County Almanac (1949): "Along the little boggy streams of these friendly wastes [the
Sand counties of central Wisconsin), called poor by those whose own lights barely flicker, the
blackberries burn richly red on every sunny day from the first frost to the last day of the
season. Every woodcock and every partridge has his private Solarium under these briars.
Most hunters, not knowing this, wear themselves out in the briarless Scrub, and, returning
home birdless, leave the rest of us in peace." The lanterns glow in the Almanac's October, yet
perhaps his most eloquent and insightful passage on tool use comes in November.
Axe-in-Hand
The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, but he is no longer the only one to do so.
When some remote ancestor or ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: he could plant a tree.
And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: he could chop it down. Whoever owns land
has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying
plants.
Other ancestors, less remote, have since invented other tools, but each of these, upon
close scrutiny, proves to be either an elaboration of, or an accessory to, the original pair of basic
implements. We classify ourselves into vocations, each of which either wields some particular
tool, or sells it, or repairs it, or sharpens it, or dispenses advice on how to do so; by such division
of labors we avoid responsibility for the misuse of any tool save our own. But there is one
vocation-philosophy-which knows that all men, by what they think about and wish for, in effect
wield all tools. It knows that men thus determine, by their manner of thinking and wishing,
whether it is worth while to wield any. ...
I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself,
but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a
man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is
humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land. Signatures
of course differ, whether written with axe or pen, and this is as it should be.
What we think. What do we think about while deciding what to cut down, dig up,
plow, create, change, or while cutting, digging, plowing, creating, changing? Who (on earth)
do we think we are? Where (on earth) do we think we come from? and What (on earth) do
we think we are doing?
We act through our tools, but from our hearts and minds. To live on a piece of land
without spoiling it will take more than a simple change in tools, it will take a change in what
goes through our hearts and minds while wielding tools, or deciding whether it is worthwhile
to wield any. To change what goes through our hearts and minds in land-relations requires
"an internal change in our intellectual emphases, loyalties, affections and convictions"
(Leopold 1949), a change in our ideas about what land is for. And "to change ideas about
what land is for is to change ideas about what everything is for." (Leopold 1939b)
How to change ideas about what everything is for, to move from the man-nature
duality and iron-heel/iron-mind mentality to something less violent, is what Leopold wrestled
with for the last fifteen years of his life. He was talking about fundamental cultural and
societal values, or ethics, and realized that change would be measured at best in generations
rather than years. But that fundamental change must come, if we were ever to approach the
ultimate goal of conservation, a state of "harmony between men and land" (1939a).
The heart and soul of his answer to 'how to change ideas about what everything is
for?’ reflects the life-long evolution of his answer to 'who on earth are we?', the community
concept (1949):
All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a
community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that
community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a
place to compete for).
The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters,
plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. ...
In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-
community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also
respect for the community as such.
In the past, our community has been only a people community, separate and apart from the
land. But if we envision ourselves as part of the land, our perspective may change. What
goes through our hearts and minds as to what is worthless and what is worthwhile may
change, and what we wield and how we wield it may also change.
To Leopold, the seeds to this new perspective are to be found in "the perception of the
natural processes by which the land and the living things upon it have achieved their
characteristic forms (evolution) and by which they maintain their existence (ecology)." (1949)
These young sister Sciences were beginning to challenge the Judeo-Christian dogma that 'the
world, we were told, was made for man’, and assert a new view of where we come from and
who we are. Ecology, especially, was providing exciting insights on the workings of this
'community of interdependent parts’. If "engineering is clearly the dominant idea of the
industrial age", the expression of the iron-heel mentality, then "ecology is perhaps one of the
contenders for a new order. ... The real difference lies in the ecologist’s conviction that to -
govern the animate world it must be led rather than coerced. To me this is engineering
wisdom; the reason the engineer does not display it is unawareness of the animate world."
(1938)
Awareness and perception take an open heart and an open mind; neither one alone will
suffice. To Leopold, "the incredible intricacies of the plant and animal community - the
intrinsic beauty of the organism called America," (1949) were one and the same. The
understanding is intellectual, through Scientific observation and experimentation, but the
aesthetic appreciation is emotive, an enthusiastic wonderment of and appreciation for it all.
Both are necessary for the enlargement of the community boundaries. Without this
understanding we will not realize we are a part of the whole, but without the aesthetic
appreciation we will not care for the whole. We care not simply for what we know, but for
what we feel familiar with and close to. This is why Leopold felt responsible as a teacher not
simply to disseminate knowledge, but to instill a 'warm, personal understanding of the land'.
Can a warm, personal understanding achieve harmony between men and land? We
have yet to find out, because such an understanding remains, unfortunately, the exception
rather than the rule. The process of nurturing it, however, ought to finally raise the question
'what on earth are we doing here?", and signs that this is happening Suggest we may be
moving in the right direction. The answer to this question, to Leopold, was not a call for the
rejection of modern tools, but rather for the rejection of the iron-heel mentality which has
governed their use. This mentality will be replaced by one of love, admiration and respect for
the land community: 'a conservationist is one who is humbly aware ...".
4
To replace arrogance with humility in land-relations will be the sign that we have
finally replaced the objectives of control, domination, and manipulation of the other with
cooperation with, harmony, and health of the whole, and our tool use has changed accordingly.
For, as Leopold concluded Sand County, "By and large our problem is one of attitudes and
implements. We are remodeling the Alhambra with a steamshovel, and we are proud of our
yardage. We shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which after all has many good points, but we
are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its successful use."
Conservation and Science
In the 45 years since Leopold's death fighting a brush fire on a neighbor’s farm, it is
Worth asking 'just how much progress have we made in changing ideas about what land, and
everything, is for?' Though to say we have failed is silliness, I do not believe we have
nurtured as well as we could have, nor are we currently nurturing, the process of changing the *
human relation to the land from One which is purely economic to one which is aesthetic as
well. In my view, this is because Scientists, conservationists, and policymakers have to a
certain degree disregarded their role as educators in the promotion of "a warm personal
understanding of the land" in the individual in favor of the less personal and more regulatory
type of approach.
Stephen Fox (1981) describes the evolution of conservation into the environmental
movement in the 1960s as a widespread recognition of people, rather than wildlife, forests, and
Such as the endangered entity. This awakening was provided by two major books; Rachel
Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962, and Paul Erlich's The Population Bomb, published
in 1968. These books and the heated debate surrounding them and similar works brought the
issues of pollution, population and resource use to the forefront of the public concern, where
they replaced such issues as wildlife and open spaces. Though some worried about the impact
the former would have on the latter, the major emphasis was upon future human quality of
life. Thus the ultimate well-being of people, not necessarily in a very enlightened sense,
became the central principle of modern environmentalism.
Unfortunately, this situation did not lend itself to a major challenging of the duality
and engineering mentality itself, but rather the trend towards large environmental organizations
using the public concerns to change the use of the tools through law. Through government
action they attempted to 'protect’ or 'defend’ various aspects of the 'environment' from the
negatives associated with human society for the ultimate benefit of people. Once laws were in
place, 'Sue the bastards' became the slogan, whether the bastards were government agencies,
corporations, or other entities. This approach only encouraged the attitude that, beyond
monetary support for the environmental organizations, conservation was still something for
these groups and for government to worry about.
This was, and still is, an irony. That, in the eyes of many, the greatest contribution
consumer-citizens can make to conservation is monetary, exhibits the power of economics as
the reigning dictatorial idea of our times; it is a stark affirmation (as if one was needed) of
Leopold's claim that the present human relation to the land is dominantly economic. In the
economic Society of the United States everything has steadily increased in scale, and the
environmentalists were no exception, becoming powerful lobbies within the power structure of
Washington. And the evidence they used in their policy and judicial struggles, science, is in
many respects no less economic.
Quantification is central to the scientific method; hypotheses lead to experiments
designed to allow collection of data, which can be analyzed to test the hypothesis. The
generation and statistical analysis of numbers is fundamental to the assumption of objectivity,
which is at once the justification for and backbone of the process. Though a Scientist himself,
Leopold (1949) lamented the exclusion of esthetics imposed by a strictly objective Scientific
approach to the natural world:
[The] song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills,
by no means audible to all. To hear even a few notes of it you must first live here for a long
time, and you must know the speech of hills and rivers. Then on a still night, when the campfire
is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen for a wolf to howl, and
think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it - a vast
pulsing harmony - its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants
and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.
There are men charged with the duty of examining the construction of the plants,
animals, and soils which are the instruments of the great orchestra. These men are called
professors. Each selects on instrument and spends his life taking it apart and describing its strings
and sounding boards. This process of dismemberment is called research. The place for
dismemberment is called a university.
- A professor may pluck the strings of his own instrument, but never that of another, and
if he listens for music he must never admit it to his fellows or to his students. For all are
restrained by an ironbound taboo which decrees that the construction of instruments is the domain
of science, while the detections of harmony is the domain of poets.
Professors serve science and science serves progress. It serves progress so well that
many of the more intricate instruments are stepped upon and broken in the rush to spread progress
to all backward lands. One by one the parts are thus stricken from the song of songs. If the
professor is able to classify each instrument before it is broken, he is well content.
Science contributes moral as well as material blessings to the world. Its great moral
contribution is objectivity, or the scientific point of view. This means doubting everything except
facts; it means hewing to the facts, let the chips fall where they may. One of the facts hewn to by
science is that every river needs more people, and all people need more inventions, and hence
more science; the good life depends on the indefinite extension of this chain of logic. That the
good life on any river may likewise depend on the perception of its music, and the preservation of
some music to perceive, is a form of doubt not yet entertained by science.
Leopold's quarrel was not with the Scientific method itself, but with the reductionism
and worship of objectivity which together exclude the perception of music among scientists.
In reductionism, or Leopold's dismemberment, in order to understand something it must be
broken down into its component parts; once the parts are identified it is assumed the whole
will fall into place. This assumption, however, ignores the fact that the whole may in actuality
be more than the sum of its parts. And the further an object is broken down into parts, the
more specialized must the researcher become in subject matter, thus science follows the trend
in Society as a whole. Through specialization and reduction the scientist loses the perspective
necessary for the perception of music in the whole.
This perception is further clouded by the perpetual pursuit of pure objectivity. An
honest attempt at objectivity is integral to the scientific process, but science exists within a
cultural context. In Science relevant to the human-land relationship, once the data are in and
the conclusions drawn from the numbers, the next Step is asking what these conclusions mean
to the relationship itself, and this is not an objective process. Numbers and the knowledge
they generate may be more or less objective, but searching for their meaning in the human-
land relationship is a subjective process. For numbers do not translate easily into values, nor
knowledge into 'attitudes, loyalties, and affections’; they may trigger pangs of uneasiness in
the conscience, but without the extension of questioning from the objective to the subjective
realm with participation of the scientific community, the potential for Such translation too often
goes unrealized.
To the degree that this happens, science has an attitude problem. It is a problem of
arrogance grounded in the belief that knowledge alone is enough to Solve the problems we
face, including those of the human relation to the land. By attempting to operate exclusively
within the objective realm, modern science continues to reenforce the duality and apartness,
the gulf between people and the natural world, and so the engineering mentality which this
gulf promotes. When modern environmentalism uses Scientific fact as the foundation of its
efforts to 'protect the environment’, it is a de facto acceptance of this status quo mentality.
The cornerstone of the modern environmentalist approach, the concept of
sustainability, illustrates this point. Sustainability is fundamentally a Scientific construct based
7
On quantifiable properties of the object to be sustained. Thus we have maximum sustainable
yield, Sustainable soils, Sustainable resource use in general. People and resources, whether
Separate and unequal or (through modern environmentalism) equal, remain separate.
Sustainability in the Strict Sense is simply a mandate for proper and restrained use, a
reincarnation of Gifford Pinchot’s wise use conservation philosophy. Sustainability alone
Cannot rebut the arrogant notion that 'the world we were told was made for man’, and it is
perfectly compatible with the reigning paradigm of economics.
Sustainability has been used in a less restrictive sense, in reference to systems such as
Sustainable agriculture or Sustainable ecosystems rather than Specific resources. And though
Such uses may be valuable and valid by questioning what it means to sustain such systems,
and thus challenging the reigning assumptions of apartness of the engineering mentality, they
remain vulnerable to reduction by those threatened by such a challenge, and subject to
confusion over definition and purpose. The danger in such confusion comes from an inability
of Science to quantify such systems. It is ironic that, though science has given us an
understanding ranging from the tiniest subatomic particle to the 'tossing and turnings of the
remotest star', it has yet to demonstrate an ability to accurately predict the weather, and
certainly cannot fully quantify the ecosystems that are our home spaces.
Yet it is these very systems in which we live and which environmentalists are
concerned with 'saving’. It is no accident that the study of these systems which is so daunting
a task to scientists, ecology, provided Leopold with the potential Seed for a shift away from
the engineering mentality. For ecology and evolution illuminate the interactions among biotic
and abiotic members of Leopold's land community, and though students of these disciplines
may attempt understanding through reduction, they are continually forced to back up and see
the whole, and reminded of the irreducibility and indivisibility of the whole as greater than the
sum of its parts. And in learning who we are and where we come from, they are reminded
that we are a member of this 'community of interdependent parts' also, and of the limitations
of objectivity and the falsity of apartness.
But the ultimate rebuttal to the apartness and engineering mentality that ecology
provides is not knowledge itself but rather knowledge of our ignorance! AS exciting and
stimulating as it is to learn about the 'incredible intricacies' of the ecosystems we inhabit,
equally amazing is the realization of what we do not know compared to what we do. This
realization and the capacity for amazement, wonder, and appreciation of the whole is necessary
for the replacement of arrogance with humility in science. It is the aesthetic component in
land-relations which Leopold lamented as absent, especially with respect to Science.
When environmentalists rely on science to provide data, or knowledge, for
environmental policy or in judicial disputes, the burden of proof ultimately relies solely on the
objective scientific method, and what is right becomes a question of numbers, of economics.
But if Scientists allow themselves to wonder, and esthetics become important criteria in the
Subjective translation of knowledge into human meaning, then the tables may be turned.
Science and conservation may together take on the primary task of encouraging a "warm and
personal understanding of the land" and "[living] on a piece of land without spoiling it".
Stewardship (incorporating Sustainability as a means rather than an end) may replace
economics as the reigning paradigm in Society, as the sciences may all be understood within
the context of ecology and evolution. And we may yet heed Aldo Leopold's (1949)
admonition to "quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine
each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is
economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and
beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
The Upshot
Stewardship, as the expression of love and understanding of the land community, a
means of deciding what is right or wrong, is a predominantly a local endeavor. This is
because one can neither truly understand, nor acquire the affection necessary for love, except
on a relatively small scale. Wendell Berry (1991) recognizes this paradox of large-scale
conservation efforts inherent in the environmentalist’s motto "think globally, act locally":
Global thinking can only be statistical. Its shallowness is exposed by the least intention
to do something. Unless one is willing to be destructive on a very large scale, one cannot do
something except locally, in a small place. Global thinking can only do to the globe what a space
satellite does to it; reduce it, make a bauble of it. Look at one of those photographs of half the
earth taken from outer space, and see if you recognize your neighborhood. If you want to see
where you are, you will have to get out of your space vehicle, out of your car, off your horse, and
walk over the ground. On foot you will find that the earth is still satisfyingly large, and full of
beguiling nooks and crannies. ...
If we could think locally, we would do far better than we are doing now. The right
local questions and answers will be the right global ones. The Amish question "What will this do
to our community?" tends toward the right answer for the world. ...
If we want to keep our thoughts and acts from destroying the globe, then we must see to
it that we do not ask too much of the globe or of any part of it. To make sure that we do not ask
too much, we must learn to live at home, as independently and self-sufficiently as we can. That is
the only way we can keep the land we are using, and its ecological limits, always in sight. .
In order to make ecological good sense for the planet, you must make ecological good
sense locally. You can't act locally by thinking globally. If you want to keep your local acts
from destroying the globe, you must think locally.
No one can make ecological good sense for the planet. Everyone can make ecological
good sense locally, if the affection, the scale, the knowledge, the tools, and the skills are right.
Hence this project; an attempt to think locally. I concur with Berry and Leopold that
the most fruitful attempts to live well on land will come from focusing on place, attempting to
understand both the natural and human economies of that place, and striving for an integration -
of the two. Obviously this is not a new idea, but neither is it one upon which the domains of
Science, education, or conservation have concentrated their energies. Realizing the limitations
of one summer's worth of independent work on accomplishing anything meaningful or
effecting change, I decided to attempt such an integrated understanding of my home place, the
Upper Iowa River Watershed (Figure 1.1).
The watershed lies predominantly in the paleozoic plateau region of extreme
northeastern Iowa, the Iowa portion of the 'driftless area', though this term is inappropriate as
the region is not truly driftless. Sitting atop the historic prairie-forest tension zone, the
headwaters of the river lie in rolling prairie country but the eastern two-thirds run through
heavily dissected lands with forested slopes and ravines, including relicts from the boreal
northcountry. The region is dominated by agricultural pursuits, from dairy to livestock to crop
farming. Conservation problems and efforts have been divided into two main areas, river
protection through state and federal scenic rivers programs, and soil and water conservation
through agencies such as the Soil Conservation Service. Local landowner opposition to many
of these efforts has often been strong and vocal. •.
Attempting such an integrative understanding naturally Suggested an approach with two
large and inseparable objectives. First, I wanted to put us, the ones trying to learn how to live
in the landscape without spoiling it, in a context of time and place, to put our actions in
perspective. In this sense, the whole paper is a history, though it is certainly not to Scale. The
perspective, from an ecologist's point of view, is the natural history, which makes up roughly
the first half of this paper. Chapter 2 describes the formation of our rocky basement, Chapter
3 the physical evolution of the landscape forms, and Chapter 4 its biological evolution,
especially in terms of pre-European settlement plant ecology.
Second, I wanted to describe some of the problems our (European-Americans)
presence has caused, and those conscious efforts taken to address them. How have We been
using the land, how has this use changed the structure and function of the Systems that were
here before us, and how is this reflected in the streams that run through it? Who has been
10
Cºl. 3 I ſº ºn
Figure 1.1.
The Upper Iowa River watershed, Iowa and Minnesota
of Interior, 1973).
UPPER OWA RIVER BASIN
JOWA AND MINNESOTA
(after United States Department


=
actively promoting change in the status quo of land use by saying we can do better, how have
they been doing this, and how effective have they been? The first of these questions is
addressed in Chapter 5, and the second in Chapter 6 along with some of my own ideas of how
we could do better. Scientific nomenclature of plants follows that of Gleason and Cronquist
(1991).
The methods used to address these objectives were twofold; literature review, and
communication with both land users and those promoting change in land use, which were not
always mutually exclusive categories. Most information for the natural history chapters came
from many many hours in libraries, from Michigan to Indiana to Iowa, and readers are
encouraged to use the literature cited to find more specific information not provided here. I
also gathered much relevant literature directly from individuals in various fields, especially for
the latter two chapters, which was invaluable in understanding some of these present-day
issues.
Discussions with the individuals themselves, of course, was equally as valuable. I was
fortunate enough to be able to meet with Luther College biologists, local and state soil and
water conservation personnel, local and state natural resources personnel (including ecologists,
open spaces, fisheries, and water quality specialists), and various other individuals too many
and varied to name, as well as, last but definitely not least, farmers. All these people were
generous in sharing both their knowledge and their opinions relative to their area of expertise,
and often other areas as well. As the summer progressed, I was also able to contact Some of
these people a second time to follow up with questions raised in the interval from other
material Or Sources.
And finally, during the last month of work I held a series of Small group meetings,
both as a token educational effort on my part and to get some feedback on my interpretation
of conservation efforts to date. The groups I addressed ranged from a County Conservation
Board to a Soil and Water Conservation District Commissioners meeting to a Farm Bureau
meeting to a group of local farmers, and others. At each meeting I gave a short (ten-minute)
presentation outlining how I felt the major conservation efforts in the watershed fell into the
two main areas of soil and water conservation and river/open Spaces protection, What I
understood the major thrusts of the efforts to have been, and some ideas to think about for the
future. I then gave out a short survey dealing with the role of individual and government
responsibility in land use, water quality, and natural areas protection. The original Survey was
planned to be a much more ambitious effort, but discussions with rural Sociologists at Iowa
State University determined that I would be unable to obtain statistically meaningful results
12
due to time and budget constraints, so it was used largely as a means of obtaining feedback
after the presentations.
In discussing the significance of Such a study in the original proposal, I stated:
Too often the worlds of science, policy and others remain, unfortunately, worlds apart.
Farmers, for example, look upon scientists as out of touch with the constraints and realities of
modern agriculture, don't understand, or mistrust science itself, and resent the holier-than-thou
attitude often associated with academia. And scientists, under time, monetary, and other
constraints, often communicate among themselves but spend little time or effort in effective
information transfer. They also often are out of touch with cultures and economies they want to
change, and fail to work toward solutions which accept these cultures and economies and their
people as integral components of the landscape. I hope to bridge this gap, to incorporate a
scientific understanding of the agroecosystems with the realities of farming and the attitudes and
perceptions of local residents."
Add "and the experiences of professionals involved with the human-land relationship"
to this last sentence and that is what I attempted to do. Success cannot be determined by the
significance of statistical results; the best I can hope for is to be a part of the process of
changing ideas about what land is for. But it may be of value to local individuals ranging
from educators to those involved with conservation professionally to those simply wishing to
know more about the place in which they live. I can say that the experience has been
invaluable to me, and I really wonder what would happen if most Scientists, policymakers,
educators or professional conservationists could undertake such an endeavor for a few months
in the place in which they live and work; the result could be similar to joining the Peace
Corps, where real benefit comes not in the service but in the effect the experience has on the
individual’s life and work. I strongly believe that a primary objective of all those groups
ought to be the fostering of a conservation aesthetic and ethic among the general public, for
only through holistic landscape conservation with the full support and participation of the
public will we achieve harmony in people's relationship to the land.
13
Chapter 2: The Basement of Time and Space
When I was a boy, there was an old German merchant who lived in a little cottage in
our town. On Sundays he used to go out and knock chips off the limestone ledges along the
Mississippi, and he had a great tonnage of these chips all labeled and catalogued. The chips
contained little fossil stems of some defunct water creatures called crinoids. The townspeople
regarded this gentle old fellow as just a little bit abnormal, but harmless. One day the newspaper
reported the arrival of certain titled strangers. It was whispered that these visitors were great
scientists. Some of them were from foreign lands, and some among the world's leading
paleontologists. They came to visit the harmless old man and to hear his pronouncements on
crinoids, and they accepted these pronouncements as law. When the old German died, the town
awoke to the fact that he was world authority of his subject, a creator of knowledge, a maker of
scientific history. He was a great man - a man beside whom the local captains of industry were
mere bushwackers. His collection went to a national museum, and his name is known in all the
nations of the earth.
Aldo Leopold, describing the work of noted paleontologist Charles Wachsmuth in Burlington, Iowa. The fossil
crinoids he studied were deposited during one of the many advances of warm shallow seas over Iowa long, long ago,
and which gave us the bedrock layers we see outcropping so spectacularly in the northeastern part of the state, our
Little Switzerland.
This chapter begins with the formation of the earth and brings us up to the present ice
age, covering over 99.9% of the history of the planet and what came before the Upper Iowa
watershed. "The Storm Before the Calm' describes the formation of the earth, the earliest
evolution of life, and the appearance of continental landmasses. 'Iowa Underwater' describes
the period of warm shallow seas over Iowa during the Paleozoic, and how they gave us our
bedrock foundation. And 'Thank Goodness for the Fish' briefly describes Some major
biological and geological events since the last of the seas recorded in northeastern Iowa
retreated.
The Storm Before the Calm
Our lifetimes are marked by events such as births and deaths, graduations and
weddings, and recorded in days, months, years. The lifetime of our Species, Home Sapiens, is
marked by migrations, the evolution of agriculture, and the rise and fall of nation-states. It is
recorded in centuries and millennia. But the lifetime of the earth, gauged by events Such as
continents and seas playing hide and seek, mountain building, and the eternal weathering
process, can be as difficult to comprehend as the size of the oceans and the distance to the
14
moon, let alone the pageant of evolution. But we can try.
The geologic and evolutionary timetable developed by scientists divides the earth's
history into four major eras, the Precambrian era ('origin of life'), the Paleozoic era ('ancient
life'), the Mesozoic era ('middle life') and the Cenozoic era ('recent life”). These eras are
broken down into periods, which are then broken down into epochs, all in a hierarchical
manner. Table 2. 1 attempts to Synthesize much of the history of the earth and of life on earth,
and I will refer to it often in the coming pages. One method of putting this history in
perspective is to relate it to a yearly calendar, which I will do here and there in the text.
On the scale of a year, January through November 15 would be represented by
Precambrian time, and it all began with the formation of the earth over 4.5 billion years ago
(bya). The theory goes as follows (Redfern 1983, Raven and Johnson 1986). Sometime
around 20 bya was the big bang explosion, and all matter in the universe was thrown violently
out from a central location. Evidence for this theory includes the fact than all known planets
and galaxies appear to be moving away from each other at a calculable rate, but this motion is
modified by their influence on each other. This influence is called gravity; Newton
demonstrated that all matter in the universe exerts a pull, or mutual attraction, on all other
matter. The strength of this attraction depends on the mass of the objects and the distance
between them; the sun and the earth are attracted to each other, but the sun has a much larger
mass, and So the earth orbits the Sun instead of the other way around, and likewise with the
earth and the moon.
As matter was hurtling away from the big bang epicenter, it gradually began to
coalesce into large clouds of gas and dust. These clouds eventually condensed into stars, with
Such large masses (creating enormous internal pressure, and So heat) that fusion of atoms
occurs and the star emits energy, observably light. Miniscule clouds of this gas and dust
which don't get pulled into the star coalesce into separate planetary bodies, which remain
under the star's gravitational pull and so in orbit. Our Solar system is a classic example of
Such a combination of a star and orbiting planetary bodies.
Our earth formed from such a minicloud beginning about 4.6 bya. As the matter came
together, the collisions produced sufficient heat energy for the matter to exist in a liquid State.
As time went by, the heavier elements (such as iron and nickel) aggregated at the core, while
lighter (such as silicon and aluminum) elements floated towards the Outer portion (King 1977).
As this outer layer cooled a crust was slowly formed; elements combined into minerals which
Combined into rocks. The lighter elements formed such minerals as quartz and feldspar, which
formed granitic rocks, and huge masses of such rocks eventually formed the continents. The
15
Table 2.1.
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3
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i
Biological
1848, neutral ground opened
12-30 tya first people in North America
5-10 mya hominids evolved
age of mammals, to present
angiosperms dominate the earth, to present
age of dinosaurs
mammals first appear
first conifers
first reptiles and insects
forest dominate the land,
large organic deposits
amphibians colonize land
age of the fishes
first multicellular terreStrial life
plants and arthropods invade land
corals evolve, reefs dramatically change the
Structure of marine environmentS
first fossil plants
explosion of multicellular life forms,
all animal phyla evolved by 500 mya
evolution of external SkeletonS
evolution of multicellularity
diverse protists
first eukaryotic fossils
origin of aerobic photosynthesis
oxygen stabilized in atmosphere
First evidence of life
fossil prokaroytes
The geologic calendar, and major biological and geological events
Geological
Major valley downcutting in the
Paleozoic Plateau, 160- tya
NE Iowa ice-free from at least
500 tya to present
Quaternary - present ice age
mountain building in western US
Pangea SplitS into Laurasia/Gondwanaland,
continental drift begins
Interior of Craton warped and uplifted,
giving present dip of Strata and
setting stage for erosion
Continents coalescing into Pangea
Craton is a lowlying equatorial landmass;
Sandy, muddy and limy SeaS wash
back and forth, with at least six
Stages of depostion in NE Iowa
light crustal blocks coalescing
to form protocontinents
formation Of the earthS oldest rocks
16
rest of the crust was formed of denser basaltic rocks, which consist of the elements silicon,
iron, and magnesium. Obviously, the separation of lighter, less dense elements from the
heavier and denser ones was not clean or perfect, but it did result in areas of the earth's crust
being significantly lighter, and so floating higher upon the semi-molten mantle below, as
plateaus above the Surrounding, denser crust.
The earth beneath the relatively thin crust (30+ km thick at continents, 5+ km thick at
oceans (King 1977)) remained molten or semi-molten, at first due to the energy produced from
the collision of all the gas and dust, later due largely to radioactive decay. We understand
now that ever since the formation of the crust, it has been almost floating on top of the semi-
molten mantle, and that it is broken up into plates which consist of combinations of ocean of
continental crust. These plates float around somewhat independently, dragged around by
convection currents in the mantle just as leaves would be moved around when floating on the
top of a large kettle of soup or pan of boiling maple sap, as hot cells cause liquid to rise and
then move laterally on top. The soup or sap metaphor is not quite accurate, however, as the
earth's mantle is not actually liquid, but rocks in a sort of sillyputty, plastic-like State. As Seen
in Table 2.1, there was a time in relatively recent earth history when the continents all came
together to form a supercontinent called Pangea, then Split up into the our present day
continents and drifted apart.
As this cooling took place, gases such as ammonium, methane, carbon dioxide, and
water vapor were evaporated into the atmosphere, cooled, rained down to earth, and were
evaporated again by the high surface temperatures, thus helping to cool the crust. Eventually
the crust was cool enough for them to remain on the Surface in a liquid State, where they
congregated in the low-lying areas and formed the earth's first seas. It was in these early Seas
that life first evolved on earth. How life evolved is beyond the Scope of this piece, but a Short
description of early life is possible.
All life on earth as we know it has four major properties in common; cellular
organization, growth and maintenance, reproduction, and heredity (Raven and Johnson 1986).
To achieve these properties takes energy, and all energy for life ultimately comes from the
sun. In order for this energy to be available for cellular processes, it must be in a usable form,
which on earth means in carbon chains. The carbon comes from carbon dioxide gas in the
oceans and the atmosphere, and carbon atoms are combined with each other and hydrogen
atoms into higher-energy molecules using energy from the sun. When the energy is needed,
these carbon-hydrogen (or organic, meaning carbon-based) molecules are then broken down,
the energy from their bonds is available for cellular functions, and the carbon is released in the
17
form of carbon dioxide once again.
Life is divided into two major categories, the prokaryotes ('before nucleus’) and the
eukaryotes ('good nucleus'). The nucleus is that part of the cell where the genetic material is
enclosed within an internal membrane. There are many other differences between prokaryotes
and eukaryotes besides the presence of a nucleus, and for two billion years, from 3.5 bya to
about 1.4 bya, the only life on earth was the prokaryotes, commonly known as bacteria (Raven
and Johnson 1986). But in the middle of this period, something happened. Whereas for a
billion years these bacteria had obtained the hydrogen needed for the creation of the organic
energy molecules from hydrogen sulfide (H2S), sometime before 2.5 bya some bacteria
evolved the capacity to break water molecules (H,0) for their hydrogen supply. The byproduct
of splitting water is oxygen, and it is believed that massive beds of these new types of bacteria
created, over the millennia, the oxygen-rich atmosphere which was stabilized by about 2.5 bya
and allowed the advent of aerobic (oxygen using) photosynthesis and respiration upon which
most present-day life forms are dependent, including us.
Yet for a billion years after this bacteria were still the only life forms on earth (Raven
and Johnson 1986). Not until between 1.3 and 1.5 bya did eukaryotes evolve, which
demonstrate packaging of the genetic material (DNA) into chromosomes and an intracellular
compartmentalization, and which allowed for more complex methods of metabolism and
reproduction and the subsequent evolution of more complex life forms. Today's Scientists
recognize 5 kingdoms of life: the prokaryotes, or bacteria were the first, then came the
eukaryotic protists, single and multicellular organisms which gave rise to the other three
eukaryotic kingdoms, the fungi, the plants, and the animals. The protists were greatly
diversified by 1 bya, and are still represented today by the many kinds of algae, and the
phytoplankton and zooplankton so important in aquatic food chains. By Sometime between
700 mya and 630 mya, multicellular life forms had evolved, allowing for specialization of
parts, in the first animals. All life during this period was still marine.
Finally, we have come to a time in the earth's history which we can See right here in
northeastern Iowa, the Paleozoic era (Table 2.1). By the Paleozoic, the protocontinents had
come into being, life had diversified beyond bacteria, the atmosphere and Oceans had taken on
characteristics similar to those of today, and erosion was proceeding apace upon all Surfaces
above the worldwide water level as it has since the beginning of time (i.e., since the formation
of the crust, 4.5 bya). Proto-North America by this time consisted of what today is referred to
as the precambrian shield and the interior lowlands (Anderson 1983). The shield is the
northeastern part of the continent, roughly the eastern 2/3 of Canada (and including
18
Greenland), where precambrian rocks of 1-3 billion years of age are exposed, and the interior
is the rest of the continent between the eastern and western mountain belts - the plains of
Canada and the US and the US midwest. There is evidence that the interior (and Iowal) was
once the site of mountain building activity as two plates came together around 2bya, then was
split by a rift valley similar to that in East Africa today as two plates pulled apart about 1 bya,
but from then On the Shield and the interior are referred to as the Craton, or central stable
region.
By the end of the Precambrian, the Craton was a lowlying landmass huddled close to
the other landmasses near the equator and undergoing weathering and erosion (Anderson
1983). Then came the Paleozoic era, which lasted for about a month on our yearly timeline,
from November 15 to December 15. This was the era of an evolutionary explosion of life
forms, and it was a time of warm shallow Seas washing back and forth across the Craton and
Iowa. Rock formed by deposition in water environments is termed Sedimentary (as opposed to
that formed from the cooling of molten lava to form igneous rock, or the transformation of
sedimentary or igneous rock under tremendous pressure under the earth into metamorphic
rock), and during the Paleozoic, these seas deposited what has become the sedimentary
bedrock of Iowa.
Underwater Iowa
The type of deposits in this marine environment, and so the type of sedimentary rocks
formed, depend on the position and nature of the seas. Because Sands are relatively large
particles they are generally not carried out to sea but deposited and worked by wave action as
shoreline deposits. Sandstones are then formed in close relation to the sea's edge, on deltaic
plains where stream velocity slows and suspended sands are deposited, or along shorelines
where wave action works and rounds the resistant quartz particles on the beach and the
adjacent shelf. The finer muds are kept in suspension by wave or minimal stream Velocity and
deposited farther out to form, through time and compression, Shales. And finally, out in open,
warm, shallow seas, carbonate rocks are formed from calcium carbonate precipitated
chemically from lime-rich seas or in the form of calcite-based shells and Skeletons of marine
organisms. The direct product of this CaCO, precipitation is limestone, but in Subtropical Seas
rich in magnesium it can be chemically transformed to dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) - a process
called dolomitization.
19
These rocks, Sandstone, shale, limestone, and dolomite, are northeastern Iowa's rock
heritage. The Seas advanced and retreated across Iowa through most of the Paleozoic era and
just a little of the Mesozoic, depositing layer after layer of sediment which our rivers and
streams have subsequently cut down through. But today these layers are not quite level, rather
they dip Slightly to the Southwest and the ancient sea basins in Kansas and Oklahoma. Over
time glaciers and other erosional processes planed off these layers, so that today one can trek
back in history if you begin in western Iowa and head towards the NE. The result is a
banding pattern of the uppermost bedrock by age, and when travelling northeast successively
older strata come to the surface (Prior 1991, Figure 2.1).
In northeastern Iowa and the Upper Iowa River Valley, we can see that we are, in
terms of bedrock, the elders of the State. The headwaters of the river occur on Devonian
outcrops in southern Minnesota and northern Howard County Iowa. Most of what we see in
Winneshiek and Allamakee Counties consist of Ordovician rock, with Cambrian deposits
appearing the full length of the valley in Allamakee. A generalized Stratigraphic sequence
outlining northeastern Iowa's bedrock is shown in Figure 2.2 (the layers, or strata, are named
by geologists just as groups of life are named by biologists), and the following paragraphs
describe the formation of these strata, with a few notes on what we can't read in the rocks.
The Cambrian period lasted almost 100 million years, or just over 8 days on our
yearly scale. Iowa was part of a sandy belt along the Sea during most of this period, which
deposited large amounts of sand later to become the sandstones which dominate our Cambrian
strata (Figure 2.2). The uppermost (youngest) of these deposits is the well-known Jordan
sandstone, which outcrops along the Upper Iowa and Mississippi Rivers nearly their full length
in Allamakee County. Because of sandstone's high porosity and permeability they have great
water-holding capacity, and the Jordan sandstone serves as a groundwater aquifer for many
Iowa communities. Water levels in the Jordan aquifer, however, have dropped 100-200 feet in
much of northeastern Iowa in the last 100 years, due largely to human uses (Anderson 1983).
The Ordovician period produced the seabed deposits which now dominate much of
what we see of northeastern Iowa's bedrock, but it did so during two separated periods of
deposition (Anderson 1983). The first was a continuation of the Cambrian seas, which had
expanded to a great enough extent that deposition in Iowa shifted from Sands to carbonates,
forming the Prairie du Chien group of dolomites which begins to appear along the river near
the small town of Freeport (Figure 2.2). These dolomites are laminated with cabbage-like
forms, thought to be evidence of large algal mats which trapped carbonate sediments, similar
to present-day mats found in shallow, bright subtropical Seas (Anderson 1982). They also
20
-
"*")
W.
W .
º
---
-
GEOLOGIC
TIME
INTERVALS
(millions of years ago)
[T] Cretaceous (66-105)
Jurassic (155160.
[ ] Pennsylvanian (300-320
[ ] Mississippian (330-355)
[ ] Devonian (365-387)
[ ] Silurian (415-435)
| ] Ordovician (440-515)
[ ] Cambrian (515-530)
Precambrian (900-2550)
Caps in time represent
periods of erosion or
lack of deposition in
lowa's rock record.
Figure 2.1.
**----------_-_
G --
Surficial bedrock geology of Iowa (after Prior, 1991).
20 40 60 m.
H===
O 40 so km








.
:
Note: Sikurion thins to north beneoth the
Devonion. Devonion rests directly
on the Moquoketo Fm. in Winneshiek
County. Silurion limestone (Woucomo Fm.)
outcrop in northern Foyette County.
Primorily dolomite elsewhere.
|OO =
2OO-
50:
CRETACEOUS PERIOD
Windrow Formation
(locally present obove Goleno
corbonotes)
:
* |OO4
Oecorah
fºortºwiile
FE lirnestone
Zºr- dolomite
E shole
Sondstone
IEE
TEI
Zººſ
breccioted limestone
:
sondy limestone
sondy dolomite
orgillaceous or sholy
F- siltstones or silty
AA* chert
Jof 46 n
Sond Stone
PPP phosphatic
f* "r, iron oxides
.* ".", grovel
^^^^^^ mojor erosional unconformity
i
oldest bedrock
exposed in northeost lowo
Figure 2.2. Generalized stratigraphic column of northeastern Iowa's Paleozoic rock sequence (after
Hallberg et al., 1984.
22












contain Oolites, tiny concentric spheres of calcium carbonate which formed around a sand grain
or Shell fragment in lime-Saturated seas much as raindrops form around particles in water-
Saturated atmosphere. These are also formed in present-day warm shallow seas, and together
with the algal structures are strong evidence of a subtropical location; the present hypothesis
puts Iowa just South of the equator for much of the Paleozoic (Anderson 1983).
In the mid-Ordovician the seas retreated from Iowa, leaving a low coastal plain
exposed to weathering and erosion and producing the unconformity, or gap, in our rock record
(Figure 2.2). But the seas soon returned, this time split in half by the transcontinental arch
formed during the early Ordovician from Lake Superior to Mexico (Anderson 1982). This
uplifted ribbon of land exposed the relatively young Cambrian sandstones to erosion, and as
the seas washed across Iowa they deposited this material as the St. Peters sandstone. As the
Shoreline continued northward, however, the beach environment gave way to a marine shelf
where muds and carbonates produced the Glenwood shale, Platteville formation, and the
Galena group (Figure 2.2). Included in the Galena group are at least 8 layers of volcanic ash,
which likely came from the taconic mountains - an active belt ancestral to Our Appalachians
and formed by a collision of North America and Europe in the early Ordovician. By the late
Ordovician the Seas over Iowa were full of muds eroded from these mountains to the east,
which formed the thick shales of the Maquoketa formation. -
The seas left Iowa, then returned again in the Silurian to deposit limestone and,
especially, dolomite throughout much of the continental interior. In Iowa, the Silurian Strata
forms the surface bedrock of most of Iowa's eastern bulge, but thins to the northWest until
finally rocks of the next period, the Devonian, lie directly over Ordovician Strata in Howard
and Southwestern Winneshiek Counties, leaving the Upper Iowa Valley with no Silurian
record. The seas returned in the Devonian, then again during the Mississippian and
Pennsylvanian (these latter two are often referred to together as the Carboniferous because of
the great amounts of plant organic matter deposits from this time). But the uplifting of Iowa's
Paleozoic rocks late in the era produced the southwesterly dip and set the Stage for Subsequent
erosion of these layers, producing the banding pattern of Iowa's surface bedrock Seen in Figure
2.1, and today the Upper Iowa watershed has a memory lapse of rock dating back to the
Devonian.
For the record, however, the Pennsylvanian was the period of coal formation Over
much of southern Iowa. The rock record is comprised of both marine and non-marine
deposition, often interbedded, suggesting a cyclic fluctuation of Sea level. This was likely a
result of glaciation in the southern hemisphere and the waxing and waning of continental ice
23
caps. Iowa was anything but icy, however, as the Paleozoic equivalent of the everglades
produced immense volumes of organic material in poorly drained swamps, which turned
Slowly into peat, and eventually coal.
Thank Goodness for the Fish
Of course we know these organic deposits came from plants, but barely one month ago
on our yearly time Scale multicellular life had just evolved! As the seas washed back and
forth over the Craton (proto-North America) laying down layer upon layer, they also left a
record of the life evolving within their waters, which Scientists such as Charles Wachsmuth
have interpreted from the rocks. We saw that multicellular life first evolved from the early
eukaryotic protists sometime between 700 and 630 mya. Between that time and the close of
the Cambrian period (the first period in the Paleozoic) only 505 mya was the greatest period of
diversification in the history of life on earth (Raven and Johnson 1986), known as the
Cambrian explosion. As mentioned earlier, biologists today recognize five kingdoms of life,
the prokaryotic bacteria and the eukaryotic protists, fungi, plants, and animals. Below the
kingdom are other hierarchical levels of classification, which are organized, ideally, by
evolutionary relationships. The level below the kingdom is the phylum, and except for plants,
all main phyla of organisms which exist today had evolved by the end of the Cambrian period,
and all of them in the Sea.
Most of the record easily visible in rocks is of the early animals, and the early
Paleozoic was a time of experimentation of body forms and ways of life. During the
Ordovician the corals evolved and greatly influenced marine structure, and by its end all major
modes of life in the sea, such as bottom feeders, scavengers, drifters, carnivores, and colonies
had evolved (Raven and Johnson 1986). Unfortunately, northeastern Iowa's only Cambrian
record is sandstone, and sandy seas are poor in life and its preservation. But our limestones,
dolomites and shales of the Ordovician period are crammed with fossils of many of these early
animal forms, including such things as bryozoa, corals, and trilobites.
But the Paleozoic was also a time of extinctions. For example, at the close of the
Cambrian a vast majority of families of the trilobites, a huge and diverse group of
invertebrates, went extinct, and the end of the Paleozoic era (248 mya) is marked by the
disappearance of over 95% of all marine species. Why? Why did those few Survive rather
than some others, what caused the extinction in the first place, and what if ... what if the Small
24
group which later gave rise to the fish, or the plants, had gone extinct - what would the earth
look like today? If there is one thing which we can learn from extinction events it is that
evolution is not progress, that if we could replay the tape of life (as Stephen Gould puts it) it
would never look the same twice, just as the path each molecule of water takes after a
thunderstorm, over or through the earth or its organisms to reach the atmosphere or sea, could
never be repeated.
But the ancestors to both the plants and the fish did survive those early extinctions,
luckily for us, for the fish are our ancestors, and the plants provided suitable habitat for the
descendants of the fish to colonize land. The first plants are believed to have evolved from a
phylum of protists know as green algae, which are still some of the dominant forms of algae
common today. They evolved and colonized land during the Silurian period (Figure 2.1), and
were the first terrestrial, multicellular organisms. This step is referred to as an 'adaptive
radiation’, whereby a group of organisms occupies a new 'adaptive Zone' in an ecosystem and
rapidly diversifies. An adaptive radiation can come about because an extinction event removes
many of the present life forms and so opens up new opportunities, or because a key adaptation
evolves which allows individuals to exploit resources in new and different ways, or a
combination of the two. In a terrestrial ecosystem, the first plants obviously must have
evolved (among other things) some sort of water-conducting tissue and an outer covering to
keep from drying out, but once they were able to survive out of the marine environment the
radiation began.
When the plants colonized land a major adaptive zone, or many of them, were opened
up for the animals. The plants are autotrophs, meaning they can create their own food
(organic energy molecules) using energy from the Sun (photosynthesis), but animals cannot -
they are heterotrophs and so acquire their energy from other organisms such as plants. Where
organisms get their food is obviously fundamental to their existence, and the result is the
ecological food web, whereby the plants or certain protists are the ultimate source of all
energy because of their photosynthetic capabilities, and animals and fungi and other protists
depend upon them for food. Thus when plants became common on land, they provided
animals with a food supply. The arthropods, the phylum containing insects, Spiders and
crustaceans, were the first major group to take advantage of this opportunity, following the
plants almost immediately (in geological time, anyway), and have since become by far the
most diverse group on earth (Raven and Johnson 1986).
Another important group which should be close to our hearts colonized land just 50
million years after the plants and arthropods, the amphibians. The amphibians represent a
25
major evolutionary step in the vertebrate lineage which includes ourselves. The vertebrates
dominate the phylum Chordata, which evolved in the Cambrian period, and are characterized
by a vertebral column which encloses and protects the dorsal nerve chord (Raven and Johnson
1986). The first vertebrates were jawless fishes (such as the lamprey), which evolved into the
jawed fishes which radiated rapidly in the Devonian (the 'age of fishes') and with which we
are familiar today. In the early Mississippian, the amphibians evolved from these fishes; life
on land was a major change from life in the sea, and two fundamental traits necessary for the
transition were the evolution of greater skeletal supports allowing efficient locomotion, and air-
breathing lungs to replace the gills of fishes. These and many other modifications allowed the
amphibians to lead semi-terrestrial lives, but they remain to this day dependent upon water
bodies for early stages of their development. Before long, the amphibians would give rise to
the reptiles, the direct ancestors of both the mammals and the birds. -
The Mesozoic era has no visible record in northeastern Iowa, and would represent the
time from December 15 to about Christmas on our yearly calendar. Around the end of the
Paleozoic era all the land masses, which had been huddled near the equator throughout the
Paleozoic, came together to form one supercontinent called Pangea and One SuperOcean called
Panthalassia (Uyeda 1978, Figure 2.3). In the early Mesozoic, Pangea split into Laurasia
(North America and Eurasia) to the north and Gondwanaland (Africa, South America,
Australia, and Antarctica) to the south, and North America began its trek northward and then
westward, which it continues to this day. The Mesozoic Iowa is thought to have had an arid
to semi-arid climate similar to that of northern Africa today. The Sea entered Iowa briefly
during both the Jurassic and the Cretaceous periods, then left for good.
The reptiles - today's snakes, lizards, turtles, etc - evolved in the Pennsylvanian and
though they gave rise to the mammals by the end of the Paleozoic, continued to dominate the
earth through the Mesozoic (the age of the dinosaurs', though dinosaurs were just one lineage
of reptiles present then). An extremely important adaptation of the reptiles was the amniotic
egg, which protects the developing embryo from drying out and nourishes it, thus eliminating
the need for water for reproduction. This is still the fundamental design of the eggs of all
reptiles, a few mammals, and all birds, which evolved from the reptiles during the middle of
the MeSOzoic era.
Also during the Mesozoic came the two major groups of plants which today dominate
terrestrial environments. The conifers evolved during the late Paleozoic as the first plants to
have seeds, that specialized unit of dispersal containing the embryo, which provide
nourishment and protection from desiccation to the developing individual much as the amniotic
26
§
(b) World geography at the end
of the Triassic period, 180
million years ago, after about
20 million years of drift. The
land mawa has now become two
supercontinents. I aurasia and
Gondwana. The light gray
areas represent the new ocean
ſloor. Spreading zones are
represented by heavy lines,
transform faults by ſine lines,
and subduction zones by
hatched lines (where a line is
broken, this indicates worne
un-rrtainty that the feature was
present at the turne). Arrows
depict motions of continents
since drift began.
(c) World geography at the end
of the Jurassic period, 135
million years ago, after about
65 million years of drift.
riſ, inne 6-10
(*) The ancient land mass
Pangaea as it may have looked
200 million years ago
Panthalasza, the ocean
surrounding Pangaea, evolved
into the present Pacific Ocean,
and the present Mediterranean
Sea is a remnant of the Tethys
Sea.
c 135 million years ago
50 million year-rown today
Plate
Continental drift and world geography since the Paleozoic (after Uyeda, 1978).
J Tºrld wrºng raphy at the rin-1
ºf the turta crºux ºr riºd “"
milliºn years awo. at-rr wºrnr
1 *-* millinn wears of drift
ºr World grºw 1-1-hy tºdav,
showing sea ſlºw produced
during the past 6" mullion
wears. In the Crnornic period
ºf World geºgraphy as it max
look some º million wear-
from now ºf present-day platr
movements continue Parts a
through ºf after R S I Metz ar.
J. C. Holden, "The Breakup of
Pangara º Cºpyright 1970
by Scientific American. Inc.
All rights reserved


egg does for reptiles and birds, as well as providing a mobile stage in the life of the otherwise
Sessile plant. Then towards the end of the Mesozoic evolved the angiosperms, or flowering
plants, with their specialized reproductive structures known as flowers which allow for a great
diversity in pollination Strategies (from insects to wind), and eventually form a fruit enclosing
the Seed and provide for an equal diversity in dispersal strategies. Today the evergreen
conifers (especially the pines, spruces, and firs) are common especially in northern regions
around the globe, while angiosperms dominate virtually everywhere else.
By the beginning of the Cenozoic era the angiosperms dominated the land. Through
most of this era, the Tertiary period, North America continued its drift westward and
weathering and erosion continued to eat away at Iowa's Paleozoic and Mesozoic rocks.
Recently (in geologic time, again) world climate grew cooler and ice sheets formed in North
America and Europe. This climate change marked the beginning of the Quaternary period, or
ice age, and dated back some 2.5 - 3.0 million years. Though the Quaternary represents only
5–6 hours on our yearly scale, it is during this period in our history that our landforms have
evolved.
28
Chapter 3: Water the Artist
Then if he climbs to the nearest commanding summit, he finds that the maze of hills and the
labyrinth of ravines blend into a strongly undulating plain, inclining gently, though wrinkling
deeply toward the Oneota (Upper Iowa) and the Mississippi ...
Early Iowa geologist W.J. Mcgee, in "The Pleistocene History of Northeastern Iowa", 1891, (quoted in Prior, 1991).
The previous chapter described the formation of our rock strata in the context of the
history of the earth and its life. This chapter describes the formation of our present physical
landscape in the context of ice, water, and wind, during the Quaternary period, or ice age.
'Iowa Under Ice' provides context through an explanation of where northeastern Iowa fits into
the grand scheme of glacial ages, glaciations, and interglacials. 'Resistant Rock’ reviews the
properties of our bedrock layers and the patterns they have produced in the landscape,
especially in the formation of karst topography. And 'Valleys in Time' describes what we can
read in the valleys themselves.
Iowa Under Ice
As seen in Table 2.1, the Quaternary is by far the shortest period in the geologic
calendar, consisting of only the last 2-3 million years of time, which is then divided up into
two epochs, the Pleistocene and the Holocene. The boundary between them is somewhat
arbitrary; it corresponds to somewhere in the middle of the most rapid period of glacial
melting of the most recent episode of glaciation, the Wisconsinan, as well as a time of
extinction of many large North American mammals. But some geologists claim it is an
anthropocentric boundary, because we are actually still well within the current glacial age
which is the Quaternary period, simply experiencing one of many warmer interglacial Stages
(Pielou 1991). In fact, the Tertiary/Quaternary boundary itself is in question, due to the
relatively recent discovery of glacial deposits much older than those previously believed to
represent the first glacial advances of the Pleistocene. More on this later.
Ice ages and continental glaciation are not new to the World, and understanding their
causes and the seemingly hierarchical, or nested patter of climatic fluctuation is an Ongoing
29
and fascinating area of study. The greatest period of climatic fluctuation related to glaciation
is what we call the ice age, or glacial age. This is a period of millions (5-507) of years of
prolonged cooling of the northern latitudes. One of the most widely accepted explanations for
the cause of a glacial age is continental drift (Pielou 1991), the moving of the earth's plates
discussed earlier. The hypothesis goes that when the continents are aligned in such a
configuration that they significantly restrict the flow of ocean currents from southern to
northern latitudes, temperate and polar regions are cut off from this massive heat-transfer
mechanism, their climate COOlS, and SO On. There have been a few of these glacial ages in the
history of the earth (Redfern 1983); of the two largest ones (both over 50 million years), one
occurred in Precambrian time, the other in the Pennsylvanian and Permian periods of the
Paleozoic, causing seasonal fluctuations related to the great Swamps and Subsequent Coal fields
of North America and SOuthern IOWa.
During a glacial age, the climate is not consistently cold, but rather we have a cycle
between cold periods when the ice sheets are expanding and widespread (glaciations), and
times when they rapidly retreat and almost disappear (interglacials) (Pielou 1991). In this
roughly 100,000 year cycle, the glaciations last for 60-90,000 years, and alternate with
interglacials of between 10 and 40,000 years. This full cycle is called the Milankovitch cycle
and is itself a product of the interactions between the tilt of the earth and the shape of its orbit
around the sun. The most important affect of this cycle is the degree of contrast between the
seasons; when the contrast is great the summers are warm enough to more than melt the
previous year's accumulation and we have interglacials. Our current interglacial Stage began
about 20 tya, peaked about 7-10 tya, and probably is within a few thousand years Of
succumbing to another glaciation. There appear to be even smaller level cycles, such as a
2,500 year variation during our interglacial that may be caused by variation in the Sun's
output, as well as a similar 200 year cycle within that one. It is obviously a good idea to take
all these hypothetical explanations with a large grain of Salt, but they do indicate that we're
nearing the end of our interglacial within this relatively young glacial age - the Quaternary -
an exciting time to be alive on earth!
To show how uncertain our knowledge really is, we can look at Figure 3.1 and note
that it shows only 3 glacial stages within our glacial age, and they don’t seem to fit a 100,000
year pattern. This is because much of the early scientific work done on glaciation in the
midwest defined 4 glacial stages separated by interglacials, shown in Table 3.1. But recent
discoveries and dating of layers of volcanic ash (from Western eruptions) within glacial
deposits in western Iowa have made this earlier conceptual framework obsolete, as evidence of
30
MICH
T IND TOHIO
Figure 3.1.
EXPLANATION
Wisconsinan
(10.500 to 30.000
years ago)
Illinoian
130.000 to 300 000
years ago)
Pre-Illinoian
(500,000 to over
2,500.000 years ago)
O OC 200 m
ETEI.
O 150 300 km
ETE-
Limits of major glacial advances in the Upper Midwest (after Prior, 1991).


Table 3.1. Glacial and interglacial stages of the Quatemary (after Anderson, 1982).

Holocene
or Recent
;
Wisconsinan ºr
Sangamon ~.
Illinoian jºr
**
Yarmouth v-
Kansan ºr ||
|
|
Aftonian Pr
Nebraskan *
Previously
Unrecognized
vº Interglacial Stage
& Glacial Stage
32
numerous glacial stages have caused the classic Nebraskan and Kansan to be replaced simply
by the pre-Illinoian category of Figure 3.1. It is also recognized that the Illinoian (which some
claim to encompass the period between 125 and 500,000 years ago) may actually represent
several glaciations and interglacials. And the time period most often given for the
Wisconsinan may represent only the most recent and southernmost advances of the ice sheets.
In any case Figure 3.1 demonstrates that only a tongue of Iowa, less than half its width
and extending from north central Iowa to Des Moines, was glaciated by this most recent
Wisconsinan glaciation. The rest was all glaciated earlier in the Pleistocene, but has been ice
free for at least 300-500,000 years, and so the present landscapes are a product of weathering
and erosion since this period. This theory is contrary to popular belief that the Scenic
northeastern Iowa is part of the "Driftless Area’, an area which apparently has not been
glaciated at all during this glacial age (Hallberg et al. 1984). The Driftless Area as it is now
defined is virtually completely confined to the southwestern corner of Wisconsin; though it
was originally thought to include portions of northeastern Iowa and northwestern Illinois with
similar topography, glacial deposits have been found on uplands throughout these areas. It is
also important to understand that even if the Driftless Area of Wisconsin was never glaciated,
it was also probably not ever totally surrounded by ice; different glaciations simply passed to
different Sides of it.
For the same reason, however, a portion of northeastern Iowa exhibits almost no
evidence of its glacial past, but instead shows off a bedrock-controlled topography
affectionately referred to as the Little Switzerland. This is the Paleozoic Plateau region of
Iowa, which encompasses all but the very western edge of the Upper Iowa River watershed
(Figure 3.2). It is likely that this area was on the eastern edge of the pre-Illinoian glaciation,
so that the deposits of glacial drift thicken to the west and south. In these areas bordering the
Paleozoic Plateau, the thicker deposits of drift slump downslope rather than holding a Steep
face, and this slumping was likely magnified during the intense freeze/thaw Of the
Wisconsinan glaciation and resulted in a low-relief landscape. But on the Paleozoic Plateau,
erosion quickly removed the drift and the drainage network began the slow process of
downcutting through the Devonian, Ordovician, and Cambrian bedrock. This bedrock was of
course much more resistant than the loose glacial deposits, and instead of slumping formed the
high-relief landscape of cliffs and steep slopes we have today (Hallberg et al. 1984).
33
º
I
) Paleozoic ſ
lowan Surface º Ploiedu )
* *s
Des Moines LODe l ~ * *-
º
---
- - -->
- - & - - -\ –-º-
Sº, - CŞ - |
* cº \AY'ſ a pº
'ost glacio _ſ^* \ſº
- ----------- - - - - - - - –2. A.
- |\ \
Southern Iowa Drift Plain MISSISSIOOl
- - --- - Alluviol
- ºr Pld in
-
-—-------
Figure 3.2. Landform regions of Iowa (after Prior, 1991).



Resistant Rock
Just as the bedrock as a whole, exposed to water, has produced the deeply dissected
landscape, the Various properties of these bedrock strata of limestone, dolomite, sandstone and
shale have given us the distinctive patterns of landforms within this landscape. The folding
and tilting of these hardened rocks mentioned earlier produced cracks and crevices called
joints, which often run both parallel and at right angles to each other to produce the
rectangular blocky appearance common to the rock outcrops and sheer cliffs of the region
(Prior 1991). These joints do more than simply add spice to the bluffs, they often control the
courses of streams throughout the region, as evidenced by the abrupt turns of many streams
and their valleys. We can never know, but who's to say the abrupt turn of the Upper Iowa
itself at Decorah was not at one time a function of one of these joints? -
Because the Strata and rock type are of varying durability, or resistance to erosion,
slope steepness is often directly related to type of outcrop. The limestones and dolomites and
to Some extent the sandstones are highly resistant and so produce the cliffs, palisades, chimney
rocks and ledges as monuments to the eternal struggle between water and rock. The shales,
and less resistant sandstones, give way more easily to mechanical weathering and slump more
quickly, rarely holding a sheer face for very long. These different erosional characteristics are
well expressed throughout the region's landscape, especially within the Upper Iowa River
valley itself.
From well above Bluffton to Decorah, for instance, the river is roughly paralleling the
strike of the strata, or perpendicular to the direction of the dip (remember that the Strata dip
down to the Southwest, and the river here is running to the Southeast). For this reason, it
remains within the same general beds, which are the Galena group limestones and dolomites
responsible for the chimney rocks and 1-200 foot cliffs in this most canoed stretch of the river.
But at Decorah the river makes virtually a right angle turn to the northeast, Orienting it in a
direction opposite the regional dip and causing it to immediately begin crossing these pre-
Galena rocks as they outcrop, one after the other, older and older, to the northeast (Eckblad et
al. 1974, Figure 2.2). By Freeport (only a few river miles from Decorah) the St Peter
sandstone is visible along the river, and for the rest of its travels in Winneshiek County the
river eats its way down through the Prairie du Chien group dolomites, which eventually give
rise to more scenic bluffs and mural escarpments throughout Allamakee County. Near the
Winneshiek-Allamakee line, however, the river itself has met the rising Cambrian Sandstones
through which it travels until it joins the Mississippi near New Albin.
35
Though the carbonates (limestone and dolomite) are highly resistant in exposed
situations, they are simultaneously susceptible to extensive underground mechanical and
Solutional activity resulting in what is referred to as karst topography. Chemically, these rocks
are Soluble in slightly acidic Solution, and rainwater is naturally acidic. The water infiltrates
down through the joints and fissures in the rock dissolving small quantities of rock and ever-
so-slowly enlarging the cracks into small passageways. In low areas where water is
concentrated the solutional activity over time can eat away enough rock that freeze-thaw action
can collapse what is left of the rock matrix into a sinkhole. By the time a sinkhole is formed
On the Surface, the underground channels have been enlarged to the point where Such areas are
often direct conduits down to the groundwater aquifers below, bypassing the natural filtering
process which would normally take place as the water makes its way down through deep soils,
glacial drift, or even non-dissolved bedrock.
Sinkholes and other openings are the upland components to karst topography, and
when these carbonates are underlain by large porous beds of Sandstone (Such as the Prairie du
Chien dolomites over the Jordan sandstone) they discharge directly into these extensive
aquifers. But if they are underlain by the less permeable shales, the downward flow of water
is intercepted. This impediment can give rise to local perched aquifers, but more often the
groundwater simply flows laterally in channels until it is intercepted by the land surface,
forming springs. This process is demonstrated well in the Decorah area, where Twin Springs,
Dunning Spring, and Siewers Spring all issue from the contact between the Galena group
carbonates and the underlying Decorah shale (Eckblad et al. 1974, Figure 2.2).
As most northeast Iowa residents know, however, the underground component of karst -
topography consists of not only enlarged cracks and fissures and joints, but Sometimes whole
cave and cavern systems. These caves and caverns are produced by two different processes
often acting in concert, mechanical and solutional activity, and are Strong evidence of the
relative youthfulness of our landscape. The solutional activity in Carbonate rockS was
discussed earlier in relation to sinkholes; but to form the large caverns seen in our region takes
more than just percolation after rains. Such largescale solutional activity generally requires
long periods of complete inundation, and the rate of dissolution of carbonate rocks is greatest
at or just above the surface of the underground Water table (Hallberg et al. 1984). As most
karst-carbonate aquifers discharge directly to the major stream valleys such as the Upper Iowa,
this water table is directly related to the depth of dissection of the landscape.
As streams further degrade the valleys, the water table lowers, leaving the caves in a
vadose, or air-filled, state. Once the caves are no longer saturated, Speleothems (Secondary
36
carbonated deposits such as Stalactites, stalagmites and flowstone) can begin to form in the
caves above the water table. Radiometric dating has shown the oldest of these speleothems in
northeastern Iowa to date back about 160,000 years (Hallberg et al. 1984). We can infer, then,
that the landscape dissection had occurred within a certain window of time before these oldest
Speleothems, putting the evolution of the modern drainage network well within the time period
Since the pre-Illioan glaciation sometime around 500 tya. As many of these speleothems are
also dated between 60 and 35 tya, it appears that much of the downcutting occurred fairly
shortly before this period, or within the last 100-150,000 years.
Mechanical karst Conditions are caused by the freeze-thaw action of water accumulated
in the cracks and fissures of the rocks, and are predominantly responsible for many of the ice
caves in the area. In well-dissected areas with extensive rock exposure above less resistant
talus slopes, outcrops are vulnerable to ice wedging in enlarged fractures and slipping of large
blocks of rock downslope. These processes were magnified in the periglacial conditions
experienced during the Wisconsinan glaciation, producing numerous narrow passageways and
small blocky caves behind the rubble of what was probably once a sheer cliff. Once formed,
air circulation during the winter in these caves cool the rocks to well below freezing, then with
the spring thaw water runs through them and freezes in contact with the rocks. The ice forms
during March, April and May, then gradually melts during the Summer, often producing more
of less permanent ice such as in Decorah's Ice Cave (Roosa et al. 1983). Not all ice caves are
formed solely by mechanical processes, but an ice cave generally must experience much air
circulation from the outside and thus be in close proximity to the atmosphere; many of Our
larger cave or cavern systems formed by solutional activity do not have Such circulation, and
maintain a more steady internal temperature year-round.
Both of these karst processes, combined with the different erosion rates of our bedrock
strata, have produced one of the most unique and rare ecosystems in the midwest, the algific
(cold-producing) talus slopes (Roosa et al. 1983). The classic situation for these is a north-
facing, highly resistant, creviced carbonate strata outcropping over a less resistant but relatively
impermeable strata such as shale. The less resistant strata, rather than holding a rock face,
succumbs more readily to erosional processes and slumps, forming a talus slope available to
plants for colonization. The impervious layer allowed for Solutional activity above it in the
carbonate rocks, or the fissures were enlarged enough through mechanical processes to allow
for ice formation as described above. Then during the summer the air from above the Outcrop
is continually moving through the crevices, over the ice, then escaping out onto the talus slope
and bathing it in relatively cool air all summer long. These are demanding conditions, and
37
such ecosystems are indeed rare; what is fundamentally necessary is a north-facing talus slope
bathed in cool air from the rocks behind and above it. Such slopes along the Upper Iowa
River harbor boreal communities of glacial relicts, with species of trees, mosses, land snails
and other organisms hundreds of miles South of their natural abundance, described more in the
next chapter.
Valleys in Time
More evidence of the dramatic history of our landscape evolution comes from the
Stream Valleys themselves. This evidence results from interactions of bedrock-controlled
topography and Subterranean karst conditions with glacial effects such as intense mechanical
weathering, huge Mississippi meltwater floods, and loess deposition. Rock-cored meanders,
exhumed cavern Systems, and colluvial/loessial slopes intermingling with impressive multilayer
floodplain terraces are all fascinating recent chapters in the history book that is our landscape.
The struggle between water and rock is displayed in spectacular form in the deep,
narrow, gorge-resembling Valleys of the Upper Iowa and other northeastern Iowa streams. The
high resistance of these rocks combined with their jointed control of stream courses noted
earlier result in what are referred to as entrenched meanders, such as those of calendar-quality
above Bluffton. These are simply meanders where the outside of the curves are defined by
bedrock cliffs, as opposed to a river simply winding its way through a floodplain. Resistant as
the rock may be, time is always on the side of water, and once in a while the river cuts across
a meander neck and abandons its former loop, much as Oxbows are formed by a river
meandering completely within a floodplain. What is left is the rock core and adjacent fluvial
deposits, forming a terrace representing the stream level at the time of abandonment, together
referred to as rock-cored meanders (Roosa et al. 1983). A good example of this on the Upper
Iowa is what is locally referred to as 'the elephant’ in Allamakee County, where the rock core
is composed of the Jordan sandstone.
The terraces in these meanders generally stand 15 to 25 meters above the present
stream and floodplain, and their associated sediments also extend 10-20 meters below the
present floodplain (Hallberg et al. 1984). The depth of these sediments shows that the
region's streams had at one point degraded their valleys to levels below the present floodplain,
then had undergone an extended period of aggradation, or deposition, prior to the cutoff of the
meanders, followed by another period of degradation to the present levels. These terraces
38
generally occur at greater heights above the present floodplain in a downstream direction,
Suggesting a less Steep stream gradient during that time period. Organic deposits and wood
within 5 meters of the bedrock floor of these meanders has been dated at about 20 tya,
Suggesting the Streams had degraded to their lowest level before this time and fluvial
deposition had begun. From this and other evidence, it is estimated that most of the
entrenchment of the streams and rivers of the area had occurred by about 30 tya, followed by
a period of deposition to the high terrace level and the subsequent cutoff of the meanders
(Hallberg et al. 1984).
Throughout the Paleozoic Plateau region but of special interest in relation to these
high-level meander terraces, are aprons of colluvial material mantling steep slopes which join
the uplands to the valleys (Hallberg et al. 1984). Colluvium is a rubbly matrix of
rock/gravel/Soil formed by mass movement downslope of loose materials. In the Paleozoic
Plateau region, much of this colluvial material is believed to be a product of the intense
periglacial conditions mentioned earlier which Iowa experienced between 15 and 20 tya.
Much of this colluvium is a silty matrix, a result of the slope-derived material plus large
quantities of loess deposited during the slumping processes. The major period of loess
deposition throughout much of the midwest is believed to have been between 14-17 tya. This
was a time of rapid retreat of the ice, leaving glacial deposits exposed to wind erosion and
deposition, and most of Iowa is covered with at least a few inches of loess from this period.
Once vegetation was established, however, the soil was stabilized and covered, at least until
Europeans arrived on the scene.
In many places these colluvial aprons descend onto and interfinger with the high-level
alluvial terraces of the rock-cored meanders. If the colluvial aprons were a product of
periglacial conditions and contained loess, they must have been deposited between about 17
and 15 tya; thus the terraces must have been high and dry by that time. The Cutoff and
abandonment of these meanders then occurred by 15 tya, and signifies the reversal from a
period of aggradation to a more recent period of degradation of stream valleys (Hallberg et al
1984).
But this isn't the end of the story! Inset below these rock-cored meander terraces are
a multitude of younger terraces found throughout the major stream valleys and their tributaries.
The complex history of aggradation and degradation between about 15 and 9tya was Written
in northeastern Iowa by the great Laurentide ice sheet (the Wisconsinan ice sheet responsible
for the glaciation of all but western North America) and its pen, the Mississippi River. As the
ice sheet retreated, its meltwaters filled the Mississippi, aggrading or degrading its Valley
39
depending upon the relationship between the volume of water and the volume of sediment
Carried. When it aggraded, it also backfilled into the valleys of its tributaries; if the water
level rose but didn't carry large amounts of sediment, it still ponded up the tributary valleys
Sufficiently for them to aggrade with their own sediment loads just as streams slowly fill in
lakes. But when the Mississippi underwent major periods of downcutting the slope of its
tributaries increased and degradation proceeded headward apace.
Some of the most interesting of the deposits from all this up and down action of the
rivers are locally known as Zwingle terraces, after the soil series mapped on their surface.
They are stratified, from sand and gravel on the bottom to sands/clays to laminated clays and
silts on top. They are believed to have formed when the draining of large glacial lakes formed
between the retreating ice sheet and the continental divide filled the Mississippi valley and -
ponded waters far up its tributaries. The color of these silts and clays depends on the
mineralogy of the glacial lobes whose meltwaters formed the lakes; floodwaters from the
Superior basin deposited red kaolinitic clays while waters from the Lake Agassiz basin (to the
northwest of Superior) deposited gray montmorillonitic clays (Hallberg et al. 1984). These
terraces usually stand 10-20 meters above present floodplain levels; the only one present in the
Upper Iowa valley is across from Sand Cove, near New Albin Roosa et al. 1983).
We can see from a creative interpretation of such features as valley terraces and
underground karst development that northeastern Iowa has had a complex history of physical
landscape evolution. Contrary to what was once believed, it is a relatively young landscape,
glaciated in pre-Illinoian time and subsequently shaped by weathering and erosional processes.
Valley downcutting created karst caverns and allowed speleothem growth to begin by about •
150 tya. The rivers had maximally deepened their valleys (well below their present floodplain
levels) by about 30 tya, after which time fluvial deposition filled the valleys to at least the
level of terraces seen in rock-cored meanders. About 15 tya, the rock-cored meanders were
cut off and abandoned, and subsequent episodes of erosion and deposition related to glacial
retreat and Mississippi levels produced a multitude of younger terraces and left the streams at
their present levels, which have probably been relatively steady for 8-9 thousand years.
All of this, from stream/valley processes to periglacial conditions to properties of the
bedrock strata to karst conditions found there, help us to read the history of Our landscape.
Even this deeply dissected region of the state is a young landscape, evolving mostly within the
present Wisconsinan glaciation in our glacial age, the Quaternary. Understanding the
processes of this landscape evolution deepens our appreciation of our home place, and
certainly puts our inquiry of historic ecology and change on a firm footing.
40
Chapter 4: A Window in Time
Father! We have listened to your proposition, and you will now hear what the Chief and
Braves of the Winnebago nation have to say in answer to it. We happen to be very well
acquainted with this country to which our Great Father proposes to send us. Many of our young
men have travelled over it, and we knew all about it --- and from our acquaintance with it, we
think it would be difficult for our Great Father to find such a country as you now describe. Many
of the Indians who have been accustomed to that country from their infancy, perish there, and all
get along badly. There is a great difference between the climate there and where we now live.
That country does not suit people who have been raised in such a country as [ours]. The Great
Spirit has placed us in the best country given to any of his children. It is our misfortune to be
placed in so good a country. We like the lands where we now are, and do not want to give them
up. But we are wasting time, Fathers, to talk about the country southwest of the Missouri. We
don't wish to talk about it, as our people have all made up their minds not to go there.
Little Hill, member of a Winnebago council in Washington in 1846,
protesting removal from the Neutral Ground of northeastern Iowa.
Continents change, climates change, ecosystems change, life forms change. Table 2.1
gives an idea of the magnitude of this change through geologic time - millions and billions of
years, timescales hard for us to imagine. This chapter brings us up to the present, tracing the
evolution of our landscape over the last few thousand years since the Wisconsinan glaciation.
'Firm Footing’ reviews the formation and properties of the watershed's soils, 'After the Ice'
describes the postglacial migration of plants and likely change in watershed biota, and
'Americans’ discusses the people who were here before Europeans arrived on the scene.
Finally, 'What Did They See?' represents an attempt to reconstruct what the vegetation of the
watershed might have looked like to these early European-Americans.
Firm Footing
As we all know, Iowa is one of the most productive States in the Union, and the Center
of one of the most productive regions of the world; agriculture is the backbone of the State's
economy. We often credit this productivity on our prairie Soils, affectionately referred to as
Iowa's black gold. But long before these soils yielded to the plow, they were the foundation
of an ecosystem of plants, animals, protists, fungi, and bacteria which thrived within or upon
them. The dominant component of any natural ecosystem to Our eyes is the vegetation, the
plants, which are autotrophs and so create the energy molecules which then travel through the
41
food WebS of the ecosystem. But plants on land need soil to provide both a medium of
Support for the organism, a place to root, and a medium for the storage and uptake of water
and nutrients necessary for Survival. Soils vary, however, and an important step towards
understanding plants or the ecosystems of which they are a part is understanding the soils.
Most terrestrial Soils consist by weight of at least 90-95% mineral material derived
from the weathering of rocks, and only a small percentage of organic material (Brady 1990).
This mineral material consists of three types of particles based upon size, the sands, silts, and
clays. Sands and silts are simply mechanically weathered grains of rock, but clays are formed
by chemical transformation of the mineral material. Clays and humus (organic particles),
because of their small size and electrochemical properties, provide the Surface areas which
hold many of the nutrients important for plant growth, have a high water-holding capacity, and
so are important components of soil. But all good things in moderation; the 'ideal' Soil, or
loam, consists of roughly equal proportions of these three mineral size particles and a
significant percentage of organic matter (say 5% or more). By volume, however, it contains
about 50% air; plant roots and other soil organisms need oxygen for respiration just as do
most living things, and too much clay in a soil can reduce the pore Space to the point where
growth of many organisms is restricted.
In any given place, there are five major factors which have interacted to produce
soils - climate, parent materials, living organisms, topography, and time - and the effects of all
of these are apparent in the soils of the Upper Iowa watershed. If terrestrial soils are mostly
mineral material, it had to come from somewhere. The most common mineral material for Our
soils is loess, or windblown deposits of silt. This loess was referred to earlier, it was given to
Iowa courtesy of the last glaciation, the Wisconsinan, and the winds which distributed it across
the state. As the great ice sheets retreated, Summers brought great quantities of meltwaters
down the river valleys, which deposited large amounts of sand and silt Sediments in the
valleys. During the winters the meltwater volumes decreased, the Sediment was exposed, and
that which could be carried by wind - the silts - was picked up and deposited in a blanket
across much of the state (Fenton and Miller 1982).
Alluvium, or water deposited material, is another important parent material in the
watershed. Streams and rivers deposit materials during floods, or during extended periods of
alluviation in a valley, which give rise to the bottomlands and floodplains along their borders.
The nature of this material depends on the material which the river is carrying, which
generally comes from the uplands, and on the Velocity of the water. As much of the alluvium
in the Upper Iowa and its tributaries came from loess-covered uplands, much of these soils are
42
also fairly silty, though some are sandier (USDA 1968).
A third important parent material is glacial drift, which is found in the upper, or
western, reaches of the watershed, mostly outside the boundary of the Paleozoic Plateau
region. This area was glaciated in pre-Illinoian times, and as the ice sheets melted they
dropped in place all the rock, assorted mineral material, and other debris they had scoured
from the lands they had travelled over. This hodgepodge of unsorted material is called till,
which is the dominant parent material in most of Howard County, and so in the upper reaches
of the watershed (USDA 1974). For some reason loess did not cover most of this region, but
in some areas a few inches of loess is found over the till. Other parent materials present
include residuum, or material weathered directly from the bedrock, and colluvium, materials
collected towards the bottom of a slope; a product of the combined forces of weathering and
gravity.
Climate affects Soils directly through weathering and erosion, products of precipitation,
temperature, wind, and other variables, and indirectly through its effects on vegetation. Clay is
an important product of the chemical weathering of mineral material in soils, dependent upon
precipitation and temperature acting through time. And time ... soils can be young or old just
as mountain ranges and organisms can, and ours, mostly Only about 14-20,000 years old, are
relatively young. Time is the great integrator. Topography also integrates, through space, and
greatly affects soil development through slope gradient and aspect. The steeper the slope, the
easier for erosion to carry surface materials downslope, thinning the Soils of the Steeper areas
and thickening the soils of those at the base. Topography, like climate, also acts indirectly
through vegetation, which varies by aspect and gradient due to moisture and nutrient
availability.
In the end, the soils of the Upper Iowa watershed demonstrate the important impact of
vegetation on soil formation. The watershed, as we shall soon See, is located right on the
transition zone of the prairies of the plains and the forests of the east, and prairies and forests
differ greatly in their contribution towards soil development (Brady 1990). In prairies, a much
greater proportion of biomass productivity goes below ground to the root System, an extremely
dense mat often extending a few feet below the surface. This root System is the only
permanent part of prairie plants, the above-ground structures die back and often burn annually,
and root turnover results in a very high organic matter content and black color deep into the
soil profile. In forests however, a greater percentage of the productivity is aboveground, and
the litter accumulates on the forest floor, where is it rapidly broken down by soil
microorganisms. The result is a fairly thin (5" or less) layer of organic matter near the
43
Surface, and underneath is a layer of lighter color where leaching has occurred, followed by a
layer of deposition. The very high organic matter content and depth in the prairie soils is what
makes the black gold which we treasure, even as it is disappearing, today.
The soils of the Upper Iowa watershed, then, are an interesting mix. Derived mostly
of loess on the uplands, this layer thins to the west, from 5-15 feet in much of Allamakee
County (USDA 1958) to 1-10 feet in Winneshiek County (USDA 1968) to a few inches or
nothing over glacial till in western Winneshiek and Howard County. In many places this loess
lies directly over bedrock, though to the west it often lies over glacial drift from an ancient
glaciation. The thicknesses given are for generally stable areas of uplands; as valley dissection
and slope gradient increase towards the main river valley, erosion has often removed much of
this blanket. Other Soils are derived from alluvium in the Valleys, or glacial till to the west.
The soils which formed in these parent materials bear the mark of the vegetation which has
been dominant upon them since the last glaciation: generally the forest-derived soils increase
in extent to the east and towards the main river valley (with the greatest landscape dissection),
while the prairie soils dominated towards the west and on the more extensive uplands (USDA
1988).
After the Ice
Just how this vegetation established and changed from the retreat of the last glaciers to
the present has been a major area of research among scientists. On a regional Scale it is
widely accepted that climate is the single most important factor influencing broad categories of
vegetation types or biomes (Pielou 1991). Taking the two dominant climatic Variables,
temperature and precipitation, there are four combinations which correspond to biomes of
North America. With cold and dry conditions (dry because moisture is locked up in Snow or
ice - especially permafrost) tundra prevails in a nearly circumpolar arctic belt. To the South Of
tundra moisture becomes more available, and cold and wet conditions produce another almost
circumpolar belt of taiga, or boreal forest. To the South of this zone thingS get more
complicated: warm and dry produces either deserts or grasslands Such as those of the
southwestern US and the great plains of the interior, respectively; and Warm and Wet produces
forests again, from the expansive eastern deciduous forest to the tropical forests. This Synopsis
is obviously a simplistic view of things, as there are many other variables involved, but did
similar regional biomes exist in a similar pattern during glacial times to the South of the ice,
44
and move with its retreat?
Most evidence of past vegetation comes from examining pollen deposited in layers of
lake or bog Sediment. Material from the layers can be dated and the pollen identified, and
though this method can't tell us what wasn’t there (or what was and didn't leave a good pollen
trail), it can indicate a change in abundance through time of certain Species or groups.
Apparently (Graham and Glen-Lewin 1982), as Iowa grew colder with the advancing ice, our
Vegetation changed from a relatively open pine (Pinus L.) forest to a closed pine and spruce
(Picea A. Dietr.) forest, which existed between about 28 and 23 tya. By around 23 tya the
pine disappeared, and by about 20 tya the coldest stage of the glaciation produced a spruce
parkland/tundra environment, similar to the tundraſtaiga boundary in Canada today. All this is
Sketchy, but Suggests that with the advance of the ice and cooling of the climate, Iowa's
vegetation shifted through stages corresponding to a south to north trek in Ontario today.
But from the glacial maximum of about 18 tya to the retreat of the ice from the US
about 12 tya, the ice-marginal communities and their successors seem to have been
significantly different than those we can see in Canada today (Pielou 1991). The open spruce
forest and tundra barrens were not replaced with but rather joined by grasses (Graminae) and
deciduous trees, most notably the ashes (Fraxinus L.), oaks (Quercus L.) and elms (Ulmus L.).
The result was a complex mosaic of ecosystems which included representatives of all four of
the major biomes mentioned earlier, likely producing a parkland effect. The probable reason
for this mosaic is that just as the regional ecosystem has no modern analog, neither did the
climate. The Summers were probably as cold as those in northern Canada today, allowing for
the continued presence of the boreal spruces, but the winters were more like those of northern
Iowa today, allowing for the invasion and spread of the less cold-hardy grasses and deciduous
treeS.
Fossil remains of mammals from this time period support the complex ecosystem
mosaic ideal (Pielou 1991). The most famous of these were the elephant-like mammoths and
mastodons, the former an open-ground grazer and the latter a coniferous tree browser, both
relatively common throughout Iowa during this time. The woodland muskox and giant beaver
and the grassland horse and camel are other examples of a diverse group of large mammals
occurring in Iowa with a diverse set of habitat requirements. A final example is the
coexistence of three small mammals whose ranges are today mutually exclusive; the collared
lemming (a tundra species), the prairie vole (a plains Species), and the pine vole (a forest
species). But between 12 and 10 tya North America went through a period of accelerated
climatological and ecological change. Summer temperatures accelerated the rate of increase
45
Which had likely been happening during the ice retreat, and Spruce disappeared from most of
North America. The tundra, boreal and deciduous forests, and grasslands diverged into their
distinct geographical regions. And over 40 species of mammals, mostly large ones, went
extinct from North America. The reasons for these extinctions we can never be Sure, but two
Common theories are the prehistoric overkill hypothesis, which asserts the Over-exploitation of
the mammals by recently-arrived humans from Asia, and the belief the extinctions were a
result of rapid environmental change (Pielou 1991).
It is hard to Say exactly what the ecosystems of the Upper Iowa watershed area were
like during this diverse time, or what mammals roamed the river valley, but from about 12 tya
to the present we have a better record. The record is somewhat at odds, however, with the
pattern of vegetation change over much of eastern North America during this time. The
general pattern (Webb 1981) is one of gradual warming and drying throughout eastern North
America from about 11 tya to sometime between 7 and 5 tya. This was a time of rapid
movement northward of Spruce, pine, and oak forest, and eastward moving grasslands (herbs).
The warmest period between 7 and 5 tya is referred to as the hypsithermal, and represented the
maximum eastward advance of the grassland biome. After this time spruce moved southward
again and pine, oak, and herbs moved westward, signifying a westward shift of the prairie
forest border to its approximate present position by about 2 tya.
In northeastern Iowa and Southern Wisconsin, however, this pattern was significantly
delayed (Chumbley et al. 1990, Wright 1992). The spruce was gone by roughly 9 tya leaving
the forests dominated by elms and oaks, with Sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marshall.),
basswood (Tilia americana L.) and the ironwoods (Carpinus caroliniana Walter and Ostrya
virginiana (Miller) K. Koch) increasing in prominence towards 6 tya. This trend suggests that
the very period which was the driest and during which the prairies were expanding through
much of the midwest, the hypsithermal of 7 to 5 tya, was the most mesic period of the
deciduous forest in northeastern Iowa. The hypsithermal didn’t occur here until 5.5-3.5 tya,
during which time prairie dominated the area, followed by oak savanna (more on this coming
up) to the present. Why the prairie invasion was 2-3 thousand years later in this part of the
midwest is an unanswered question, though some are Suggesting the presence of a Sharp
climatic boundary, a result of summer monsoonal rains lasting longer in the Southern midwest
than to the north and east, though northeastern Iowa is hardly Southern midwest.
46
Americans
In any case, the pollen record brings us to the present, Suggesting the domination of
Oaks and herbs for at least the last couple thousand years. But before a detailed investigation
into just what this area actually looked like in presettlement times, we have one last backtrack.
By presettlement of course I mean pre-European settlement; but there were humans in North
America, and Iowa, for at least the last 12 thousand years! No review of natural history is
complete without including the Native American representatives of our own species; where did
they come from, how did they live, how did they change? There is much Controversy as to
When the first humans came to North America (Pielou 1991); the traditional hypothesis has
been that they crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia, exposed due to lowered sea levels
from the ice sheets, between 12 and 14 tya. Some scientists today are claiming evidence for a
much earlier date, anywhere from 30 to even over 100 tya, but this evidence is not yet widely
accepted, and this discussion will follow the changes in Native American culture and ecology
from about 12 tya to the time of settlement (Anderson 1981, Bataille et al. 1978).
Some may question the discussion of Native Americans in the natural history section
rather than the more people-oriented upcoming chapters. The fact is that we humans were not
always so separate from our natural environment. In my view there are three major ecological
roles which people have occupied. For most of hominid (us and our direct descendants since
we evolved from the other great apes) history we have been hunter-gatherers, a completely
responsorial role to the world around us, not unlike the roles played by other large mammals.
Tools remained simple, people generally mobile, and population density low. Then next step
was agriculture, taken just 10-20 tya (though humans of 2 or 300+ tya were virtually identical
to us today), when we began to control and alter our environment for food production. This
step represented a manipulation of nature and allowed for higher population densities and
complex social structures (civilizations), but human labor was still the foundation of virtually
all aspects of the human endeavor. And finally came the fossil fuel revolution, mechanization,
and industrialization, when energy from ages past was harnessed to transform Our existence, to
separate a majority of those in the machine Societies completely from the natural landscape.
For most of their history, Native Americans played primarily the responsorial role, and
so the distinction between human and 'environment’ makes little Sense; they were integral
components of their natural ecosystems but not, relative to today, the dominant and
transforming element. Scientists have broken down this period into roughly four Stages based
upon archaeological evidence such as tools, social structure and food use (Table 4.1). The
47
Table 4.1.
Generalized archaelogical sequence in Iowa (after Bataille et al.,
1978).
*-
Culture-Historical
‘‘Periods''
Some significant archaeological sites, archaeological
complexes, and known (“TRIBES”)
LAT I. Historic
A l) 8()()
EAR 1.Y HISTORIC
A D 1600
POST - WOODLAND
A [) l ()()() ---
S()() {3C —
6()()() BC * *
The Bertrand Ft. Atkinson Ft. Madison
Cºl St.
Miscellaneous general comments
“Historical archaeology”; overlap between history and
archaeology; intrusion of Euro-Americans; removal of
most Native American groups; establishment of the Mes-
quakie Settlement.
Siouan speakers in central and western part of State; in-
flux of Algonquian speakers (“Fox'' and Sauk) from
• *-* * * * * * * : * * * * *-* * * - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - *** * * * ~ *s-s
Small to medium-sized villages; economy based on hor-
ticulture and hunting; some ſortifications; burials usually
in flat cemeteries; elaborate pottery with distinctive
regional variations.
Certain sites within the Oneota Tradition probably repre-
sent westward movement of Chiwere Sioux speakers
(loway-Oto-Missouri group)
Red Ocher Mounds
Coalport Kiln & (MESQUAKIE)
Noah Creek Kiln
(OMAHA) & (DAKOTA) (1OWAY) (ILLINOIS)
(PONCA) (N1 ISSOURI) (OTO)
- erox'ssaulo.
NEBRASKA N1 I LL CREEK GREAT OASIS ONEOTA (Possible
CULTUR [3 CULTURE CUſ TURE TRADITION overlap
(Central (Middle (NMiddle with Late
Plains Missouri Missouri Woodland
Tradition) Tradition) Tradition?) groups)
Effigy Mounds
WOODLAND THADITION Hopewellian Mounds & Village Sites
Conical burial mounds—often with elaborate mortuary
offerings related to Hopewellian centers in Illinois and
Ohio; grit-tempered, cord-impressed pottery; small
villages and camp sites; hunting and some incipient
cultivation.
* --~ * * * --ºw ~ºmsºmº mºs, -º-º-º-º-º-º-º- & = * * -- ~ * * * * * *
Turin Site
LOGAN CREEK COMPLEX: Simonsen Site, Hill Site, etc.
Hunters of large bison; kill sites and butchering sites;
flexed burials at the Turin Site.
ºmºmºmºmº mºms º a “ ºrº - ºr ** * * *-*. 4- --> ** - - - ** * * * *
CHERO KEE SI: \\' H R SITE
Surface finds: parallel flaked lanceolate projectile points
Surface finds: CLOVIS FLUTE1) PROJECTILE POINTS
\\ OODLAND
A R C Al C
PA I. EO-1 ND| AN
12,000 BC
(Rummells-Maske Site?)
Lowest level at Cherokee Sewer Site plus surface evidence
of big game hunters of the late Pleistocene; probable
hunting of mammoths, mastodons and other large now-
extinct mammals.
&
first was the paleo-indian stage, when the peoples were primarily hunters of such large
mammals as the mammoth, the mastodon, the camel and the bison. These were cold-adapted
peoples, and foraging was not such a large part of their diet as their descendants. But as
mentioned earlier, a number of large mammals disappeared from North America between 10
and l l tya, forcing many of these groups to depend more heavily on the extant bison and
Smaller mammals, as Well as gradually increasing their foraging Skills.
The next stage, the archaic (from about 8 or 8.5 - 2.5 or 3 tya), was a time of rapidly
changing technology among the Native American groups across North America, perhaps the
most idyllic time. As we saw, it was a period of rapid climate change, and the people
responded with adaptations to increase the value of foraging, such as ground-Stone tools for
processing seeds and nuts and bone utensils for sewing, scraping hides, and such uses. They
continued to hunt with Spears but used a device called an atlatl – a shaft of WOOd a Couple of
feet long with a bone/antler hook at one end which was placed in the end of the Spear and
held at the other end - which increased the velocity and range of the Spear. They hunted a
wide variety of game, from deer and elk to beaver, rabbit, waterfowl and fish, and this
combined with their extensive foraging produced a variable and protein-rich diet. They were
probably less nomadic than the paleo-indians, Small groups moving with the Seasons to
locations most conducive to the major activity of the time, such as foraging in the fall.
The woodland tradition spans the time from the end of the archaic Stage to historic
times (the 17" and 18" centuries), and represents a partial shift in ecological roles. It was a
time of major change both socially and ecologically; agriculture was introduced, most likely
from the southwest, and crops such as maize, Squash, Sunflower Seeds, and beans gradually
represented a greater proportion of their diet. Groups slowly evolved more Settled CultureS, as
shown by the appearance of ceramics (made from clay with crushed Sand or gravel added)
during this period, vessels which would likely have been unfeasible to transport far and often.
Population densities and social complexity increased, and trade and communication became
extensive over long distances and between what was obviously a cohesive group of interacting
societies. The existence of an extensive network of trade is shown by the presence in upper
midwestern archaeological sites of artifacts such as obsidian tools from the Rocky Mountains,
copper from the Great Lakes, and marine shells from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Though
horticulture was important, hunting continued as shown by the first appearance of the bow and
3ITOW.
Perhaps the most well-known record of people of the woodland tradition is the burial
mound. The extensive trade shows the great degree of interaction between Societies of the
49
time, and when mound-building became common it spread rapidly throughout the cultures of
the midwest. These mounds were believed by many of the early European Americans to be
traces of a lost white race from Egypt, China, Isreal, or some other place, because they
couldn't believe the ancestors of the Native Americans they encountered could have built such
large and often elaborate structures. Some of the most elaborate offerings found in these
mounds Come from Centers in Ohio and Illinois and suggest a high degree of social
Stratification, but northeastern Iowa has its own variation of burial mounds from this period.
The effigy mounds are created in the form of animals, and a large group of them is preserved
in Effigy Mounds National Monument at the mouth of the Yellow River, the next watershed to
the south of the Upper Iowa.
Late in the Woodland period the extensive trade network appears to have gradually
broken down, and many regional variations appeared. The Oneota complex (named after the
aboriginal name for the Upper Iowa River) was centered on the Upper Mississippi valley, and
is distinguished by its unique pottery tempered with crushed shells and intricately decorated
with lines or dots on the shoulder area. This complex is believed to have given rise to tribes
Such as the Ioway, Oto, and Missouri. When the first Europeans came to the midwest they
encountered many such tribes evolved from different Woodland complexes, with different
lifestyles, alliances, and languages. Between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi were
generally Algonquin speakers such as the Potawatomie, Sauk, Mesquakie (Fox), and the
Siouan speaking Winnebago, and to the west of them were the Siouan speaking tribes such as
the Dakota, the Ioway, the Oto and the Missouri. With the influx of Settlers, however, there
was a general shifting to the west of these various tribes, as Europeans displaced them from
their homelands through force and monetary enticements in the form of treaty succession.
The Winnebago were no exception (Hovde 1975). Likely derived from the Siouan
speaking Oneota complex of the upper Mississippi valley, the Winnebago used both hunting-
gathering and slash-and-burn horticulture in their subsistence economy. Wild rice and fish
were two important staples of their diet, but natural products included; deer, buffalo, fowl and
other game; nuts, wildfruit and edible roots; and domestic CropS Such as corn, Squash, beans,
potatoes, and others. Originally spread over various parts of Wisconsin, they were gradually
forced into a small portion in the southwest, and eventually into northeastern Iowa. By the
early 1800s, the closely allied Sauk and Mesquakie had also been pushed into eastern Iowa
from Illinois and Wisconsin, and there was much hostility between them and the Dakota of
southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. The US government (with Nathaniel Boone, Son of
Daniel Boone, surveyor) created a neutral ground, a roughly 40-mile wide Strip following most
50
of the Upper Iowa, and in 1840 removed all the Winnebago from Wisconsin to this area. The
government built Fort Atkinson, purportedly to protect them from the Warring tribes to the
north and South, but hostilities continued, the Winnebago did not civilize and settle the land as
the government wanted, and in 1848 were removed to Minnesota. Though relatively transient,
the Winnebago were thus the last of the Native Americans to inhabit the Upper Iowa river
Valley before Settlement began in ernest in 1848.
What Did They See?
What was the landscape like when the Winnebago and their predecessors lived here? I
mentioned earlier that the Upper Iowa watershed is on the historic boundary between the major
biomes of the interior grasslands and the eastern deciduous forest, and even contains remnants
of the boreal forest thanks to its fairly rugged karst topography. Many authors who attempt to
classify vegetation on a large Scale simply place the area in a 'transition zone’ between the
forest and the grassland (Anderson 1984, Curtis 1959); The way I interpret her map
(approximately - there were no county lines on her map), E. Lucy Braun (1950), one of the
most respected of such reviewers, included Allamakee County in the Maple-Basswood region,
Winneshiek County in the Oak-Hickory region, and Howard County in the grassland
formation! Localities within such areas are then described as X% prairie, Y9% forest, as if
Such biotic communities were mutually exclusive. For example, the presettlement forest cover
of the above three counties is claimed to be 89%, 35%, and 17%, respectively, and forest is
claimed to be the prevailing vegetation of the Paleozoic Plateau region of northeastern Iowa
both during presettlement times and today (Glen-Lewin et al. 1984). But is this the best we
can do -- simply say it is a transition and go on to describe the dominant vegetation in each of
the component communities such as forest or prairie?
I think we can do better. Pigeonholing is a fundamental tendency of humankind, and
of science especially, hence the need to call something which doesn't fit neatly into a
pigeonhole some catchall such as a 'transition'. I don't mean to disregard classification
altogether; it is a necessary part of science and management. But it always involves a loss of
information and, most importantly, can lead to a dangerously simplistic misunderstanding of
the nondiscreteness of the natural world. Gleason is well known for his recognition of this
problem and his proposal of an alternative, the individualistic concept of Species and
associations. He worked extensively in the prairie-forest border area, and in his landmark
51
paper (1926) Stated:
Such transition zones, whether broad or narrow, are usually populated by species of the
two associations concerned, but instances are not lacking of situations in which a number of
Species seem to colonize in the transition zone more freely than in either of the contiguous
associations. Such is the case along the contact between prairie and forest, where many species of
this type occur, probably because their optimum light requirements are better satisfied in the thin
shade of the forest border than in the full sun of the prairie of the dense shade of the forest.
Measured by component species such a transition zone rises almost to the dignity of an
independent association.
In his view plant ecologists should be concerned not so much with the extent or
Structure of Communities than with the causes (such as migration or environmental factors)
determining the coexistence of Species. The effect of these causes, he claimed, is not to
produce large areas of homogeneous vegetation but to determine the plant life at any given
'minimum area', and the causes can change abruptly or gradually and so determine the
distinctness of boundaries between groupings. This view does not reject the importance of
Classification and mapping efforts in ecology, but reminds us that the boundaries drawn are
human constructs, neither structure nor function will be constant within them, and deciding
which criterion to use in the process is ultimately a subjective decision.
What were the 'causes', or most important factors, influencing the vegetation
distribution in the Upper Iowa River watershed? Climate, as noted earlier, is obviously of
primary importance on a large scale. Grassland plants are generally adapted to much more
Xeric (dry) conditions, with adaptations such as bulliform cells (which cause leaf margins to
roll up), the C4 photosynthetic pathway (more efficient than the more common C3), and the
ability to grow under very low soil-water potentials (Anderson 1984). In his seminal 1935
paper, Transeau (1935) showed that there is (or was) no distinct prairie-forest boundary, but
rather an area of the midwest encompassing much of Iowa and Illinois, and portions of
southern Wisconsin, Southern Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and even Kentucky (and Small parts of
other states), which had a greater evapotranspiration to precipitation ratio than areas to the
north or south. This peninsula of partial grassland jutting into the eastern deciduous forest
region also had a more irregular climate, both aerially and temporally, than neighboring areas,
and Transeau used this as evidence of the overriding importance of the extremes Over the
means, a point that is often overlooked when ecologists speak of climax vegetation. Braun
(1950), for example, classified Allamakee County in the maple-basswood region because She
claimed it was the climax vegetation, even if it wasn't the dominant one. She was right that
such a forest could thrive in most years over most of the area and in the absence of
52
disturbance, but a 10- or 50-year summer drought may easily destroy such a forest on the
exposed uplands of the county.
'In the absence of disturbance' is a key phrase here; records of the great fires which
raged across the plains and extended into the peninsula fill the journals of the early explorers
and pioneers, and were certainly important to the ecological regime (Shimek 1948). Plants of
the prairie are adapted to regular fire; mostly herbaceous perennials (grasses and forbs),
virtually the whole aboveground prairie dies each fall, and grows back from underground parts
each spring. The mats of litter provide ample fuel for fires, which release nutrients and bare
the ground, allowing for earlier Spring growth. In the prairie peninsula, the climatic tension
zone, the fires also work to maintain the prairie in the face of invasion by the forest, as a
majority of forest plants cannot withstand such periodic fires. The few that can, of course,
have been very successful in the prairie peninsula, as we shall Soon see.
There has been an historic controversy as to the influence of the Native Americans on
this fire regime (Williams 1987). Fires were often used to clear land from cultivation and to
release nutrients, as well as to thin the forest and create the parklike Conditions which
maximized hunted game populations. Some who work with prairie management maintain that
if people were there, they may well have burned extensively with or without good reason but
simply because of the fascination and excitement (B. Grese, pers. Com.), or "just for the hell of
it!" (Spurr 1964, p.197) Another controversy has been over the relative importance of climate
versus fire in the origin and maintenance of the grasslands, especially in the midwestern prairie
peninsula. A full review is impossible here, but I concur with Curtis (1959) that a dependence
upon the explanatory power of any one ecological factor to the exclusion of others is
obviously simplistic and misleading; they were both important, and their influence on
vegetation in a region or locality such as the Upper Iowa watershed was mediated by
physiography and Soils.
Toward the humid border of the interior grasslands such multifactor interaction became
quite complex. Soils played a major role predominantly through regulation of the moisture
regime, with sandier textured soils conducive to more drought-resistant plant assemblages.
Physiography also influenced soil development directly through slope position, the steeper the
slope the thinner the soil and the less the water-holding capacity. But the greatest influence
was likely that of physiography on local climate and fire regime. It is Well known that South-
facing slopes support a more xeric vegetation because of their greater insolation and resultant
evapotranspirational demands than do north-facing Slopes. But what is often forgotten is the
additional evaporative demands caused by wind; forests can often maintain an internal
53
humidity much greater than Surrounding areas and so reduce evapotranspiration losses, but
with prevailing Southwesterly winds, the slopes facing in this direction will generally be
exposed to air much lower in humidity than more protected north to east facing slopes.
Finally, fire travels with the prevailing winds, but much more vigorously uphill than down,
and is often stopped by breaks such as streams. So the steeper the north to east facing slope,
the less likely a fire will continue down it especially when already forested; the more heavily
dissected the terrain the more firebreaks such as these slopes and streams and, quite possibly,
the less frequent the fires.
What does all this mean for the presettlement vegetation of the Upper Iowa watershed?
Due to its general east-west orientation and apparent location on the prairie-forest climatic
boundary, macroclimate likely exerts significant influence along this axis, with increasing
moisture towards the Mississippi River. In concert with continuum is the fact that within the
watershed the degree of dissection/relief increases to the east, a function of the bedrock-
controlled topography and deepening gorge of the Upper Iowa River itself. Thus, with
increasing moisture and increasing potential firebreaks and sheltered hillsides, the tallgrass
prairie of the upper reaches of the river gradually gave way to a greater presence of woody
plants to the east, though various combinations of the two probably occupied a majority of the
area of the watershed. In this discussion, unfortunately, the best I can do is refer to
dominants, such as the grasses or the woody plants, though more extensive lists can be found
in the literature cited.
The prairies of the watershed were predominantly the tallgrass prairie which covered
most of Iowa in presettlement times (Smith and Christiansen 1982, Curtis 1959). These
prairies were dominated during the summer by the tall grasses Such as big blueStem
(Andropogon gerardii Vitnam.), indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans (L.) Nash.), junegrass
(Koeleria pyramidata (Lam.) P. Beauv.), and needlegrass/porcupine grass (Stipa Spartea Trin.),
as well as the mid grasses such as little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium Michx.) and
prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis A. Gray). Though such prairies were dominated by
appearance, and usually by weight also, by the grasses, they were an extremely diverse
ecosystem. Three families of plants dominated the tallgrass prairie of Iowa; the grass family
(Gramineae - 72 species), the daisy/sunflower family (Compositae - 50 species), and the
peaſlegume family (Fabaceae - 25 species) (Smith and Christiansen 1982). Other important
families included the rose, buttercup, milkweed, mint, sedge and parsley. These "pure"
(without significant amounts of woody vegetation) prairies covered most of Howard County
and adjacent Minnesota, and significant portions of Western and southern Winneshiek, but Were
54
probably rare in Allamakee County (Marschner 1930, Robbins and Nordquist 1990). They
Covered large expanses of rolling upland, areas where fire could sweep through unimpeded and
Often, and were largely treeless. They have been associated with the glacial till soils of those
areas, but are more likely a function of the topography of this physiographic region - the
rolling western border of the Paleozoic Plateau.
These prairies are a kaleidoscope of color during the growing season, with multiple
Species in flower at all times, in contrast to the forest where over 70% of the flora bloom
before June 15 (Costello 1969, Smith and Christiansen 1982). In northeastern Iowa, the first
Spring flower (Second Only to the Skunk-cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus (L.) Nutt.) of the
Woods) is the pasqueflower (Anemone patens L.) in April, followed by the puccoons
(Lithospermum L.) and shooting stars (Dodecatheon L.) in May. By midsummer many species
are in bloom, including the milkweeds (Asclepias L.) and legumes (Fabaceae), and the fall is
heralded by the goldenrods (Solidago L.), asters (Aster L.), Sunflowers (Helianthus L.), and
finally the gentian (Gentiana puberulenta J. Pringle). Often these various species are highly
aggregated, so that there is a profusion of different colors at different points in the landscape
(Curtis 1959). An interesting relationship has been demonstrated between flowering date and
height of the individuals in the species; the later the flowering time, the taller the plants
(Butler 1954). Thus the earliest bloomers are usually basal rosettes only a few inches tall,
while those in September average over 1.5 feet, with the grasses of course reaching 5-7 feet!
An interesting variation on the tallgrass prairie common in northeast Iowa is the hill
prairie, or goat prairie. The latter name comes from their appearance on South and Southwest
facing hillsides throughout northeast Iowa, often steep enough that Only goats could graze
there. Because of their locations, they are the most common remnant of the prairie we have
left. They are simply natural openings in predominantely wooded Steep slopes and bluffs, and
represent the xeric extension of the tallgrass prairie of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois (Ugarte
1987). Though big bluestem was sometimes common, many of these prairies were dominated
by the shoner bunchgrasses such as little bluestem, prairie dropseed, and side-oats grama grass
(Bouteloua curtipendula (Michx.) Torr.). Because of their exposure they warmed up more
quickly in the spring and so often had a greater spring floral display than the rest of the
tallgrass prairie, and thanks to their shorter grasses the summer/fall display was much more
Visible also.
The xeric nature of these hill prairies is apparent; their thin soils, high insolation, and
exposure to winds all suggest stressful moisture conditions. This exposure Was Strikingly
apparent along the Mississippi River bluffs, where a long section between Iowa and Wisconsin
55
Sported a whole string of such openings on the southwest-facing Wisconsin side, and very few
on the Iowa side (Shimek 1924). Yet even so, their isolation and the lack of any evidence of
fire in some examples presents a puzzle to those who believe fire is necessary for the
maintenance of the prairie (R. Knutson, pers. com.). They may represent a true physiological
barrier to most woody plants, Suggestive of conditions on the prairie much farther to the west.
On the other hand, many are today being invaded by smooth sumac and juniper, according to
Ugarte (1987) because of fire exclusion and overgrazing. Could the competition from these
prairie plants under such dry conditions have prevented seedling establishment of woody plant
seedlings in the absence of fire, or were most of these prairies fire dependent?
A final type of prairie occurred on sandy terraces in the stream valleys, especially
within the valley of the Upper Iowa itself. According to the best records of grasses of these
areas, they were dominated by hairy grama (Bouteloua hirsuta Lagasca), Sand dropSeed
(Sporobolus cryptandrus (Torr.) A. Gray), and witch-grass (Panicum capillare L.) (Tolstead
1938). But depending on the elevation of such terraces, on the wetter of such areas would
also be expected the wet prairie grasses of bluejoint (Calamagrostis Canadensis (Michx.) P.
Beauv.), sloughgrass/prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata Link), and Canadian wild rye
(Elymus canadensis L.). The role of fire in these ecosystems is also in question. The were
often not very large in size, and isolated from the upland fires by steep slopes. Evidence that
they were sometimes bordered or sparsely scattered with bur oak and even white pine (Eckblad -
et al. 1974), however, suggests the influence of fire. These were likely the rarest of the
prairies of the watershed, and probably fell early to the plow or the cow.
The prairies under discussion are prairies in the classical sense, in that they are good-
sized expanses dominated by herbaceous plants, and woody plants are relatively rare and
widely scattered. But in actuality this herbaceous prairie can be seen simply as one end of a
prairie to forest continuum, with a diverse range of intermediates. Many of these intermediates
are referred to as savanna, which generally means a grassland with widely Scattered trees or
clumps of trees, but has also been used to describe prairies with a high concentration of non-
tree-sized woody plants, the scrub Savanna (or brush prairie). Obviously, discussions of
savanna can be contentious due to lack of agreement on definition, which vary from minimum
of one tree per acre up to 90% canopy coverage by trees (Nuzzo 1985). Yet often the trees
are highly aggregated into clumps, and so referring to average canopy coverage can be
misleading. And when they are fairly evenly spaced, the question becomes one of "how much
grass or prairie plant ground cover is necessary to call it a Savanna rather that a forest?" -
Unfortunately these squabbles over terminology are too often another example of the need to
56
pigeonhole rather than to understand the true nature of such ecosystems.
The midwestern Savanna has only recently begun to receive significant attention, and
another controversy has been the question of the uniqueness of the savanna from both the
forest and the grassland in species composition. Packard (1986, 1988) and the Illinois Nature
Conservancy, in restoration efforts near Chicago, claim that the presettlement 'tallgrass
Savanna' (as opposed to the very dry savannas) once dominated by bur oak (Quercus
macrocarpa Michx.) was quite distinct, with a prominence of ground cover forbs (rather that
the dominant prairie grasses) under the oaks which reach their maximum presence there.
Packard postulates that unique light conditions and influence on the fire regime by the woody
plants may give such a set of species a competitive edge over the more sunloving prairie herbs
(reminiscent of Gleason). This argument is supported by the fact that there are a number of
native non-woody species which today are either rare or weedy (colonizing disturbed sites),
and which don’t seem to do well in either the forests or the remnant prairies but thrive in the
'restored' mesic or tallgrass Savanna.
As to the woody plants of the savanna, the shrubs include hazelnut (Corylus
americana Walter), prairie rose (Rosa arkansana T.C. Porter), and New Jersey tea (Ceanothus
americanus L.), among others, and the trees include dwarf Serviceberry (Amelanchier Spicata
(Lam.) K. Koch), prairie crabapple (Pyrus ioensis (A. Wood) L. Bailey), and pin Cherry
(Prunus pensylvanica L.f.), but most of all the four dry site oaks of the upper midwest; the bur
oak, white oak (Quercus alba L.), black oak (Quercus velutina Lam.), and northern pin Oak
(Quercus ellipsoidalis E.J. Hill). The oaks as a group are the angiosperm equivalent of the
pines, in that they can often tolerate moisture and fire regimes that most angiosperm trees
cannot. Adaptations to drought include deep taproots, thick leaves with Small Stomata for
efficient water use, and ring-porous xylem anatomy which allows for rapid Sap movement in
the spring through large early-season vessels, then narrower late-season vessels which resist
cavitation during drought (Abrams 1990); adaptations to fire include thick, fire-resistant bark,
vigorous sprouting. and resistance to rotting after scarring (Abrams 1992). In fact, as many
oaks are very intolerant to low light conditions, oak forests or Savannas are often dependent
upon fire for maintenance and regeneration of individuals, and in the absence of fire Secede to
later successional, closed canopy forests.
Contrary to the belief that the forest was the prevailing vegetation type of the
Paleozoic Plateau, I believe that variations on the Savanna actually dominated the uplands of
most of the Upper Iowa River watershed. Though prairie Was dominant in the upper reaches
of the watershed, much of this prairie was likely being continually invaded by many bird or
57
wind dispersed woody plants such as bigtooth and trembling aspen (Populus grandidentata
Michx., and P. tremuloides Michx.), oaks, willows (Salix L.), cherries, Serviceberries, etc, to a
much greater degree than farther west because of the proximity to wooded slopes and valleys.
These invaders produced a mosaic of low shrub thickets and patches of small trees, and
increased in concentration towards the actual forest edges; the Smaller the prairie expanse the
greater the invasion, thus such woody vegetation became denser in the prairies to the east
because of the heavier dissection. Significant areas of these brush prairies (Marschner 1930),
or scrub savanna, occurred in the Minnesota portion of the watershed adjacent to Winneshiek
county, and we can probably assume they made up a significant portion of winneshiek County
also. Most of this woody vegetation was kept low (and often hidden by the grasses) by fire;
especially important were the oak and aspen grubs which, once established, could be knocked
back by fire but resprout for decades from their roots (aspens) or root collars (oaks).
The bur oak was the king of the prairie fire survivors, and because of its thick Corky
bark (and other factors) could often survive such fires as a Sapling and develop into a wide-
branching, open-grown tree. Described as the prairie invader, it established as Scattered
individuals or groups throughout the prairies of the prairie peninsula, forming the oak groves,
oak openings, or oak barrens referred to frequently by the early Settlers:
The Burr Oak Openings, ... are among the most productive portions of the varied and picturesque
surface of the country. Grouped here and there like so many old orchards, on the summit of a
gentle swell of land, or on the border of marsh, prairie or lake, there is nothing in the whole
catalogue of American sylva that equals these Burr Oaks for the charming, homestead-like
expressions they give to the landscape. The timber they furnish is brittle and of but little worth,
except for fencing and fuel; still, abounding as they do in what would otherwise be a prairie
country, and constituting so charming a feature of Wisconsin scenery, they possess a value which
is beyond computation. (Hoyt, quoted in Curtis 1959).
This was a description of the openings in Southwestern Wisconsin, an area very Similar
in physiography and vegetation to northeast Iowa. Generally found on rolling uplands among
the tallgrass prairie, it is the tallgrass, or mesic, savanna which Packard has been attempting to
restore in Illinois. In a few places, these oaks were joined by dense young Stands of trembling
or bigtooth aspen (Marschner 1930). They appear to have dominated the uplands, along with
the scrub savanna/brush prairie, in the midsections of the watershed, including most Of
Winneshiek and western Allamakee Counties and adjacent Minnesota. Towards the forested
end of this continuum appear to lie the uplands of much of Allamakee County. Here I
seriously question the value and accuracy of the claim that this area was predominantly (89%)
forested (Thompson and Hertel 1981). An early atlas of Iowa (Iowa State Historical Society
58
1875) described the Soils of Allamakee County as follows:
Perhaps about one-third is prairie, hazel thickets, and river bottom. It consists of a deep black
loam of almost inexhaustable fertility, and is dry, porous and easily tilled. About one-sixth is burr
oak openings, scarcely inferior in richness to the prairies. The white oak and hickory openings
constitute almost one-half of the area, and though heavier, and of less depth, produce a finer
quality of wheat than the prairies.
According to this account, the county does not appear to be 89% forested. The hazel
thickets were probably a variation of the scrub savanna referred to earlier, and the bur oak
Openings Similar to those described above. Especially interesting is the fact that the author
Speaks of white oak and hickory openings rather than forest or woods. Dick-Peddie (1985)
reviewed the Original Surveyors notes of three Iowa counties; the surveyors were instructed to
designate, at each Section and quarter Section corner, the species, size (in diameter at breast
height), direction and distance to the nearest tree at least 5 inches in diameter (referred to as
witness trees). Some of his data on Allamakee County are presented in Table 4.2. He
described two different types of woods in the county, the oak-hickory and the oak-maple-
basswood, and the data are grouped accordingly in the table. Of most importance here is the
dominance of the Oaks, especially bur and white, and the great disparity in average distances
between the principal trees. (It is likely that Some of the trees identified as black oak were
actually upland pin Oak.)
These numbers and percentages of trees are not going to be representative of the actual
numbers of trees in the county, as it is simply a regular spatial Survey - the trees of the denser
woods, though possibly high in numbers would not have been recorded as often due to their
limited areal extent. But it does give us a sense of the proportion of the area dominated by
each species and, as area is proportional to the square of the distance, the average Space
occupied by each tree and so the average tree density of such areas. It is obvious that bur
oak is the most widely spaced tree; it appears to be the major tree over almost 30% of the
County with an average density of about 9 trees/acre. Lumping the other oaks and the
hickories (Carya Nutt., probably Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch and Carya glabra (Miller)
Sweet) together because of their similar distances, we get an average density of only 13
trees/acre over 79% of the county. As the average diameter of all these species fell between 9
and 13 inches, these are likely to be very open 'woods’. Though these may not be accurate
estimates of tree density, the surveyors records ought to be valid for comparisons of average
density across species. Together accounting for 79% of the area of the county, these areas of
oak and hickory are 8-9 times less dense (the distance is almost three times greater) than the
59
Table 4.2. Public lands survey witness tree data for Allamakee County
(adapted from Dick-Peddie 1985)
Tree Species Percentage of Total Average Distance
Of Selected Trees
(links)
Quercus alba 31.5 78.9
Quercus macrocarpa 29.5 104.5
Quercus velutina 14.2 88.4
Carya Spp. 4.1 79.8
oak-hickory combination (total) 79.3 (average) 88.9
Quercus rubra 1.4 36.1
Acer Saccharum 1.8 29.1
Tilia americana 1.3 28.9
oak-maple-basswood combination (total) 4.5 (average) 30.5
Quercus muhlenbergii 0.6
Acer spp. 2.3
Fraxinus spp. 5.3
Ulmus spp. 2.8
JuglanS Spp 0.3
Betula spp. 1.5
Salix spp 1.7
Populus deltoides 0.5
Populus tremuloides 0.7
Prunus Serotina 0.1
Acer negundo 0.1
60
closed canopy sugar maple-basswood-red oak forests which make up the rest of the county.
What were these areas like? Surely they were not of even tree density throughout;
Some areas were probably more like the oak-hickory forests of today, while some had
significant treeless areas scattered around. They form the forested end of the prairie-forest
continuum but, from the tentative density values, rarely had a canopy coverage greater than
about 50%. They varied greatly, a function of the local fire regime and of other physiographic
and Soil conditionS. The bur Oak areas were a continuation of the Savannas to the west in
Winneshiek County, though the grassland component was likely reduced and various woody
shrubs increased in importance. Much of the area was probably an open oak-hickory
woodland (though it is important to note, from the Allamakee data as well as other sources
(Curtis 1959), that the hickories were only a minor component relative to the oak-hickory
woods of the Southern midwest) with a mixed ground COver of prairie grasses and forbS and
woody shrubs such as those mentioned before as well as the Smooth Sumac (Rhus glabra L),
gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa Lam., though this name is incorrectly applied due to fruiting
arrangement, and ought to be C. foemina), boxelder (Acer negundo L.), prickly-ash
(Zanthoxylum americanum Miller), raspberries and blackberries (Rubus L.), and others. The
borders between such woodlands and the open grasslands or Scrub Savannas Could have been
gradual or abrupt depending on physiographic boundaries or other factors; most early accounts
talk of relatively abrupt borders (Tolstead 1938), but the were probably biased towards the
trees, the shrubs and herbaceous plants would have exhibited more of a gradation.
An interesting variation on this would likely have been the oak-juniper glades (Glen-
Lewin et al. 1984). On dry calcareous rock slopes and blufftops with little Soil and Occupying
topographic positions unlikely to burn, the juniper (Juniperus virginiana L.) was able to
mature and form isolated patches, along with the mentioned oaks plus the chinkapin/yellow
oak (Quercus muehlenbergii Engelm.). These were very xeric and Windswept places, with a
ground cover of the drier prairie plants and shrubs such as the prickly gooseberry/dogberry
(Ribes cynospati L.) and ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius (L.) Maxim.) (Eckblad et al.
1974). Besides these cedar glades there were probably various unique microcommunities On
wet and dry limestone and sandstone outcroppings throughout the watershed, which were rare
and now gone.
The denser oak-hickory woods probably occupied south to West facing slopes which
burned less frequently than the uplands because of stream breaks or other factorS. AS moSt
oak woods, however, they were generally fire maintained, with a ground cover of plants
adapted to these conditions. These adaptations include a perennial existence, deeper root
61
systems, and a high reliance on vegetative forms of reproduction (Curtis 1959). Thus many of
these plants are Shrubs and grasses, and flowering and photosynthesis occur throughout the
growing Season. Besides the Oaks and hickories, black cherry (Prunus serotina Ehrh.) and the
aspens were probably important members of these woods, with red oak (Quercus rubra L),
the ironwoods, and red maple (Acer rubrum L.) in the more protected sites, and they were
Continually being invaded by the mesic or lowland species such as basswood, the elms, ashes,
and sugar maple (Shimek 1905).
In the deep ravines and steep north to east facing slopes was the closed canopy mesic
forest, probably similar to what remains of it today (Cahayla-Wynne and Glenn-Lewin 1978).
These forests were dominated by Sugar maple, basswood, and red oak (Dick-Peddie 1985; red
oak is the most tolerant of the oaks, and therefore most mesic and least fire-dependent) with
bitternut hickory, white oak, red elm, black walnut, the ironwoods, and others as important
components depending on light, moisture and nutrient requirements as mediated by soils and
physiography. These forests were the most dense in trees, and often produced a canopy
coverage approaching 100% during the Summer. To survive in the understory of such a
ground cover plants or saplings need to be able to cope with low light conditions, as well as
high levels of competition for moisture and nutrients from the overstory trees. The dominant
trees of this forest, especially the sugar maple, can tolerate these conditions as Saplings and
seedlings, and so these forests generally maintain, or reproduce themselves in a relatively
stable state and so are referred to as climax species. Because of the low light conditions the
ground cover is not very dense, and the shrubs and grasses are not nearly so common as in the
oak-hickory forest. A large portion of the ground cover are herbaceous annuals which grow
and flower in the spring before the trees have leafed out, then die back and exist the rest of
the year as seeds or underground tubers, corms, and Such (Curtis 1959).
At the base of these slopes, the sugar maple-basswood forest graded into the lowland
forests of the river floodplain, which shared the valleys with the variations on the Sand terrace
prairies described earlier. These lowland forests were (and still are) probably the most diverse
woodlands in the watershed due to flooding disturbance and site variation (Such as distance
from or elevation above stream) (Shimek 1911, Tolstead 1938). On newly-created mudflats or
sandbars the pioneer woody plants were the shrubby Sandbar and heart-leaved/diamond
willows (Salix exigua Nutt, and Salix eriocephala Michx., also known as Salix cordata Muhl).
The trees which eventually dominate these areas and the lowest, wettest bottomlands include
the almond-leaved/peach-leaved, black, and white willows, (Salix amygdaloides Andersson,
Salix nigra Marshall, and Salix alba L.)as well as river birch (Betula nigra L.) (rare today),
62
Silver maple (Acer Saccharinum L.) and cottonwood (Populus deltoides Marshall), though the
Cottonwood does not appear to be as common in the watershed as it is in floodplains of
Wisconsin or further to the west. The upper bottomlands had the highest concentrations of
green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marshall) and red and white elm (Ulmus rubra Muhl. and
U. americana L.), though silver maple, boxelder, butternut and white walnut (Juglans cineria
L. and J. nigra L.), hackberry (Celtis occidentalis L.), black ash (Fraxinus nigra Marshall),
Cottonwood and honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos L.) were not uncommon. Many of these
riparian areas were apparently extremely dense with undergrowth, often described as thickets
(Tolstead 1938). As these woods grade into the uplands, red oak and basswood mix with the
elms and ashes, until eventually a maple-basswood or oak-hickory is found.
The floodplain forest is interesting in many ways which separated it from the upland
forests, mainly relative to the hydrologic regime. There is high variation both spatially and
temporally in the trees as well as the ground cover, which is composed of a mix of herbaceous
(especially the Sedge and mint families) and shrubby species, such as the vines poison ivy
(Toxicodendron radicans (L.) Kuntze) and grape (Vitis L.), the elderberries (Sambucus
Canadensis L. and Sambucus racemosa L., also known as S. pubens Michx.), the wahoo
(Euonymous atropurpureus Jacq.), and the flowering currant (Ribes americanum Miller)
(Shimek 1905). The trees are fast-growing and often achieve very large sizes, though at fairly
low densities. Due to spring floods the groundlayer may not be fully developed until July or
August, which excludes many of the spring ephemerals of the maple-basswood forest in favor
of those flowering later in the season. -
And finally, on the steep, north-facing talus slopes occur the boreal relict communities
the valley is known for (Glenn-Lewin et al. 1984). Located on limestone or dolomite
discontinuities with Shale resulting in cold-air drainage, and Shaded much of the time, these
slopes are noted by the presence of Canadian/American yew (Taxus Canadensis Marshall) and
yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis Britton), and often contain a mix of Sugar maple, balsam
fir (Abies balamea (L.) Miller), basswood, red oak, or white pine (Pinus Strobus L.). These
ecosystems often harbor unique assemblages of mosses, ferns, and other herbs which, along
with the balsam fir, are representative of boreal assemblages 300 miles to the north and
northeast (Conard 1932). Balsam fir has been described from at least 6 stations in northeast
Iowa, mostly along the Upper Iowa River (Conard 1938).
And so we see that the presettlement vegetational ecology of the watershed was truly a
continuum of ecosystems presenting a mosaic of dominant vegetation types. Vast expanses of
the tallgrass prairie dominated the upper reaches of the watershed and extended in Smaller
63
patches towards the east, where they graded into uplands of predominantly scrub and bur oak
Savanna and eventually a mix of Open oak-hickory Savanna or woods. The prairie was also
represented on sand terraces in the Valleys, and south and Southwest facing hill prairies, often
surrounded by trees. The south and west hillsides were generally either a type of oak-hickory
Or prairie depending upon location in the landscape and associated factors, and the oak and
hickory trees dotted more and more of the uplands toward the east, forming a savanna to forest
gradient. The mesic maple-basswood forest was present in protected locations (increasing to
the east due to the greater degree of dissection), and the floodplains presented a highly
variable Set of conditions and plants.
The current interest in and controversy over the midwestern Oak Savanna as a distinct
community is to my mind both encouraging and disappointing. The degree to which it is
breaking down the prairie-forest dichotomy and recognizing the scope of the variation found
where the two meet is a positive development. And yet, though much of this work is focusing
on species composition within a community (biological diversity at the alpha level), I believe
its true ecological significance may be better understood by backing up and viewing Savannas
within a regional or landscape context (ecological diversity at the gamma level). The mosiac
concept is not a new idea; in the early 1970s authors such as M.L. Heinselman and H.E.
Wright were describing a landscape mosaic in the pine forests of northern Minnesota
(Heinselman 1973, Wright and Heinselman, 1973). This mosaic consisted of a patchwork
ranging from new burns, many stages of pine forest maturity, and more shade-tolerant, climax
plant communities, all directly related to physiography, soils and microclimate but especially
to fire history as mediated by these factors.
In a very similar scenario, the savanna also does not stand alone, but throughout its
range there existed a mosaic of grassland, Savanna, forests, and all the variations of and
intergradations between. It was a continuum in three dimensions (horizontal Space, Vertical
space, and temporal), changing sometimes abruptly, as through fire or sharp topographic
boundaries, or gradually as through succession or toposeducinces. This mosaic as a whole
created a region quite different from the more homogeneous and extensive grasslands to the
west and forests to the north, south, and east of the prairie peninsula. As in the pine forests of .
the Great Lakes region, this mosiac was greater than the sum of its parts in terms of
ecological, and therefore biological, diversity. For instance, What Were the habitats of the
multitude of birds which are now common (or uncommon) along roadsides, Oldfields, and
edges? What of the mammals - what of the insects, for that matter? Packard, for example,
has reported a number of colorful butterflies 'returning to their restored tallgrass (bur oak)
64
SãVaſlila IIC&I Chicago. Unfortunately, both directly through land use and indirectly through
fire exclusion we have completely transformed this dynamic and continuously varying region
into pieces, most of which do not even resemble fragments of the original.
65
Chapter 5: A Legacy of Change
Originally not less than one-fourth of the surface of Winneshiek county was covered
with forest. This was sometimes scant, as upon the rocky slopes and drier hill-tops, or consisted
of trees of but little value, as upon the narrower lower bottom lands. Here, as elsewhere, the
forest was developed chiefly upon poorer soils. The sandy alluvial bottom lands, the rocky slopes,
the gravelly or clayey hills - these formed the favorite habitat of trees. Even where a veneer of
rich soil and leaf-mould appeared it was the effect rather than the cause of the forest. The forest
prevented erosion; it retained moisture which made easier the disintegration of both organic and
inorganic materials; it annually contributed its leaves to the accumulating soil; it harbored worms
and other burrowing animals which brought fine soil-materials to the surface; and in its shelter the
burden of dust-laden winds was deposited. So man thought that he saw alluring promise in the
richness of the forest soil, and this coupled with the prospect of immediate gain from its products,
led him to remove the forest. But an awakening has already come, and men realize that with the
removal of the riches of the forest they also lose the richness of the soil, for the rains and melting
snows quickly strip it from the hillsides. The land is then practically worthless, for it will make
neither field nor pasture - it is fit only for growing trees, as it has grown trees in the past. Few
counties in the state have surfered more than Winneshiek in this respect. The principal forest
areas were in the roughest territory, unsuited to the ordinary purposes of agriculture. Man's greed
and thoughtlessness combined in many cases to strip the best, if not all, of the forest from these
hillsides, but this was not the gravest error, for if left to its own resources the forest would renew
itself. But an attempt was made in many cases to cultivate or pasture the stripped areas, and this
was done on the steepest slopes with uniformly disasterous results. More acres were cultivated
that still other acres might be secured, under the pretext that the children of the land-holder must
not be left without inheritance. The desire for immediate gain was, however, responsible for this,
for men had not yet learned that a growing forest is one of the most splendid legacies which they
may leave to their children.
Prominent Iowa naturalist and scientist Bohumil Shimek,
in The Plants of Winneshiek County, 1905
The previous three chapters give us a background in the rock foundations, landscape
evolution, and presettlement plant ecology, both a physical sense of place, and of the place in
time in which we live. This is our natural history; by no means exhaustive, but hopefully
enough to put in perspective the arrival of Europeans on the scene, and set the stage for this
chapter. Here I attempt to explore, through a watershed perspective, Some of the major
conservation issues that have arisen from subsequent Settlement and intensive land use.
'Watersheds, Streams, and People' provides an overview of hydrology, stream ecology, and
how rural land use affects and is reflected in them, with an aside on point source pollution of
the Upper Iowa River. 'Down the River examines the degree to which agricultural land use is
reflected in the watershed's streams and groundwater, and reviews land use trends. And
"Peopled Landscape' recalls what this land use has excluded.
66
Watersheds, Streams, and People
A couple of clarifications are necessary. First, as we all know, the list of
environmental problems today goes on and on; air and water pollution, hazardous and
nonhazardous waste, depletion of nonrenewable resources, loss of biodiversity ... it can be
Overwhelming. The purpose of this study is to focus on place and those specific, local,
problems which can be effectively addressed in that place. I realize that many problems are
national and international in Scope; eventually the need to address the twin towers of resource
use and population growth will require fundamental Social change, and the acceptance of
responsibilities to each other (both at home and abroad) and to the natural world which we are
Only beginning to realize. But ultimately change must Occur at the local level, whether
encouraged from above or within, and the process of addressing the issues described here can
be effectively strengthened by local people with local knowledge, skills, and resources.
Secondly, I am discussing conservation from the perspective of an ecologist, and so am more
concerned with ecological than economic impacts of resource use. For instance, I will spend
more time describing the effects of soil erosion on stream ecosystems than their negatives for
recreation and navigation.
Scientists, managers, policy makers and others all draw boundaries around land units
they wish to work with. These range from the public lands survey dividing area into
geometric squares of townships, sections and quarter Sections regardless of natural features, to
hierarchical ecosystem classification based on climate, physiography, Soils and Vegetation,
irregardless of human activities. I chose to focus at the watershed level because it is, in many
respects, a fundamental unit both biophysically and relative to human land use, integrated by
the hydrologic cycle. Water is as fundamental to life as sunlight, and while only the
photosynthetic organisms directly require sunlight, all living organisms require a steady
(relative to their lifespan) supply of water.
Not only is water a spatial integrator but its qualities within Streams, the waterShed
veins, tell us a lot about the geology, soils, and other characteristics of the land Over and
through which it travelled. Streams are in a sense a reflection of their lands, and they and
their biotic components are in dynamic equilibrium with the terrestrial portion of the drainage,
resulting in a relatively stable relationship over the long term (Schlosser 1991). Anthropogenic
changes shift these structural and functional relationships among landscape elementS, however,
resulting in significant changes in the chemical, physical and biological nature of the Stream
ecosystems. With an understanding of these relationships, we can then use Streams as a focus
67
from which to view land use impacts within the watershed.
Streams are dynamic ecosystems just like forests or prairies, except that water is
Substituted for air as an important growth medium. The medium is different, however, in the
fact that for many photosynthetic organisms it supplies not Only oxygen but also important
nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium, and others, thus also replacing an important
function of Soil in terrestrial ecosystems. These nutrients can be dissolved from bedrock,
Solubilized and carried from Soil, or the breakdown products of plant organic material input
from bordering terrestrial areas. Obviously, changes in any of these represent Significant
potential to change the nature of the water and so the stream ecosystem.
The biotic community of stream ecosystems demonstrates a food web of primary
producers (photoautotrophs) and consumers, though with significant differences from other
aquatic or terrestrial ecosystems. Unlike marine (sea) or lentic (lake) ecosystems with
extensive Suspended phytoplankton and zooplankton communities, in streams (lotic
ecosystems) the primary producers (mostly diatoms, green algae, and plants) and consumers
(insects and other invertebrates) are generally attached to the substrate due to the movement of
the water. Changes in Substrate, then, significantly alter the biotic community. Also, stream
ecosystems often receive a large proportion of their organic matter from terrestrial sources.
This outside organic matter is referred to as allochthonous carbon, as opposed to
autochthonous (produced within the stream by photosynthetic organisms), and if the proportion
of the former to the latter is greater than 1 in a given area, that stream reach is referred to as
heterotrophic; vice versa, the stream reach is autotrophic. Allochthonous carbon inputs will
depend largely upon riparian (streamside) vegetation, while autochthonous production will
depend upon degree of shading by riparian vegetation as well as other factors limiting
photosynthetic activity such as turbidity or nutrient availability. Altering the balance of
allochthonous to autochthonous carbon for a stream reach has potential to radically alter Stream
ecosystem structure and function (Vannote et al. 1980).
when water quality became an issue in the 1960s and 1970s and clean water
legislation was adopted to address it, attention was focused mainly on the point Sources of
pollution such as municipal and industrial waste discharges. These were concentrated Sources
of contamination, reachable, and regulation was widely accepted as an effective and necessary
means of protecting our waters. But the 1980s saw a growing concern over nonpoint, or
diffuse, sources of water pollution, primarily due to sediment, chemicals, and Organic matter
from agriculture. Today, though municipal and industrial discharges of organic matter and
bacteria have resulted in measurable improvements in water quality across the nation,
68
agricultural nonpoint pollution threatens to prevent the attainment of national water quality
goals (Smith et al. 1987).
Though the water quality of the Upper Iowa River has not been regularly monitored,
various studies give an indication of the major problems and the direction in which we are
moving, and reflect the national pattern. But first, it is important to note that relative to the
rest of the midwest, the Upper Iowa and its tributaries have overall excellent water quality.
For example, in water chemistry "the magnitude of pollution on the Upper Iowa River is
considerably smaller than any other major river in the state" (IDEQ 1975) and the river is
"superior" (McMullen 1972) to others, and biologically it is "healthy" (USEPA 1979).
Specific chemical and biological information can be obtained by these and upcoming literature
cited, but the point is that the streams of the watershed, due to reasons such as a general lack
of industry and large population centers, a fairly steep gradient which reoxygenates and
prevents some sedimentation, and topography which precludes intensive land use in Some
areas, have fared better than most.
Though a predominantly agricultural watershed, the river and its tributary streams have
not altogether escaped point source pollution. In 1972, a study described the discharges of all
the small towns on the river, including Cresco and Spring Grove, which discharged into
streams flowing to the Upper Iowa (McMullen 1972). But the major problem was Decorah,
which discharged half of the total effluent in the watershed. The study detected significant
increases in orthophosphate and fecal coliform bacteria concentrations, and recommended that
Decorah consider chlorination for the control of fecal coliform levels. Another Study in 1975
confirmed the problem, detecting little chemical change but levels of fecal coliform far in
excess of Iowa water quality standards for primary body contact (Class A, which the river is
designated) and which posed a potential health hazard (Geary and Morris 1975). And finally,
a biological survey in 1982 found that just below the Decorah wastewater treatment plant the
number of mayflies and caddisflies (indicators of high Water quality and found at all other
Sites) were replaced by moth flies and sewage fungus, indicators of poor water quality
(Meierhoff and Prill 1982). The high organic matter of the plant's effluent provided
sustenance for these latter organisms, which lowered the oxygen level in the Water sufficiently
to Suffocate the insectS.
The treatment plant at this time was located on the east side of the city near the river,
and was a trickling filter plant built in 1935. When the levee Was constructed in the 1940S,
the plant remained on the river side vulnerable to flooding, and by the 1970s population and
industrial growth had overloaded the plant and it was exceeding the limits on biological
69
oxygen demand (BOD), suspended sediment, and fecal coliform (D. Halverson, pers. com.,
McMullen 1972). The city took action, and in 1985 a new activated sludge facility became
operational, located east of town towards Freeport. Secondary treatment is achieved by
microbial decomposition of organic matter in aeration basins, and the effluent is chlorinated to
kill bacteria. Though the effluent levels are now well within the standards for BOD,
Suspended sediment, and bacteria, the chlorine levels are too high and they are currently in the
design stage for dechlorination (D. Halverson, pers. com.). This new plant is a significant
improvement over the old one, but a survey such as that done in 1972 of all potential point
sources in the watershed would be useful to identify other potential point source problems.
Agriculture, however, is the undisputed number one concern for those involved with
water quality in the area (D. Bonneau, pers. Com., L. Asell, pers. Com., J. Eckblad, pers. Com.,
G. Wunder, pers. com.). Its effects are many and varied, and often linked, but it all begins
with land conversion. For under natural conditions, vegetation covers a vast majority of the
land surface; during rainfall, a significant portion is intercepted and evaporates before it even
hits the ground. The energy of the raindrops is absorbed by the vegetation or litter on the
ground, and the soil, under natural vegetation, is highly porous due to root channels and soil
organism activity. When the water reaches the ground, virtually all infiltrates into the soil,
rather than running overland. In the soil it continues downward until it reaches a less porous
layer, which causes it to flow downhill; this is called subsurface flow. In the rare occurences
when precipitation rate exceeds infiltration and surface runoff does occur, the accumulated
roots, ground vegetation, and litter combine to prevent significant soil loss from occuring.
Some of the water, of course, continues downward and becomes part of the groundwater pool.
Ultimately, the removal of natural cover over large areas and increase in runoff reduces the
response time of the streams (they become more flashy), thus increasing flooding and the
erosion of channel banks and adjacent areas.
With the removal of natural vegetation and baring of the soil, however, all this
changes. Exposed soil is subject to the full impact of the raindrops which, in a two-inch
thunderstorm, is equivalent to over 225 tons of water per acre, falling at a Velocity Of 25 feet
per second (Clark et al. 1985). This energy dislodges the soil particles, which can then slide
downhill, en mass, a process called sheet erosion. These dislodged particles also fill in SOil
pores, which together with previous compaction by animals or machinery reduces infiltration
rates and so increases the portion of a rainfall which flows over the surface. Water running
downhill carries dislodged particles with it and dislodges more soil particles; this water/Soil
mix in motion creates numerous shallow channels, a process called rill erosion, which
70
eventually can lead to gully erosion. The longer and steeper the slope, the greater the velocity
of the runoff and So the greater its capacity to detach and transport soil particles. Various
tillage and Cropping patterns and structural measures attempt, fundamentally, to increase the
infiltration rate and decrease the velocity of runoff.
The major instream ecological negatives associated with such large amounts of runoff
include those due to nutrients, pesticides, organic matter and, fundamentally, the sediments
themselves. Though these are often tightly linked, the change in instream habitat and channel
morphology due to high flows and sediment loads are the most obvious and potentially the
most impacting (LaRoe 1986, Richards 1992). High sediment loads almost invariably lead to
deposition, which fundamentally alters substrate characteristics and homogenizes diverse riffle-
pool stream environment. This leads to a shallower, wider channel, increased bank erosion
and increased stream temperatures. It buries rocky or gravelly substrate, reducing habitat for
algae, benthic (bottom dwelling) insects and spawning grounds for fish, and Smothering fish
eggs and invertebrates present. Suspended sediments result in high turbidity and so decrease
stream productivity by decreasing light available for photosynthesis by algae and plants. High
turbidity also impairs the vision of fish and so their feeding efficiency, as well as changing
courtship behavior and inhibiting spawning in Some fish Such as bass.
The Michigan DNR has convincingly demonstrated some of these effects in a 20-year
study in the northern lower peninsula (Alexander and Hansen 1988). For five years they
monitored the brook trout population in a small, stable, groundwater fed Stream called Hunt
Creek, then for five years added small but daily amounts of Sand. For the next five years they
let the stream clean itself, then installed sediment traps for the last five years to clean Out What
was left, all the while monitoring the trout populations. During the additions of Sand, the
brook trout populations fell to half of their original level, and it took six years after the sand
additions were stopped for the adult population and channel characteristics to recover. But by
the end of the study the recruitment rate of the trout was still significantly below pretreatment
levels. This dramatic effect was achieved with only small but regular additions of sand; an
equal if not greater threat to many trout streams is the removal of riparian vegetation, which
increases stream temperature and decreases dissolved oxygen to the point where trout cannot
Survive.
Nutrients and pesticides are often adsorbed (bound) to and transported with soil
particles, but can also be dissolved in runoff water. Nitrogen and phosphorous are applied as
fertilizers to cropland, but in the stream they may stimulate photosynthesis far in excess Of
natural rates (LaRoe 1986). The eventual death and decay of luxuriant algal blooms can
71
greatly lower dissolved oxygen levels, seriously changing the biotic community and even
causing fish kills, a process called eutrophication. Nitrogen from cropland is generally in the
form of nitrate, which at sufficient levels poses a human health hazard, while that from
livestock waste runoff often contains a significant portion of ammonia, which can be highly
toxic to fish. Pesticides vary greatly in their degree of adsorption and persistence, and so their
potential to bioaccumulate in food chains. The organophosphates which have for the most part
replaced the long-lasting (highly persistent) and banned organochlorines of the 1960s and 70s
(such as DDT, dieldrin, aldrin, chlordane) degrade much more quickly, but even so we know
little about the behavior of the breakdown products over the long term, or the interaction of
these various chemicals in the Soils, waters, plants, and animals.
The last major category of agricultural pollutant is animal waste, which is generally a
concern in areas of concentrated livestock Such as feedlots or Stream access sites. These areas
also can be a source of nutrient loading and associated vegetation blooms, as mentioned above,
but of equal concern are the high organic matter inputs into the stream (J. Eckblad, pers.
com.). Bacterial metabolism of this organic matter raises the biological Oxygen demand
(BOD) and lowers the dissolved oxygen, changing the biotic community and potentially
causing fish kills. Where livestock have access to rivers and streams, related problems include
removal of riparian vegetation and soil compaction, leading to higher stream temperatures,
increased erosion, and change in channel morphology.
Down the River
Which of these threats poses the greatest risk to the streams of the Upper Iowa River
watershed is difficult to say, though impacts will likely vary by Stream size and location. On
the Upper Iowa River, a study (McMullen 1972) found significant increases in turbidity, all
nitrogen compounds, biological oxygen demand, and fecal bacterial populations with runoff
events, and significant decreases in dissolved oxygen and bacterial ratios (meaning liveStock
fecal bacteria increased relative to human). In 1990 Iowa's water quality assessment (Iowa
DNR 1988), only partially supported a rating of fishable for the Upper Iowa's tributary
streams due to high impairment from siltation and slight impairment from nutrients and
pesticides, and similarly partially supported a rating of fishable for most of the Upper Iowa
due to high impairment from siltation, moderate impairment from nutrients, and slight
impairment from pesticides and unknown toxicity. Even without such data, the effect of
72
widespread agriculture is visibly obvious to anyone viewing the river during or after heavy
rains. Historical accounts (Johnson 1991) of similar watersheds, as well as the aforementioned
knowledge of infiltration in natural systems, demonstrate the radical changes in the hydrologic
regime. Any discussion of the current magnitude of the problem ought to also discuss the
direction we are going.
The effects of nutrients, pesticides, and organic matter from runoff are often difficult
to detect. While soil particles are mainly responsible for the dramatic increases in turbidity
and alteration of the substrate and channel appearance, these other pollutants often go
undetected except for rare fish kills. They are often detected in small levels if at all during
normal flow, but can occur in concentrations 2 to 3 orders of magnitude greater during times
of runoff. Nutrients and pesticides which are bound to sediment deposited on Stream bottoms
may be released slowly over the long term, with effects on the biotic community that are
difficult to trace. Jim Eckblad (pers. com.), local aquatic biologist, believes that pesticides are
the greatest long-term threat to the local streams and rivers, not because of what we know, but
because of what we don't know. We don’t have a good idea of what's out there because they
are rarely tested for in normal water quality testing, and we certainly don't know the long-term
effects of the initial chemicals or their breakdown products, alone or in combination, On
natural systems or on people. e
The only pesticide detected in significant levels in fish samples from the Upper Iowa
River is chlordane, which was detected in channel catfish fillets along with PCBS, at
concentrations well above the FDA tolerance levels, in 1985 (USEPA 1986). Technical
chlordane is an organochlorine insecticide that was used extensively as a lawn and garden
pesticide and for cutworm control on corn, until the EPA canceled its registration in 1978 for
use on food crops. It was then used mainly as a termaticide, until it was finally banned from
all use in the United States in 1988. In 1987 both chlordane and PCBs were again detected,
along with dieldrin, DDT, DDD, and mercury in channel catfish samples, but all were in
concentrations less that half the FDA tolerance levels (Iowa DNR). The levels of chlordane
and PCBs detected in the first test were considered atypical and attributed possibly to the fact
that the fish used in these studies were taken from lower reaches of the river near Dorchester,
and so the fish may well have come up from the Mississippi (G. Wunder, pers. com.). An
alternative explanation, however, may be that the gradient in the lower reaches is much less,
thus sediment deposition is greater and the total amounts of adsorbed pesticides released Over
time and available for bioaccumulation may be greater.
Feedlot runoff tops the list of Jim Eckblad's short-term threats, especially in relation to
73
the tributary streams. During the summers of 1972 and 1973, he and a student studied the
impact of a number of small feedlots located on streams, analyzing the chemistry and biology
upstream and downstream, during dry weather and during runoff periods (Scherpelz and
Eckblad 1974). Though the results were not statistically significant, they found distinct trends
and Concluded that, at many feedlots, "gross numbers of bacteria and organic matter are
flushed into the streams via feedlot effluents" during and immediately after rainstorms. The
problem with studying them statistically is their small size and high variability; they are
predominantly well under 100 head, and the lots themselves may be used only sporadically
during the summer as livestock is moved from one area to another. Feedlots are generally
considered point Sources of pollution, but in the Upper Iowa watershed the major impact may
be in total numbers, as they are Small but numerous, and a few livestock operations on a
stream could have a cumulative effect even if the impact of any single one is minimal.
Gaige Wunder (pers. com.), fisheries biologist at the Decorah hatchery, agrees that
feedlots pose a significant threat, and says there have been isolated fish kills, including one in
coldwater creek attributed to overapplication of manure from a large cattle operation on the
Upper Iowa back in the 1970s, and one in Bigalk creek in 1989 (J. Wolf, pers. Com.). The
Iowa DNR confirmed that during the 70s there were 2 open feed lots permitted at less than
1000 head, and one confined cattle operation permitted at 5000 head, but they are now out of
operation. The broader problem, according to Gaige, is the widespread livestock access to
streams, not simply the areas of concentrated waste. When livestock have access to a stream
they generally destroy native vegetation and compact the Soil, decreasing Shading and SO
increasing stream temperature, and increasing streambank erosion rates. Of the 25 highest
priority put and take trout streams (stocked with Rainbow and Brown trout) in northeast Iowa
identified by the DNR to target pollution, 9 are in the Upper Iowa watershed, and 63% of the
designated stream length was grazed (Link 1986). These are the least degraded streams with
the greatest amount public ownership, and yet livestock access and livestock Waste Were
identified, along with sediment, as the primary problems causing the failure of Successful trout
reproduction. In many of these streams there were significant populations of brook trout in
presettlement times, but all disappeared due to warmer stream temperatures and changes in
instream habitat (G. Wunder, pers. Com.).
The effect of nutrient loading on the stream ecosystem is dependent upon whether or
not the nutrient in question is a limiting factor in photosynthesis. Classical ecological theory
says that nitrogen is the limiting factor in primary productivity in most terrestrial ecosystems,
while phosphorous is limiting in most aquatic Systems, though this is not always the case.
74
Researchers are now suggesting that in many midwestern watersheds light availability as
mediated by turbidity, depth, and shading appears to be the primary factor limiting
photosynthesis (Richards et al. 1991, Wiley et al. 1990). In this case elevated nutrient levels
would have little effect on the stream ecosystem unless they reached toxic levels. They are
also Suggesting that urban areas are potentially responsible for controlling the Soluble reactive
phosphorous levels (Osborne and Wiley 1988), rather than agriculture as often assumed. This
may well be true on the Upper Iowa, as the year-round 1972 study showed no relationship
between phosphorous levels and runoff (McMullen 1972), though fertilizer use has increased
significantly since then. There is little direct evidence of nutrient loading on streams in the
watershed, though Gaige Wunder says there are isolated situations such as an area of Waterloo
Creek which do have algal blooms and elevated BOD levels, apparently related to livestock
nutrients.
Obviously the effects of nutrients, pesticides and organic matter are all present in
streams of the Upper Iowa watershed, but such effects are often so interrelated to each other
and tied to Soil erosion and physical habitat change that it is difficult to Sort them out. Even
with significant nutrient loading, for example, their effects on the macroinvertebrate
community composition can be overwhelmed by those of habitat and channel morphology
variables (Richards et al. 1991). Which brings us back to the fundamental problem of land
use, runoff, and erosion, and the question of 'where do we stand now relative to the past?'
With the opening of the area to settlement in 1848, people came quickly. The total
population of the 3-county area peaked between 1890 and 1900 at over 55,000, and has been
steadily decreasing ever since to a low of just over 44,000 in 1990. A much greater
percentage than today of these were rural dwellings, with agriculture the major form of
subsistence. By 1875, over 25% of the land area of Allamakee County was under tillage for
wheat, corn, and oats (Iowa State Historical Society 1875); by 1900 this figure may well have
as much as doubled, and these figures would be proportionally greater for Winneshiek due to
its greater population Most of these rural families, of course, had small numbers of livestock
to graze as well. And all of this settlement required wood for building material, and energy,
and eventually good oak for railroad ties, wood which was most abundant on Some Of the
steepest slopes. The opening quote of the chapter vividly describes the early resultS.
The upshot was a rapid transformation, probably within the first 30–40 years, of the
watershed's hydrologic regime, and most likely its waterways as Well. With large amounts of
land in cultivation and most hillsides stripped, grazed, or cultivated, runoff must have
increased dramatically. An example probably similar to what happened in the hillier Sections
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of the watershed is a description based on historical accounts of the Coon Valley watershed in
the driftless region of Wisconsin (Johnson 1991, J. Eckblad, pers. com.). Apparently the
earliest Settlers farmed the bottomlands, even built there, following the example of the Native
Americans, with little danger of severe floods. But within a few decades of settlement, the
Streams were extremely flashy, and flooding carried away houses and even buried whole small
Settlements under 10-20 feet of sediment. The first point is that it is difficult to know exactly
how we are affecting the streams today because we have no unaffected streams to compare
them to; the second point is that this first 50-year period of settlement produced severe
alterations in the landscape with erosional consequences equal to or greater than what we are
experiencing today. This perspective suggests that the present trend in intensivity of land use
may be more a second cycle than the continuation of a steady worsening of the problems.
Thus much of today's forested areas are probably second growth, and few if any
escaped the impacts of livestock grazing. In any case, land use intensity has again been
increasing for the past few decades, with the added threat of farm chemicals such as fertilizers
and pesticides. Data from the county's 1991 soil and water resources conservation plans
demonstrate this trend (Allamakee County SWCD 1991, Winneshiek County SWCD 1991,
Howard County SWCD 1991). In Winneshiek County, total cropland acres increased from 64
to 76% of the total land area between 1960 and 89, and row crops increased as a percentage of
this from 40–44%, with Soil loss levels of 10–25 tons/acre/year on unprotected loess Soils. In
Howard County, the big pair of corn-beans increased from less than 50% of cropland in 1965
to over 77% in 1986. And in Allamakee County, row crops as a percentage of Cropland
increased from 30 to 38 between 1955 and 87, and slightly less than half of all cropland lacks
adequate treatment and averages roughly 14 tons/acreſyear in soil loss. Some of this increase
in row crops is coming from a lengthening of rotations from, for example, corn-oats-meadow
to multiple years of corn, which of course can increase total soil losses and also increase the
need for fertilizers and pesticides. But some of it is also coming from pasture and woodland
conversion, often on steep slopes and subject to high erosion rates.
During similar time periods (the last 30-35 years), livestock have also Significantly
increased in numbers, except for Howard County. In Winneshiek County, though dairy has
decreased, beef cows have increased 79%, fed beef cattle 235%, and Sheep 100%, for a
combined total increase in animal units of 17%. And in Allamakee County, beef cows have
increased over 300% and fed beef cattle just under 600%. These livestock puts pressure On
pastureland, grazed woodland, and streams alike. Even though woods when grazed only
provide a small fraction of the forage of true pastureland, as the Winneshiek plan SayS, too
76
often "owners and operators confuse timber for pastureland." Conversion in the mid 1980s to
cropland and pastureland (roughly 50-50) continued at a steady rate of 1% per year in the
Upper Iowa Rivers Basin, which includes the Upper Iowa, most occurring on D slopes or
greater (>9%). Currently between 75 and 80% of private woodland (a vast majority of total
Woodland acres) in Winneshiek is grazed, destroying the vegetation - including, eventually, the
trees - and resulting in an average soil loss of almost 10 tons/acre/year.
Overgrazed pasture can erode at similar rates, and it is most heavily used, and abused,
along streams. Estimates vary, but somewhere between 60 and 95% of all stream reaches are
accessible by livestock, compacting the soil and removing natural vegetation. Don Bonneau
(pers. Com.) of the Iowa DNR believes streambank erosion is a significant problem which has
been overlooked in this part of the state. The hilly topography and widespread livestock
access together produce a much more serious problem than in more gently rolling areas of the
state with very little livestock. A 1985 study estimated that between 8 and 34% (varying by
county) of streambank miles in the tri-couty area exhibited serious erosion problems (USDA
1985), which demonstrates that, similar to upland erosion, great quantities of Soil loss are
usually concentrated on a relatively small portion of the area.
Though land use intensity has been increasing, Soil conservation efforts have
simultaneously been making slow but steady progress, which was given a great boost by
various measures of the 1985 farm bill, especially the conservation reserve program. About
15% of all cropland in Howard and Winneshiek Counties is currently enrolled as CRP land,
and 12% in Allamakee County. Various tillage methods, Cropping patterns, and Structural
measures have also made improvements in soil losses, with the exception of the lengthening of
rotations. Gaige Wunder, who has been working at the Decorah Hatchery since the 1970s,
believes that water quality is just barely holding its own, in that increased land use has offset
the gains which have been made in soil conservation and, more recently, farm chemical
reduction. Many farmers who have been around for a long time, however, claim that the
flashineSS of the streams has significantly declined, indicating an increase in infiltration and
corresponding decrease in runoff, which would benefit surface water.
Such a trend may not, however, be a boon to groundwater quality. With increased
infiltration comes an increased potential for the leaching of farm chemicals down through the
soils and into groundwater aquifers. This is paradoxical, as groundwater contamination
deserves a great deal of credit for the present emphasis nationwide on increasing the
sustainability of our agricultural practices. In the early 1980s, an ad hoc working group in
Iowa made up of University researchers, State DNR and Geological Survey personnel, Soil
77
Conservation Service personnel and others began in-depth study of the Big Spring basin in
northern Clayton County (just to the south of Allamakee), and demonstrated the relationship
between quantities of farm chemical applications and their concentrations in groundwater
discharges from the Big Spring itself. By the mid-80s statewide data was coming out from
Iowa and elsewhere showing alarmingly high levels of nitrates and certain pesticides in
drinking water, and in 1987 the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act was passed by the state
legislature. This act, among other things, effectively taxed farm chemicals and put the
proceeds towards establishing and funding the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and
the Integrated Farm Management Program, both which have become models for states and the
nation in research, education and demonstration of more Sustainable agricultural practices.
Part of what made the Big Spring basin an attractive site for a long-range groundwater
study was the karst topography of northeastern Iowa, described earlier. These conditions of
shallow soils over fractured bedrock often provide only a very minimal level of filtering as
water moves down towards the groundwater. Rather than a long slow process of infiltration,
karst aquifers can actively interact with surface water, especially in areas of high sinkhole
concentration. Sinkholes provide direct access to such aquifers, channelling field and farm
runoff directly to the groundwater, and even engulfing whole streams, referred to locally as
'disappearing streams'. In the Big Spring Basin, for example, though only about 9% of the
groundwater comes through sinkholes, it is estimated that 20-50% of the contamination comes
with that water, depending upon seasonal precipitation quantities and intensities (Robinson
1991). In northeast Iowa 12,700 sinkholes have been mapped, with 1,300 of them in
Winneshiek County and probably a similar number in Allamakee (Robinson 1991).
The pollutant which has received the most attention has been nitrate, the most stable
nitrogen compound in the soil and water. Health threats from high nitrate levels include what
is called the 'blue baby syndrome', where the blood's capacity to carry oxygen is reduced, as
well as the implication of lower birthweight babies. In Iowa, though the percentage of private
wells tested by the University Hygienic Lab (12-18,000/year) exceeding the maximum
contaminant level of 45 ppm nitrate has remained relatively steady since 1965, this is in Spite
of the vast improvement in average well safety during that time, and in the same period
municipal wells have shown a drastic decline (Hallberg 1987). In Winneshiek County, 13% Of
those private wells tested voluntarily between 1983 and 1989 were exceeded this level, and Of
9 wells tested in 1988-89 as part of the rural wellwater Survey, 5 exceeded the level at least
once of the four times tested (Robinson 1991). Though there are many sources of nitrates,
including municipal sludge, animal wastes, and overloaded wastewater Systems, "while septic
78
tanks, chemical spills, and poor well construction cause local problems, they are no longer a
Significant factor. Nitrate problems have become regional in scope, resulting from the wide-
Spread application of fertilizer." (Hallberg 1987) -
Pesticides are another widespread concern, again more because of what we don’t know
as far as long-term health effects as what we do. There are two main classes of pesticides
Commonly detected in groundwater, the Soil fumigants and nematicides used on vegetable or
Specialty crops, which are highly mobile and/or volatile, and the herbicides, especially atrazine;
the only commonly detected insecticide is carbofuran (Hallberg 1989). By 1989 over 16 -
different pesticides had been detected in Iowa groundwater, and 8% of wells in northeastern
Iowa had detectable levels of one of them (Robinson 1991). Some pesticides detected in
groundwater have presented an anomaly to scientists, who claimed they should not be so
persistent or leach So quickly as groundwater testing shows they have - atrazine is a good
example. But recent research is showing that movement of water and Solutes through the soil
matrix can occur much more quickly than classical Darcian concepts of infiltration would
allow. It describes a mechanism termed preferential flow, which allows greater pore water
velocities through macropores or discontinuities, under unsaturated conditions, and to greater
depths than simple displacement-dispersion through the Soil matrix. Thus, "preferential
movement of Solutes becomes an all-important mechanism when we must be concerned with
the occurrence of ppm or ppb concentrations of toxic substances in drinking water." (Hallberg
1989)
There are many other potential sources of groundwater pollutantion, though coliform
bacteria is the other major one associated with agriculture. Of those private wells tested
between 1988 and 89 in Winneshiek County, 30% contained unsafe coliform levels, and of the
9 wells tested for the statewide rural wellwater survey, all were unsafe in at least One of the
four tests (Robinson 1991). Home septic systems can be potential contaminants of bacteria,
nitrates, phosphates and chlorides, as well as other household chemicals dumped down the
drain. Leaking underground storage tanks can be serious point sources of hydrocarbons such
as gasoline and solvents, which besides polluting groundwater can also produce dangerous
levels of vapor in underground structures such as basements,etc. Landfills can eventually
leach a broad spectrum of pollutants to the groundwater, no matter how well constructed. And
finally, industrial toxic substances can be other potential point sources, either through
purposeful discharges or accidental spills, as all in Decorah are unfortunately aware of thanks
to the contamination of part of its water supply by the dry-cleaning chemical TCE
(trichloroethylene) in the summer of 1992.
79
Peopled Landscapes
A typical Survey of local conservation problems might end here, with the possible
addition of a discussion of 'wildlife' to complement those of water pollution and soil loss.
This wildlife component would represent the biological diversity concerns of the area, and
review the status of those species, especially vertebrates such as birds or mammals, which are
of Concern due to dramatic declines in population size since settlement times. Though there is
little Specific data for the Upper Iowa watershed, I will review what is available, and readers
interested in Iowa and local wildlife lists and discussions may want to refer to the literature
cited.
Wildlife in the State of Iowa has undergone a severe decline since settlement times.
Among interior (not including the border rivers) fish species, 5 have been extirpated and 14
are endangered or threatened currently (Menzel 1980). Of 76 species of reptiles and
amphibians in Iowa today, 37% are endangered or threatened, another 32% declining, and it is
estimated that less than one-third of the original species will be present in the state in 50-100
years (Christiansen 1980). Some 9% (17 species) of breeding birds have been extirpated from
the State, and another 15% are currently endangered or threatened (Dinsmore, 1980). And of
Iowa's 70 mammal species, 14% have been extirpated since settlement, 14% are endangered or
threatened, and 16% more are declining (Bowles 1980). A little closer to home, the Iowa
Natural Resources Inventory (Iowa DNR 1992) lists 81 Species of plants, 16 invertebrates, 13
vertebrates, and 5 communities as endangered, threatened, or of Special Concern within the
Upper Iowa watershed. More discussion of the status of Some vertebrates, especially
mammals, is available in the Environmental Inventory Report On Dry Run cited earlier.
Some are surprised or alarmed by these numbers, but the only Surprising aspect of
them to me is that they are not higher. The plain fact is, we have transformed the landscape
into a peopled one, where human activity over a vast majority of the Surface area has
dramatically altered the structure and function of the land community which was here before.
Hunting pressures can reduce or eliminate populations such as the timber rattlesnake and
passenger pigeon, respectively. Introduced species, for example many species of plants or the
house sparrow, starling, or cowbird can negatively impact native species directly through
competition or other means and indirectly through a multitude of various ecological
interactions. And altering the natural disturbance regime can drastically change Species
composition of remaining natural areas, such as the exclusion of fire from open oak or Oak-
hickory savanna resulting in the gradual closure of canopy, disappearance of original ground
80
cover, and eventually replacement by more tolerant overstory plants such as maples and
basswood. But ultimately, the natural terrestrial systems in an agricultural landscape in the
midwest have suffered most from simple displacement/replacement by controlling land uses
Such as agriculture.
Such changes can be read only indirectly in the streams. Muddy waters and severe
floods may be signs of stress in these ecosystems. They also may signify the severity of a soil
loss problem which threatens the longterm agricultural productivity of our fields or their ability
to support natural ecosystems. But what do they mean in terms of the landscape mosaic which
was here 145 years ago. Try hard to imagine the landscape described in the first three
chapters, then step out of your car or house, and what do you See? If we can hear "[the] song
of the waters ... [the] music in these hills ... [the] vast pulsing harmony - its score inscribed on
a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhytnmS Spanning the
Seconds and the centuries ...", both the waters and the hills beg the question "Just how much
room have we left, both on the land and in our hearts and minds, to this Orchestra?"
I will return to this theme in the next chapter, but it may be worth remembering that
significantly less than 10% (and as low as 1%, depending upon definitions, etc) of the area of
the watershed exists today in anything resembling a natural (preSettlement) Condition.
Focusing on species, or even on 'wildlife’, misses the point, which is that if a primary tenet of
conservation as a process is moving in the direction of greater harmony between people and
the land community in the hopes of integration of the two, we have a long way to go. The
natural areas movement among conservationists is a recognition of this tenet, and of the
importance of preserving open spaces even within peopled landscapes. Simultaneously,
ecologists are studying new ways of talking about natural Systems, and working with them,
and fitting people into them. That water pollution and soil loss are the major concerns in the
Upper Iowa watershed unfortunately demonstrates the degree to which modern
environmentalism has shifted emphasis away from Leopold's concept of conservation.
81
Chapter 6: Making Room?
The people would act today if the situation were clearly understood. The question is
whether we do the right thing now or wait until the expense shall have increased a hundredfold.
The preservation of springs and streams and forests will one day be undertaken as freely as the
building of fences or bridges or barns. When that day comes, Iowa, once so fair in her virginal
beauty of wild-flowered meadow and stream-washed groves, now so rich in all that comes from
tillage and toil, will put on yet an added splendor in that all her toil and tilth shall yield to
wisdom's guidance; forest and meadow shall receive each in turn intelligent and appropriate
recognition; beauty will become an object of universal popular concern, and once again across the
prairie state the clarified waters of a hundred streams will move in perennial freshness toward the
great river and the sea.
Dr. T.H. MacBride, President’s address to the
Iowa Academy of Science, 1897
In this chapter I review those actions and efforts within the watershed that are attempts
to address the issues raised in the previous chapter; who the actors have been, what have been
their motivations, and what has been accomplished. In no way can it be an exhaustive review,
but the issues do suggest two foci, river/natural areas protection and Soil and water
conservation. 'Protecting the River' describes efforts to designate the Upper Iowa as a scenic
river or in other ways preserve some adjoining lands. Conserving Soil and Water’ traces the
goals, methods, and effectiveness of soil and water conservation efforts up to the present, with
a small aside on riparian buffer/filter strips. And 'The Upshot' reflects on these efforts,
returns to Leopold's philosophy in evaluation, and provides Some ideas on alternative
approaches.
Protecting the River
Efforts in Upper Iowa River protection, no less than in soil and water conservation and
most conservation/environmental actions, have been initiated and supported largely through
state and federal policy. Located, as described in the first part of this paper, in the paleozoic
plateau and gracing the landscape with its unique geological and ecological features such as
entrenched meanders and algific talus slopes, the Upper Iowa was naturally one of the first in
the midwest to be considered for protection when the concern arose. In the 1960s, with
growing awareness over water quality and river protection as conservation Was evolving into
82
environmentalism, both the State of Iowa and the Federal government began looking at the
Upper Iowa for potential inclusion in their respective river protection programs.
In 1967 the state Studies culminated in an evaluation that concluded that the Upper
Iowa should be a potential first unit in a proposed state scenic rivers system. The State
embarked on a land acquisition program, and in five years had acquired 885 acres along its
banks (Knudson 1979). But the big step was in 1968, when Congress passed the Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act, and through the efforts of Iowa Senator George Culver (K. Knudson, pers.
com.) included the Upper Iowa as one of 27 designated for potential addition to this
nationwide system of national treasures. The Federal Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (BOR)
carried out a major study in 1970 and produced what was referred to as the thin strip plan,
which was submitted to Congress and the President in 1972 with little change and a
recommendation for inclusion contingent upon state action (USDI 1973).
This plan proposed the protection of an 80-mile segment of the river, between river
mile 86 (at its last exit from Minnesota, near the Howard-Winneshiek line) and Lane's Bridge,
6 miles upstream from its mouth. The upper 21 miles to Bluffton was to be designated scenic,
the middle Section between Bluffton and the lower dam and including Decorah and the most
visible agricultural activities was to be recreational, and the last 30 miles between the lower
dam and Lane's Bridge were to be scenic. Management objectives included 1) maintaining the
free-flowing condition of the river, 2) protecting the Scenic, recreational, geological, fish and
wildlife, archaeological and other resources, 3) maintaining and enhancing water quality, and
4) providing opportunity for river-oriented recreation. To facilitate the last objective, 8
potential development sites were located on the river for access and other Services, with 5
including campgrounds.
As suggested in the thin-strip nickname, the plan focused on a critical zone
immediately adjacent to the river, and mainly only the 'visual horizon' or 'critical sight Zone'
beyond that. For the protection of a 100-400 foot strip along the river and adjacent visible
bluffs Or hillsides, the plan required control of a total of 14,300 acres, 13,500 acres of which
was private, somewhere between 1 and 2% of the total land area of Winneshiek and
Allamakee Counties. Of this 13,500 acres, it was estimated that about 6,000 acres,
predominantly the river strip itself, would need to be purchased in fee, while the remaining
7,500 acres, extended vistas and land within river bends, could be protected with less-than-fee
scenic controls such as easements. Acquisition of additional backup lands for forest or game
management or protection of tributary trout streams would receive lower priority.
The first public exposure to these plans was in August of 1970, when the BOR and the
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Iowa Conservation Commission (ICC) jointly held hearings to explain the progress to date and
receive public feedback, which they most certainly did. With the appearance of the plan in the
newspapers a week before the hearings, a group of local landowners immediately hired a
lawyer and formed an organization called the Upper Iowa River Protection Association, or
UIRPA. This group packed the hearings, then continued to send press releases and letters to
the editor, circulate petitions, even caravaned to Des Moines to protest the plan to the
Governor. According to Karl Knudson (pers. com.), the landowners were 'fearful and
suspicious' of the government plans, perhaps rightfully so, for in five years of planning there
had apparently been little to no public involvement or consultation.
Unfortunately, however, the landowner's opposition was to a large degree emotional
rather than rational, and their approach to obstructing the plan was apparent from the August
26 hearing. Their attorney "first made a few ad hominem attacks, then began to cloud the
atmosphere with misinformation, addressing the landowners in the audience rather than the
hearings officers, and playing on their fears and lack of knowledge about the project."
(Knudson 1979) This statement admittedly comes from a staunch supporter of the federal
plan, but his description of the many erroneous facts presented by the attorney is a fair critique
of the group's tactics. For example, the attorney stated that the government would confiscate
320 acres/mile, or a strip 40 rods in width on each side of the river. Actually, the plan called
for an average of 75 acres of fee acquisition and 94 acres of easements per mile, and the
Federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act limited fee acquisition to 100 acres/mile.
Another claim made by the attorney was that over $72,000 would be lost in property
taxes, a figure arrived at by assuming the full 13,500 acres would be purchased in fee and
would be predominantly prime farmland. But the plan called for only 6,000 acres to be
purchased and so removed from the tax rolls, and much of this would be rough land anyway.
And finally, the attorney took the estimated total projected cost of $1,269,000, divided by
13,500 acres and told the farmers they would be reimbursed at a rate of $92/acre (though it
should be 94 by those calculations) for prime farmland worth much more than that. But in
truth, the plans assumed reimbursement for all lands at fair market value; what the attorney
forgot to mention was the fact that the costs for easements and purchase of rough land would
be significantly less than that for farmland. Once these mistruths were repeated often enough
in the public arena, however, they took on a degree of authenticity which was impossible for
the federal and State Officials to counter.
There were legitimate concerns with the proposal also, however. First and foremost
among these was the problem of fencing. Anyone who has tried to maintain fences in riparian
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areas knows the difficulty it presents, and the plan would necessitate fences between much of
the private land and the public thin strip along the river. Construction and maintenance could
present significant economic burdens to the landowners, as Iowa law places the responsibility
of fencing between public and private lands equally on the two parties. The possibility of up
to a 400-ft Strip on each side of the river didn't seem so thin to some, and was especially
unnecessary for the maintenance of a visual corridor which appeared to be the primary goal of
the plan. And finally, the potential impacts of increased usage by river or trail users was
unpredictable, and many simply were fundamentally and ideologically opposed to government
ownership of significant areas of land.
Landowner resistance was not the only obstacle the proposal encountered, however.
The federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act allowed for two pathways to inclusion in the
nationwide System, direct federal designation, acquisition and management or inclusion
contingent upon State designation, acquisition and management as a State wild and Scenic river.
The Upper Iowa was proposed as the latter, placing the bulk of the burden on the ICC in
administration. As a first step in this process, the Iowa legislature passed the Iowa Scenic
Rivers Act in 1970 with the Upper Iowa the sole initial member. But when the state went
looking for financial assistance for land acquisition, it realized the federal act provided no
special funds for state-administered rivers aside from the normal 50-50 costsharing funds
already available to states from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, or Law.con funds.
Iowa Governor Ray wrote to the Department of Interior asking for 75% cost-sharing and to be
given project credit for the 800+ acres the state had acquired in the past five years, but was
refused on both points (USDI 1973). In effect the BOR was recommending that the Upper
Iowa be designated a National Wild and Scenic River but that the job of acquisition and
management be turned over to the State, "along with general recommendations which the state
would be free to ignore." (Knudson 1979)
With no monetary incentive from the federal government and under fire from
landOwnerS, the ICC quietly abandoned the BOR plan and drew up and pursued their own
alternative (Knudson 1979). This plan focused on the fee title acquisition of two large blocks
of land, one between Kendalville and Bluffton and the other between Decorah and the upper
dam. It was not limited to mainly riparian areas or bluffs, and originally planned the purchase
of about 5,000 acres along 28.7 miles of river using Lawcon matching funds. A 1973
environmental impact statement showed that over 86% of this land was agricultural, and the
project would require removal and relocation of the residents of 26 farmsteads.
The ICC went ahead with the plan, purchasing land when available, but progress was
85
much slower than anticipated and eventually land purchases were not confined solely to those
blocks. This plan was sharply criticized by groups such as the Sierra Club and the League of
Women Voters for its complete reliance on fee purchase and emphasis on agricultural land,
and in 1977 these and other groups succeeded in earmarking $100,000 of a $500,000 open
Spaces bill for easements on the Upper Iowa River. The ICC was uninterested in easements,
however, turned down a landowner's offer to donate one on his wooded bluffs overlooking the
river in the lower block, and let the money revert to the general fund the next year where they
could use it for acquisition.
To this day the ICC, now the Iowa DNR, continues a process of land acquisition,
though slowed significantly from the 1970s. The original Iowa Scenic Rivers Act called upon
the DNR to develop a plan for the designation and management of scenic rivers, but such a
plan was absent until the legislature approved a fulltime temporary staff position in 1978 for
the job. Study was conducted during 1979 and 80, and the product was a general plan for
protected waters in Iowa not limited specifically to rivers (ICC 1981). In 1984 the Iowa
legislature approved the plan as part of the Protected Waters Act, meant to replace the Scenic
Rivers Act of 1970, in which the Upper Iowa was, once again, a potential designate. The
DNR drew up a management plan for the Upper Iowa after hearings in 1989, which the
UIRPA is currently attempting to block from legislative action through litigation.
This plan harkens back to the BOR plan of the early 70s (Iowa DNR 1990). The
study area includes a 64-mile stretch from Kendalville in Winneshiek to the highway 76 bridge
in Allamakee County. The primary protection zone consists of unique ecological features,
most often seen areas, and other significant visual features, concentrating on a 50-ft strip along
the river and adjacent wooded slopes of bluffs. The secondary protection zone includes such
areas as wooded tributary streams, Soils Suitable for natural areas, and upland forests and
savannas removed from the river but which are desirable for a healthy and diverse ecosystem.
The management guidelines call for addressing agricultural and woodland abuse, encouraging
healthy wildlife and fisheries, and recreational use, and improving water quality in the river,
but are vague on how to accomplish this. The plan is equally vague on methods of protection
for the primary and secondary zone lands; though it rejects condemnation and States all
participation and cooperation will be voluntary, it provides no indication of which of a
multitude of listed possibilities, from fee title acquisition to easements to tax incentives to
local zoning, will be the preferred means of action.
Hearings during research for the Protected Waters Area General Plan and the Upper
Iowa River plan, conducted by the DNR in 1980 and 1989 in Decorah, uncovered similar
86
opposition as that encountered in the 1970 hearings. Antagonism towards the DNR and
government involvement in river protection remained strong. In the two and a half days Kevin
Szcodronski of the Iowa DNR held office hours in Decorah for public information and
comment, he believes the anti-government forces had someone present the whole time to
monitor the discussion, intimidate, and in general poison the atmosphere (K. Szcodronski, pers.
com.). Though I contacted the UIRPA and they promised to meet with me, they eventually
refused due to suspicion that I was representing the State and the DNR. In the letter
explaining this refusal from one of UIRPAs leaders, it was claimed the protected water area
plan for the Upper Iowa would probably result in less animal agriculture, milk plants closing,
and increased chemical usage due to a decrease in livestock and the usefulness of crop
rotations. The author admonished that "many of us are veterans ... if we would put our lives
on the line in a foreign land; there will be hell to pay when our own homes, families etc are
On the line!! Remember that!"
Though such extreme views are certainly in the minority, landowner opposition has
been a significant obstacle which could probably have been dealt with much more effectively
than it was. Once the seeds were sown against government ownership with the Army Corps
of Engineer's lock and dam work on the Mississippi and the creation of the Upper Mississippi
Fish and Wildlife Refuge, the wild and scenic river and protected water area proposals were
seen simply as government forcing its plans on locals by many in the eastern part of the
watershed. No contacting of individual landowners to explain the proposals was attempted (M.
Carrier, pers. com.) which might have prevented the "Snowballing of emotional opposition"
(Knudson 1979). Unfortunately, the DNR now has a very negative image among many
landowners thanks to this and other issues, which it will take a large degree of Outreach to
overcome, but which I believe must be emphasized if they are to succeed in current or future
efforts.
Another problem with the protection efforts to date has been the emphasis on fee
acquisition as the sole means of protection The original Wild and Scenic Rivers Study by the
BOR relied heavily on easements, but ever since the DNR dropped this plan they have been
interested solely in fee purchase. Purchase of land is the slowest and costliest method of
protection, requires either payment of property taxes by the government or loss of those taxes
to the local tax base, and often entails management and upkeep expenses. Aside from
easements, which have been steadily growing in popularity as a conservation tool for Over a
decade, the protected water area plan mentioned several other possible methods of protection,
but it is clear from discussions with Mike Carrier of the DNR that they continue to pursue
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almost exclusively the fee purchase option. He says that easements generally cost about 60%
of fee purchase anyway, there are potential enforcement problems, and public ownership
provides maximum potential for public use.
This last point is a serious issue which hasn’t been sufficiently addressed in the river
protection efforts to date. Why protect the river? What are the goals of protection - for the
ends will certainly influence the means employed to achieve them. The BOR plan, for
example, appeared oriented almost solely towards canoeists and scenic preservation in its
emphasis on the 'visual corridor,” which would be perfectly compatible with the employment
of scenic or conservation easements. But such a thin Strip plan may accomplish very little in
Water quality, as a river is a product of its streams, and the negative agricultural sources of
pollution are in no way restricted to the river corridor. And it would provide minimal benefit
to wildlife or biological diversity in general, probably increasing riparian habitat but doing
little for upland habitat, and certainly not increasing ecological diversity significantly.
Though the present protected water area plan pays lip Service to the importance of
addressing such away-from-river concerns, the emphasis, as Seen in the primary protection
zone, is very similar to the BOR plan. The DNR's two block plan does include significant
upland areas, but rather than focus on protecting existing natural areas wherever they may
occur, a majority of land targeted is currently agricultural. The apparent emphasis in this
approach is on providing large areas for the use of hunters and fisherpeople, and they have
been criticized for this (K. Knudson, pers. com., M. Ackelson, pers. Com.). I will return to the
issue later, for it is obviously important not only in determining the means for protection but
also the pieces to protect.
However, preservation has not been completely limited to stream-associated purchases.
Though I don't have complete figures, both the State and the County Conservation Boards
have acquired upland parcels of land, the best example of which is Hayden Prairie north of
Cresco. Named in honor of Iowa conservationist Ada Hayden, and acquired largely thanks to
her statewide campaign for prairie preservation, it is the largest such preserve in the State.
Two private groups which are working on preservation in the watershed include the Iowa
Natural Heritage Foundation (INHF) and The Nature Conservancy. The latter is focusing
primarily on protection of the unique algific talus slopes, but the former is also working to
preserve other river-associated natural areas such as bluffs and riparian areas (M. Ackelson,
pers. com.). The INHF is "diametrically opposed" to the DNR's emphasis on fee purchase and
public use, and has been successful in getting conservation easements donated to them (M.
Ackelson perS. Com.).
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Conserving Soil and Water
A similar situation is found in the area of soil and water conservation; the methods and
approaches taken have changed only recently as ideas of what needs conserving have evolved.
Ever since the 1930s, soil conservation has been an integral component of federal farm policy.
The Soil Conservation Service (SCS) has been the technical agency which provides on-the-
ground advice and assistance in Soil conserving measures, while the Agricultural Stabilization
and Conservation Service (ASCS) has been the administrative agency which runs the various
farm payment programs. Though there has been a history of conflict over which agency
Should have control of conservation cost-share monies, this responsibility has remained with
the ASCS.
In practice, these two agencies work closely, and often have adjoining office space
within each soil and water conservation district. The districts are local units of government
formed in the 1940s and 1950s with often broad authorization over local land use, but which
in practice are generally synonymous with county boundaries and simply provide a framework
for the State and federal programs carried out by SCS/ASCS. For decades, virtually the sole
concern of agricultural conservation in these programs has been conservation of the Soil
resource for the purpose of maintaining the productive capacity of our agricultural lands.
From the 1930s to the 1980s then, conservation methods consisted of a variety of on-
field practices meant to reduce soil loss, encouraged and often designed by staff of the SCS
with voluntary cooperation from the farmer, and paid for by cost-share funds through ASCS or
various state programs. Although measures such as windbreaks and retiring highly erodible
land (HEL) in various set-aside programs were also employed, the main thrust was on
cropland practices, including tillage practices, cropping patterns, and Structural measures; Clark
et al. (1985) provide a good review of these practices, and are the source of the effectiveness
data below. These practices are designed to reduce runoff by reducing the impact of rain
and/or the velocity and concentration of overland flow, and to increase infiltration.
Tillage practices include contouring, conservation tillage techniques, and other means
Such as timing of tillage. Planting crops on the contour is a relatively simple technique which
allows the furrows to hold water rather than channel it downhill, and can reduce runoff and
associated solids and farm chemicals by 20-50%. Conservation tillage includes a spectrum of
reduced cultivation techniques including mulch till, minimum till, no till, ridge till, and others,
all designed to increase levels of residue on the soil surface, reducing erosion and slowly
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adding to Soil organic matter. Conservation tillage can be very effective, reducing
contaminants associated with runoff by 10-70+%, but may also require specialized machinery
or increased use of pesticides.
Cropping patterns include such methods as crop rotations, cover cropping, and strip
Cropping. Including Soil conserving crops, whether meadow crops or even simply non-row
grains, in a multiyear Sequence (rotation) can significantly reduce runoff and associated
contaminants by 30-80%, with significant reductions even when the rotation is only between
row and grain crops. Meadow crops especially, however, provide canopy coverage and root
mats, and increase Soil quality by improving structure, organic matter and nutrient content. It
can decrease income because of lower profits on meadow crops, but can also significantly
reduce expenses through lower fertilizer and pesticide costs. Planting a cover crop during
fallow times of course increases the benefits to soil quality. And alternating strips of non-row
crops with row crops, generally on the contour, can increase the effectiveness of simple
contouring by 25%.
Structural measures attempt to retain or redirect runoff, and include terraces, diversion
channels, Sediment basins, and grassed waterways. Terraces, or cross-slope embankments, can
be very effective in cutting the slope into steps and reducing slope length, thus reducing total
runoff and soil loss. But they are also costly to construct and often difficult to maintain.
Vegetated Strips, such as grassed waterways or diversion channels that are designed to channel
runoff either across or down the slope, also can effectively reduce runoff volume and
contaminants. And though catchments or basins do not prevent Soil loss from the field and are
very expensive, they also have potential to be very effective.
Most of these soil conservation practices have been understood and in use for
centuries, it is not new technology. And yet we still have a significant problem with soil loss
in the U.S.. For example, according to the soil and water resource conservation plans for the
three counties including the watershed, conservation tillage is practiced only on 50-60% of
QCTCS needing it, contouring on only 17–70%, and terraces on 17–75% of necessary lands. And
these SCS estimates of what is needed are minimums; what is possible is Certainly much more.
Part of this limited success through the years can be seen as a result of contradictions in
federal farm policy. The commodity price support system, for example, has inadvertently
discouraged conservative cropping patterns through encouraging the increase in cropping
intensity. Much of it, however, is attributable to a simple lack of urgency, Will, and purpose.
Though it is well known, for instance, that a significant majority of the erosion losses can be
traced to a small fraction of total agricultural lands and targeting SCS efforts and ASCS
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monies on those lands would provide maximum return, politicians were unwilling to cut off
the potential cost-share monies from a large portion of their constituents, the public wasn’t
clamoring for progress, and farmers had little real incentive to change.
The goal of these efforts was single; to maintain the productive capacity of the soil by
keeping it on the fields. But with growing concern in the 1960s and 1970s over pesticides, the
1970s and 1980s over surface water quality, and in the 1980s over groundwater pollution, it
became obvious that the short and long term negative effects of agriculture extended far
beyond the field. Increasing public awareness and demand for action shifted the focus from
On-farm to off-farm impacts, and policymakers were forced to respond. These off-farm
impacts include the ecological effects discussed earlier and some which weren’t, such as
threats to humans and other terrestrial predators through bioaccumulation of pesticides, as well
as Severe economic effects such as the dredging of reservoirs and river channels, the loss of
recreation from polluted waters, and the treating of water or drilling of new and deeper wells.
The major federal response to this growing concern over off-farm impacts was the
1985 Food Security Act, which may be the most significant piece of land/water conservation
legislation since the New Deal (Soil and Water Conservation Society 1990). It was an attempt
to bring farm programs into line with agricultural conservation through an extensive set-aside
program and three cross-compliance provisions. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)
allows farmers to retire highly erodible and other ’fragile’ cropland for a contract period of 10
years in return for annual rental payments. The land must be maintained in permanent
vegetative cover, and thus benefits soil, water quality, and wildlife. The Swampbuster
provision prohibits conversion of wetlands and the Sodbuster provision prohibits the breaking
out of highly erodible land without an approved conservation plan, both as conditions of
eligibility for other program benefits. And Conservation Compliance requires all those
farming highly erodible land to develop and follow an approved conservation plan.
Important policy initiatives in Iowa include the Groundwater Protection Act of 1987
and the Resource Enhancement and Protection Act (REAP) of 1989. The latter, besides
significant funding for open spaces (including protected water areas) and other natural heritage
programs, creates the Soil and Water Conservation Fund, which provides money to the Soil
and Water Conservation Districts for cost-share practices and projects (which I will discuss).
The former (mentioned earlier), through registration and dealer fees on farm and household
chemicals and a nitrogen fertilizer tax, created and funds the Leopold Center for Sustainable
Agriculture (LCSA) at Iowa State University and provides funding for the Integrated Farm
Management Demonstration Project (IFMDP).
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These initiatives demonstrate a more holistic approach to agricultural conservation than
Simply applying practices to reduce Soil loss, placing Strong emphasis on research, education
and demonstration for the furtherance of conservation objectives. It is an approach which
promotes an integrated understanding of the farm as a system, and attempts to minimize
negative on and off-farm impacts through minimizing inputs to the system and maximizing
cycling of available resources. For example, research at LCSA developed a late spring soil
nitrogen test which allows farmers to determine the true needs of a field and encourages
correct timing of fertilizer application. IFMDP can then show farmers firsthand how to use
this information, together with tests of nitrogen content in manure and resultant spreading
rates, to reduce or eliminate altogether the need for synthetic nitrogen applications. It is an
approach which takes a holistic view of the farm, especially with regards to livestock (which
the traditional emphasis on cropping practices failed to address); it is also an approach which
takes significant levels of skill in the farmer, and assumes that she or he has the desire to learn
them and Care to do better. -
This more systems-oriented approach, and the general broadening of agricultural
conservation objectives to include the reduction of various off-farm impacts, is also apparent in
the recent emphasis on projects, rather than simply practices, as a method of targeting areas of
major concern. But rather than targeting highly erodible land, projects represent an attempt to
take the next logical step when water is of main concern and focus on Small watersheds,
usually in the range of 5-100 thousand acres in size. In their focus on place, they identify the
major threats to water quality and promote various combinations of research, education, and
demonstration as well as extensive cost-sharing for practices deemed to provide maximum
benefit to the waters. These efforts encompass everything from soil conservation to nutrient
and pesticide management to livestock waste management. They are generally cooperative
efforts including SCS/ASCS, the Cooperative Extension Service (CES), the DNR, and other
state or local organizations. In taking such a holistic and integrated approach, Similar to
integrated farm management but at the miniwatershed level, these projects are symbolic of the
degree to which agricultural conservation has evolved from soil to Soil and water conservation.
Funding sources for these projects reflect the increase in public concern as expressed
through state and federal policy (Iowa DALS 1991). In Iowa, major funding comes from the
Water Protection Fund, which provides support for projects through application from local Soil
and water conservation districts as well as additional cost-share monies for practices. At the
federal level, the recent USDA water quality program plan includes at least two major Sources;
the agricultural conservation program (ACP - which has been the major cost-share program for
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practices, run by ASCS) now funds water quality special projects, and the Water Quality
Demonstration projects are funded to demonstrate and accelerate the adoption of cost-effective
technology not widely in use. The Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act - PL-566
funds - are meant to provide technical and financial assistance for small watershed activities.
While project proposals to these sources are generally submitted by soil and water
conservation districts often with the SCS as lead agency, the EPA also provides project
Support in which the DNA takes the lead. Section 319 funds are part of the 1987 Clean Water
Act and are meant to assist in the implementation of state nonpoint control plans, while the
Pollution Prevention Projects encourage multi-agency, ag-chemical oriented attempts at
controlling the source of pollution.
There are many examples of such projects in the Upper Iowa watershed currently, one
of which is the French Creek stream improvement project in Allamakee County (Allamakee
County SWCD 1991). An ACP water quality special project, French Creek is one of the Iowa
DNR's top 25 priority trout streams, with a watershed of 14,455 acres and soil loss on
cropland averaging over 10 tons/acre/year. The stream is currently managed as a put-and-take
stream, but could maintain a naturally reproducing population of brown trout if not for the
high sediment delivery to the stream and flashiness. The ASCS/SCS is providing 75% cost-
sharing and assistance for terracing, erosion control Structures, diversions, and waste
management structures to reduce sediment and animal waste delivery to the stream. The CES
is working with landowners in proper nutrient management techniques such as crediting
manure and legumes to reduce fertilizer applications. And the DNR is carrying out
streambank stabilization and habitat morphology improvements such as removing sediments
from gravel beds and providing overhead cover. With the voluntary participation of two-thirds
of the watershed’s landowners and the cooperation of ASCS/SCS, CES, and the DNR, much
progress can be made on such targeted areas.
A project example from Winneshiek County is the Trout Run water protection project
(Winneshiek County SWCD 1991). This Small (5,720 acres) watershed, just south of Decorah,
feeds Siewer Spring and the DNR's $2.5 mil trout rearing facility. The shallow aquifer, which
serves as the source of drinking water for residents, is contaminated with high levels of
nitrates and bacteria. The stream, another of the top 25 priority coldwater streams, suffers
poor water quality due to severe nutrient loading, animal waste and Sediment loads, and the
DNR incurs significant expense in reducing the elevated levels of turbidity and BOD before
using the spring water for trout rearing. Again, the project targets most important runoff
reduction areas with cost-sharing for terraces, contour/Strip cropping, and other practices, as
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Well as plugging and diverting 2 disappearing streams which provide direct access to the
groundwater. Reduction in nutrient loading will be encouraged through cost-sharing of animal
waste control facilities, and financial incentives will be provided for farmers to keep records
on cropping history and chemical applications. This information will be integrated with
manure analysis and soil nutrient tests for proper nutrient management. And to complement
this the CES and SCS will carry out extensive education efforts such as workshops for
landowners on Streambank Stabilization and nutrient management, and various mailings.
Special funding for the two-year project will be provided by the Iowa Water Protection Fund.
Other projects in the watershed either planned or in progress are located on Bigalk
Creek in Howard County (an Iowa WQPP), Coon and Bear Creeks in Allamakee and
Winneshiek (the former an EPA 319 and Iowa WQPP, the latter a PL-566 application), and the
Northeast Iowa Demonstration Project (NEIDP). This last one is not in the Upper Iowa
Watershed but Centered on Postville and covers parts of four counties; Winneshiek, Allamakee,
Clayton, and Fayette. One of 24 USDA water quality program demonstration projects around
the country, it now encompasses the Big Springs project begun in the early 1980s which
produced some of the earliest and best evidence linking farm chemical applications to
groundwater levels. In addition to the types of technical and financial assistance described in
the other projects, the CES and SCS specialists are also offering assistance in private wellwater
testing, risk identification, and advice on solutions and maintenance to insure good drinking
water quality.
With the emphasis on off-farm pollution control and especially the concern over
aquatic Systems, one practice which has gained increasing attention and promotion both alone
and as part of small watershed projects is the riparian filter or buffer strip. Riparian areas are
important interfaces between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, with the dual function of
providing terrestrial habitat as well as exerting significant and important control over aquatic
Systems such as providing organic carbon inputs as food, influencing channel morphology and
habitat through bank stabilization and the contribution of large woody debris which together
create dams, pools, and overhangs, and regulate stream temperature, dissolved oxygen and
photosynthesis through shading effects. And finally, the physical location and hydrologic
regime of such areas puts them in a position to filter, store and/or transform agricultural
contaminants before they reach the stream.
Among the contaminants discussed earlier, evidence for such benefits is strongest in
the area of nitrogen reductions. This is because, under anaerobic, or reducing conditions (ie
high water table, as opposed to well aerated soils) nitrogen in the form of nitrate is
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transformed through a bacterial process called denitrification and released to the atmosphere.
A literature review by Osborne and Kovacic (1991) found that in forested buffers 30-50m
wide, 40–100% of nitrate-nitrogen was removed from subsurface flow and 79–98% from
surface flow, and the latter decreased to 54-84% for grass buffers 4.6-27m wide. Phosphorous,
however, cannot be released to the atmosphere, it must either be transported to the stream or
Stored in the Soil or in plants. The corresponding numbers for phosphorous were: forested
buffer Strips 16-50m wide have been shown to remove 50-85% of phosphorous from surface
flow, and grass buffers 4.6-27m wide 61-83%.
Because phosphorous cannot be released, however, the potential of riparian systems as
long-term sinks remains in question. Omernik et al. (1981) compared watersheds with varying
amounts of forest in close proximity to streams, concluded that those with significant amounts
of riparian forest did not have lowered stream nutrient levels, and suggested that "the long-
term effects of near stream vegetation in reducing stream nutrient levels may be negligible".
Phosphorous, however, is often tightly bound (adsorbed) to soil particles, and another study
measured the accumulation and distribution of phosphorous in riparian sediments deposited
within the last 20-25 years (Cooper and Gilliam 1987). They concluded that riparian areas can
be important sinks for phosphorous only when it is continually associated with sediment
deposition, that their study site had been such a sink for the past 20-25 years, but that
ultimately the "capacity of a riparian area to serve as a P sink is finite" because at some point
equilibrium phosphorous concentrations must be reached, even if this takes decades.
Which begs the question, "is there a long-term limit to the potential of riparian areas to
remove solids such as suspended sediment or particulate organic matter?" In the short term,
such as seasonally, these areas may be expected to decrease in effectiveness as sediments build
up, but annual vegetation growth ought to stabilize these new deposits yearly and result in a
long-term sink (Cooper et al. 1987). Various studies have shown that cropped buffers 21-27
meters wide can remove 79% of total solids (Young et al. 1980), grass buffers 4.6-9.1 meters
wide can remove 70-84% of suspended sediment (Dillaga et al. 1989), and a 50 meter riparian
forest can remove 94% of total particulate matter (Peterhogh and Correll 1984).
The evidence is convincing on the potential of riparian areas to protect Streams from
agricultural contaminants, but the total magnitude of this potential will vary greatly for
different contaminants in different places. With so many factors varying greatly between the
studies, it can be almost impossible to come up with standard specifications. Effectiveness
will depend on much more than simply width and vegetation type, the two most common
factors studied. The nature of runoff inputs from the field to the riparian area is important;
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how much is Subsurface and how much overland flow, and how concentrated is the runoff?
What are the litter and soil characteristics of the riparian buffer, what is the predominant
textural class of the Suspended sediment, and are most of the nutrients bound to sediment or
dissolved? What are the length, gradient, and cropping patterns on the contributing slope?
And what is the hydrologic regime of the riparian system? Many studies do not even give all
of this information, much less attempt to explain how it could be accounted for in
Comparisons.
Most of the Studies have also been done on riparian buffers along a medium-sized
river where there a significant floodplain exists, but in the Upper Iowa watershed much of the
Contaminants enter the Upper Iowa via its numerous small tributary streams. Because of the
rough and rugged landscape, there is often little or no floodplain, the absence of which may
greatly decrease the potential for denitrification, the greatest mechanism for nitrogen removal
in Such Systems. Sometimes such areas are not even level but slope directly down to the
Stream, in which case their effectiveness at filtering Solids from overland flow would be
impaired. And none of the studies recognize the management problems associated with the
use of riparian buffer strips in areas of animal agriculture such as northeastern Iowa. These
areas are often some of the best pastureland available, and the sole water source for livestock.
Protecting Such Strips would mean fencing livestock out and providing an alternative source of
water. The initial fencing costs would be high, but would be just the beginning, for damage
from floods requires continual maintenance.
Even with these uncertainties and limitations, riparian buffer strips are being actively
encouraged by both the SCS and the DNR in the watershed, both for their pollution control
potential and for their benefits to wildlife and their impact on stream temperature, and have
even become eligible for the CRP. Barton et al. (1985) looked at 38 streams in southern
Ontario and compared temperature, suspended matter, and variability of discharge to land use
patterns upstream, especially proportion of bank forested. All were inversely related to degree
of upstream bank forested, which explained 56% of the variation in weekly maximum
temperature, the only variable that separated trout from non-trout streams. After leaving a
forested riparian area, they found streams to warm as much as 1 degree C per kilometer. Of
course, these systems are simultaneously home to many terrestrial life forms, and Some which
use the full interface, such as some amphibians, reptiles, and mammals like the beaver.
The fact that both soil conservation and natural resource specialists are promoting the
same thing, and often working together on special small-watershed projects, demonstrates the
degree to which traditional conservation barriers are breaking down, especially ideas about the
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purposes and goals of agricultural conservation. In many respects, this progress is
encouraging. DNR fisheries biologist Gaige Wunder (pers. com.) believes that the situation
has not significantly worsened in recent years, and many landowners, DNR, and SCS people
claim that the flashiness of Streams has significantly declined in the last couple decades.
Evidence for such a claim is not completely unsubstantiated; streamside fences have needed
significantly fewer repairs and many farm ponds have been low or dry in Allamakee County in
recent years, suggesting an increase in infiltration. Much of this improvement is probably
attributable to the increase in concern over the off-farm effects of agricultural runoff, and the
legislation of the 1980s enacted to address it. For example, according to the 1991 Resource
Conservation Plans for the three counties, between 12 and 15% of agricultural cropland in the
watershed is currently enrolled in CRP, and that is a significant amount of land taken out of
cultivation in the watershed.
These programs, and the 1985 FSA in particular, are hardly perfect, however, as I
learned in discussions with District Conservationists of the three counties (K. Bauman, pers.
com., L. Rolling, pers. com., J. Wolf, pers. Com.). Set-aside programs such as the CRP can
have the unintended effect of rewarding land abusers rather than stewards, as the latter may
have refrained from tilling their hilliest land in the first place and so be ineligible. Farm
conservation plans required by Conservation Compliance for the tillage of highly erodible land
often allow alternative levels of soil loss significantly greater than T (the tolerable loss level).
Conservation Compliance only applies to farmers tilling highly erodible land and participating
in other farm programs; but there is room for much inconsistency in the assessment of highly
erodible land - in Howard County only one-quarter of cropland is designated highly erodible
land, though erosion rates are significant over much of the rest as well - and in Allamakee
County only about 50-60% of farmers participate in farm programs annually. All of the FSA
conservation initiatives continue to focus on cropland and do little to reduce livestock waste
pollution. Ultimately, such programs bypass a large number of farmers in the Upper Iowa
watershed and elsewhere, continuing to rely heavily on the voluntary participation of farmers
(such as in mini-watershed projects), and at best achieve minimum standards when we could
be doing even better.
To a certain degree these problems can be addressed through revisions or additions to
legislation/programs in place. Acceptable levels of soil loss in farm plans could be set at T,
plans required for all farms which are part of federal farm programs and not just those with
highly erodible land, and an additional compliance provision formulated for livestock
operations. These would all be consistent with the current cross compliance emphasis at the
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federal level. Some are advocating taking agricultural conservation efforts a step further, in
Saying that what is needed is major social change (L. Asell, pers. Com.), and that society is
inevitably going to be demanding more and new responsibilities from farmers. The
assumption is that these demands will need to be in the form of 'mandated stewardship’ or
regulation, Such as requiring farm plans for acceptable levels of Soil erosion on all land,
regardless of participation in other federal farm programs. Regulation could also take the form
of limits on farm chemical applications depending upon region, or the exercise of various land-
use controls by local soil and water conservation districts.
The Upshot
It is this kind of talk, of major change through regulation, which usually ruffles the
feathers of those who make their living directly from the land, including farmers. To a greater
degree than that allowed by most environmentalists, their concerns are deeply rooted in ideas
of possession and ownership, that in turn are steeped in the American traditions of fierce
independence and individualism. Nobody wants to be told what to do with something they
believe belongs to them. The most tragic conflict our nation has been involved in was
internal, the Civil War, and was fought between groups of people with different ideas about
possession and ownership. And the current land-use controversy in the US is, in a parallel
manner, over conflicting ideas of possession, and what ownership of land really means. Much
of the agricultural community views environmentalists with the fear and hostility of those
whose rights and freedoms are threatened by another group, just as the South viewed the
North, opponents of women's liberation view feminists, or America for decades has epitomized
the communist Soviet Union as the Evil Empire.
In all of these cases, the reactionary nature of this resistance to change, especially
When the impetus comes from the outside, is to a large degree the collective expression of
accumulated anger, fear, suspicion, and frustrations, and the identification with a group, the 'us
versus them' syndrome. But to a certain degree it also represents a fundamental problem of
our time and country. The United States of America was founded for the protection of
freedom, liberty and individual rights, but more and more it is being called upon to promote
responsibilities and obligations in human-human and human-land relations. A similar situation
is found today in the arena of crime and drugs, with society demanding that government take
action, and government responding with a war on drugs, more police, and more prisons.
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But can government solve such problems, impose such responsibilities? In human-
land relations, significant steps have been taken through the years, especially in the last decade
in agriculture. But how will we ultimately measure success? Some say we need goals in
agricultural conservation, we need to determine how much is enough and orient our policy
efforts towards achieving those goals (J. Gulliford, pers. Com.). In such a view, success means
progress in attaining goals, be they in soil loss reductions or open spaces protections. And yet
is it not possible to someday have State forests scattered throughout the landscape, even a
protected river corridor, which are little more than crowded museum pieces? And to have
minimum soil loss, no synthetic chemicals, and waters free from pollution but little room in
the hearts and minds or on the lands of private citizens for things natural, wild, and free? I
believe it is possible, but it is not a landscape in which I would want to live.
Aldo Leopold recognized this tendency to relegate conservation duties to the
government bureaus in the opening words of this paper. Though there has been tremendous
growth in concern which metamorphosed into environmentalism since his lifetime, the
dominant formula for conservation remains very similar to his day. Science/technology gives
us information, knowledge, or capabilities, which the major conservation organizations use to
pressure governments to enact legislation protecting Open Spaces, Species, waters, and so on.
The rise in use of litigation and the judicial branch of government as a conservation tool by
the major organizations over the last two decades reflects not only the degree to which they
have been successful in getting legislation enacted, but also the degree to which this legislation
has been resisted, forcing conservationists to direct their resources towards monitoring
implementation as well as lobbying for legislation.
Leopold (1939a) recognized that the reason for this resistance, the "basic fallacy in
present-day conservation", is the fact that the human relation to land remains strictly economic.
This relation is largely a function of the "complete regimentation of the human mind [that is]
accomplished by our self-imposed doctrine of ruthless utilitarianism." When land use is driven
by economic considerations and criteria alone, government-imposed conservation becomes an
exercise in restraint or caution, a limit to the freedom of the landowner. But to Leopold
(1939a), true conservation involved much more than restraint; it meant "a positive exercise of
skill and insight" on the part of the landowner, born of a warm and personal understanding of
the dramas which surround her or him on their very own land. To illustrate this point, he
described an incident on the campus arboretum in which some botanists asked him to clear the
bog birch which was shading out the white ladyslippers along the marsh. After describing the
cycles of rabbits which normally keep the birch low, the deer grazing on it and the grouse
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relying on its seeds during a blizzard, he concludes "that our little entity, the bog-birch, is
important after all. It spells life or death to deer, grouse, rabbits, ladyslippers." He then enters
into a what-if scenario about farmers, of which I will treat the reader to a generous portion
because, though Leopold was a farmer of sorts himself, a scientist, an educator, and a
policymaker, he was also a poet and as such a symbol of what is too often lacking in these
Other arenas.
Disregarding all those species too small or too obscure to be visible to the layman, there
are still perhaps 500 whose lives we might know, but don't. I have translated only one little scene
out of the life-drama of one species. Each of the 500 has its own drama. The stage is the farm.
The farmer walks among the players in all his daily tasks, but he seldom sees any drama, because
he does not understand their language. Neither do I, save for a few lines here and there. Would it
add anything to farm life if the farmer learned more of that language?
One of the self-imposed yokes we are casting off is the false idea that farm life is dull.
What is the meaning of John Steuart Curry, Grant Wood, Thomas Benton? They are showing us
drama in the red barn, the stark silo, the team heaving over the hill, the country store, black
against the Sunset. All I am saying is that there is also drama in every bush, if you can see it.
When enough men know this, we need fear no indifference to the welfare of bushes, or birds, or
soil, or trees. We shall then have no need of the word conservation, for we shall have the thing
itself.
The landscape of any farm is the owner's portrait of himself.
Conservation implies self-expression in that landscape, rather than blind compliance with
economic dogma. What kinds of self-expression will one day be possible in the landscape of a
cornbelt farm? What will conservation look like when transplanted from the convention hall to the
fields and woods?
Begin with the creek: it will be unstraightened. The future farmer would no more
mutilate his creek than his own face. If he has inherited a straightened creek, it will be
"explained" to visitors, like a pock-mark or a wooden leg. The creek banks are wooded and
ungrazed. In the woods, young straight timber-bearing trees predominated, but there is also a
sprinkling of hollow-limbed veterans left for the owls and squirrels, and of down logs left for the
coons and fur-bearers. On the edge of the woods are a few wide-spreading hickories and walnuts
for nutting. Many things are expected of this creek and its woods: cordwood, posts, and sawlogs;
flood-control, fishing and swimming; nuts and wildflowers; fur and feather. Should it fail to yield
an owl-hoot or a mess of quail on demand, or a bunch of sweet william or a coon-hunt in season,
the matter will be cause for injured pride and family scrutiny, like a check marked "no funds."
Visitors when taken to the woods often ask, "Don't the owls eat your chickens?" Our
farmer knows this is coming. For an answer, he walks over to a leafy white oak and picks up one
of the pellets dropped by the roosting owls. He shows the visitor how to tear apart the matted felt
of mouse and rabbit fur, how to find inside the whitened skulls and teeth of the bird's prey. "See
any chickens?" he asks. Then he explains that his owls are valuable to him, not only for killing
mice, but for excluding other owls which might eat chickens. His owls get a few quail and many
rabbits, but these, he thinks, can be spared. The fields and pastures of this farm, like its sons and
daughters, are a mixture of wild and tame attributes, all built on a foundation of good health. The
health of the fields is their fertility. On the parlor wall, where the embroidered "God Bless Our
Home" used to hang in exploitation days, hangs a chart of the farm's soil analyses. The farmer is
proud that all his soil graphs point upward, that he has no check dams or terraces, and needs none,
He speaks sympathetically of his neighbor who has the misfortune of harboring a gully, and who
was forced to call in the CCC. The neighbor's check dams are a regrettable badge of awkward
conduct, like a crutch.
Separating the fields are fencerows which represent a happy balance between gain in
wildlife and loss in plowland. The fencerows are not cleaned yearly, neither are they allowed to
grow indefinitely. In addition to bird song and scenery, quail and pheasants, they yield prairie
flowers, wild grapes, raspberries, plums, hazelnuts, and here and there a hickory beyond the reach
of the woodlot squirrels. It is a point of pride to use electric fences only for temporary enclosures.
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Around the farmstead are historic oaks which are cherished with both pride and skill.
That the June beetles did get one is remembered as a slip in pasture management not to be
repeated. The farmer has opinions about the age of his oaks, and their relation to local history. It
is a matter of neighborhood debate whose oaks are most clearly relics of oak-opening days,
whether the healed scar on the base of one tree is the result of a prairie fire or a pioneer's trash
pile.
Martin house and feeding station, wildflower bed and old orchard go with the farmstead
as a matter of course. The old orchard yields some apples but mostly birds. The bird list for the
farm is 161 species. One neighbor claims 165, but there is reason to suspect he is fudging. He
drained his pond; how could he possibly have 165?
His pond is our farmer's special badge of distinction. Stock is allowed to water at one
end only; the rest of the shore is fenced off for the ducks, rails, redwings, gallinules, and muskrats.
Last spring, by judicious baiting and decoys, two hundred ducks were induced to rest there a full
month. In August, yellow-legs use the bare mud of the water-gap. In September the pond yields
an armful of waterlilies. In the winter there is skating for the youngsters, and a neat dozen of rat-
pelts for the boy's pin-money. The farmer remembers a contractor who once tried to talk
drainage. Pondless farms, he says, were the fashion in those days; even the Agricultural College
fell for the idea of making land by wasting water. But in the droughts of the thirties, when the
wells went dry, everybody learned that water, like roads and schools, is community property. You
can't hurry water down the creek without hurting the creek, the neighbors, and yourself.
The roadside fronting the farm is regarded as a refuge for the prairie flora: the
educational museum where the soils and plants of presettlement days are preserved. When the
professors from the college want a sample of virgin prairie soil, they know they can get it here.
To keep this roadside in prairie, it is cleaned annually, always by burning, never by mowing or
cutting. The farmer tells a funny story of a highway engineer who once started to grade the
cutbanks all the way back to the fence. It developed that the poor engineer, despite his college
education, had never learned the difference between a silphium and a sunflower. He knew his
sines and cosines, but he had never heard of the plant succession. He couldn't understand that to
tear out all the prairie sod would convert the whole roadside into an eyesore of quack and thistle.
In the clover field fronting the road is a huge glacial erratic of pink granite. Every year,
when the geology teacher brings her class out to look at it, our farmer tells how once, on a
vacation trip, he matched a chip of the boulder to its parent ledge, two hundred miles to the north.
This starts him on a little oration on glaciers; how the ice gave him not only the rock, but also the
pond, and the gravel pit where the kingfisher and the bank swallows nest. He tells how a powder
salesman once asked for permission to blow up the old rock "as a demonstration in modern
methods." He does not have to explain his little joke to the children.
He is a reminiscent fellow, this farmer. Get him wound up and you will hear many a
curious tidbit of rural history. He will tell you of the mad decade whey they taught economics in
the local kindergarten, but the college president couldn't tell a bluebird from a blue cohosh.
Everybody worried about getting his share; nobody worried about doing his bit. One farm washed
down the river, to be dredged out of the Mississippi at another farmer's expense. Tame crops
were over-produced, but nobody had room for wild crops. "It's a wonder this farm came out of it
without a concrete creek and a Chinese elm on the lawn." This is his whimsical way of describing
the early, fumblings for "conservation."
I do not mean to disregard the various conservation efforts I have described here, nor
the ones which I have missed. Many people and much energy has, I believe, conspired to
move us, in many respects, in the right direction in the watershed. But in many ways,
conservation-as-restrain can be self-defeating, as it has the potential for creating resentment,
for retarding or inhibiting the positive skill and insight necessary for conservative land use.
This problem is seen in the negative reaction to much of the DNR's river protection efforts, as
well as an angry fear over future agricultural regulation. "Subsidies and propaganda may
evoke the farmer's acquiescence, but only enthusiasm and affection will evoke his skill. It
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takes something more than a little "bait" to succeed in conservation." (Leopold 1939a)
I am also a firm believer in publicly-owned wilderness and other smaller pieces of
Open Space. But the reality is that most rural landscapes are peopled landscapes, and there is
only so much land which can be in public ownership for them to remain so. For people to
live in harmony with the land will, in the end, take more than Setting aside some isolated
pieces of 'natural land’, and more than changing the way people, farmers, act in certain places
and situations; it will take changing the way people, and farmers, think about themselves, their
actions, their role in the landscape. "Doesn't conservation imply a certain interspersion of
land-uses, a certain pepper-and-salt pattern in the warp and woof of the land-use fabric? If so,
can government alone do the weaving? I think not. It is the individual farmer who must
weave the greater part of the rug on which America stands. Shall he weave it into only the
Sober yarns which warm the feet, or also some of the colors which warm the eye and the
heart?" (Leopold 1939a)
What does this mean for those interested in bettering human-land relations? It means
that of equal importance to asking "how can we best achieve certain conservation goals?" in
our efforts, is asking "how can we best promote a 'warm personal understanding' of the land,
best foster the 'enthusiasm and affection' of positive skill, and best instill a conservation
aesthetic and ethic?" The answers to these questions do not need to be mutually exclusive, but
the final approaches may be significantly different than if the first question were asked alone.
Admittedly, this can be a chicken and egg problem, especially in policy initiatives; is a
conservation ethic a prerequisite to living on a piece of land without spoiling it, or can
"society demand", through government, better land use and simultaneously promote the ethic?
An example which may illustrate the possibilities is the 1987 Iowa Groundwater
Protection Act mentioned earlier. What is so unique about this legislation is not only the
funding sources but the emphasis on research, education, and demonstration and virtual
absence of regulation. The authors believed that a combination of good Science and innovative
and intensive outreach to farmers could affect major change. And they believed it was an
effective way to communicate to farmers the public's desire for change without forcing it and
creating division and resentment. With this message communicated and the methods for doing
better at their doorstep, the hope was that farmers would be able to change their ways and feel
good about it like they ought to, rather than feeling punished. Since its enactment, nitrogen
fertilizer use in Iowa has decreased from roughly 145 pounds/acre to 117 pounds/acre in 1992,
while in neighboring Illinois use increased from 145 pounds/acre to 160pounds/acre during the
same time period (P. Johnson, pers. com.). Despite this divergence in fertilizer usage, in 1992
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the two states tied for record average yields of 145 bushels/acre.
Much of this agricultural change is in the direction of understanding and managing the
farm as an integrated system, as discussed earlier. This can take large amounts of information
and Skill in the farmer, and various organizations such as the chemical manufacturers and local
farmer cooperatives are increasingly assuming consulting roles in integrated crop and pest
management. At the same time, the usefulness of the Cooperative Extension Service is being
questioned in many parts due to the many and varied sources of information for farmers. Why
not redefine the mission of the CES from simple information links between the agricultural
colleges and farmers to one of integrated farm management specialists, who cooperate with
SCS in promoting whole-farm approaches.
And yet, the refrain I heard over and over again was that we (farmers) can’t afford
conservation, its a matter of economics, and what Society is telling us to do is putting us out
of business. Too often this is just an excuse, a justification for resisting change and rejecting
the idea that we haven’t been doing as well as we ought to, such as when farmers continue to
apply what has been shown over and over again to be twice the amount of nitrogen fertilizer
necessary for maximum crop yields. But conservation practices can cost the farmer money,
such as fencing out and losing production from riparian areas, installing livestock waste
containment systems, or purchasing new tillage or chemical application equipment. We need a
major review and overhaul of all policy such that farmers can make a decent living; if Society
is going to demand better from agriculture, I think agriculture has a right to demand better
from Society.
And here I would like to take Leopold's "a farm is the owner's portrait of himself"
metaphor a step further and suggest that a landscape is the community's portrait of itself, and
the goal of rural policy ought to be to promote the 'integrity, stability, and beauty' of the rural
landscape. This represents a radical departure from the historic farm policy goals of farm
income support, maximum productive efficiency, cheap food, and so on. It may mean we will
all have to pay a little more for our food. It ought to mean greater farm, landscape, and
regional diversity, fewer inputs, a greater percentage of food production profits going to the
farmer and less to the chemical and equipment manufacturers and food processors. Such
policy will not be good for the gross Gross National Product, but will be good for the land
community, including its human inhabitants.
Creating, implementing, and evaluating such policy will inherently need to take place
to a large degree at the landscape level, and will mean asking the question "what does this
place really need?", rather than prescribing large-scale solutions to spatially variable problems.
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An important step would be the organization of bureaus or agencies dealing with land-
relations, such as the SCS/ASCS and state DNRs or EPAs, according to natural rather than
political boundaries. The Upper Iowa watershed would be predominantly a part of the greater
driftless area, including small parts of NE Iowa, SE Minnesota, NW Illinois, and much of SW
Wisconsin. For example, many farmers and soil conservation personnel are upset that they are
able to do almost nothing in the way of streambank stabilization because most streams in the
area are Coldwater trout streams protected by the Iowa DNR, whose position is that such
erosion is a normal process (L. Rolling, pers. Com.). In hilly NE Iowa, however, it is a
Significant problem, and if the DNR had been located within the region and designed its rules
and regulations specifically with these place-specific considerations in mind, they might be
more flexible and willing to cooperate with landowners. I am told this is the case in
Wisconsin, of which the SW 1/3 of the state is occupied by such terrain (Rolling 1992).
Such policy review and redesign could be a major positive force in improving land-
relations. But in no way should the responsibility of encouraging conservation behavior be
relegated to the realm of policy. The old formula of conservation using science to create
policy to change behavior needs to be broken down, and the fields of Science, conservation,
and education integrated in an attempt to link them more directly and interactively with the
general public. To a certain extent all these efforts are educational in nature, but not
necessarily in the traditional, direct transfer of information sense. Rather, they are experiential
forms of education, learning by doing, Seeing, making decisions, debating, and so on, rather
than listening to lectures or reading a book. Thus they can simultaneously do conservation,
accomplish Something. With this alternative philosophy in mind, endless possibilities suggest
themselves; these last paragraphs are just a few ideas on local possibilities in this area. In all
these cases, the impetus must come from local citizens, and can be pursued through schools,
conservation organizations, local units of government, or other means.
Beginning with education as we normally think of it, in the schools, get the kids
outside! Let them kick-Screen for insects in the Streams, clamber through ice caves, climb an
Oak Or a pine tree. Let them See and hear and feel, describe Some of the dramas we have
learned to understand, and then show how this understanding comes from knowledge which
comes from Science. There are thousands of schools around the country hours away from
anything wild, anything not paved over, plowed, bulldozed, or in some other way radically
altered from its natural State; when we have such a classroom just out the door it is a crime
not to use it.
At the high School, have students plant prairies on the dike that winds its way through
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town. It is an ideal location for a small scale prairie restoration project, and could be initiated
and operated by Decorah’s best and brightest. Bordered by the river on one side and largely
unflammable lawns and such on the other, and with the fire department immediately adjacent
(!), the fires could be easily controlled. It could evolve into an ideal educational tool, teaching
Students about prairies, plant biology and identification, fire ecology - and imagine the day
when the fall burning generates more excitement than the Saturday football game.
Begin a local water monitoring program. Methods have been developed to use insect
and fish biological diversity to create what is called an index of biotic integrity, or IBI. It
would have to be a serious effort, and learning to identify the organisms can be tough, but
local folks could work with Luther College aquatic biology professors or DNR officials to
train a few individuals with the skills and to develop a sampling framework and timeline.
Such an effort could start small, but eventually consist of a coordinated network across the
watershed with the ability to provide valuable data and track changes in the river and its
tributaries. Even without this ability, however, such a program would be a valuable
educational tool for all those involved. And as the biology of the river is in relatively good
shape, this could be publicized as a matter of community pride, just as Leopold's farmer is
proud of his pond, prairie, and bird list.
Even more community pride could be cultured in the form of greenbelts around towns
in the area, which should be part of a conservation district in the county zoning ordinance.
Zoning is a touchy issue in the area, as demonstrated in the recent process and passage of
county zoning in Winneshiek County. But there is no good reason why the ordinance did not
have any type of conservation district. Decorah especially is slowly sprawling out in many
directions; I don’t mean we need a full circle of greenery to prevent all expansion, but to limit
it to certain areas, the rest of which will remain natural or agricultural, and which in decades
to come will preserve the small-town feel and provide breathing, relaxation, and recreation
space easily accessible to all residents. The debate over such a zoning change would fuel
healthy discussion about the desirability of growth in general. And other natural area lands
could also be included within such a conservation district, such as publicly owned lands or
privately owned lands at the owners request.
Speaking of public debate, an important form of education is information transfer, and
I strongly believe that a 'conservation page' in local newspapers could be extremely effective
in increasing awareness of the many issues involved with good land use, and pricking the
conscience of many who could be doing better. It could feature a column shared by the
SCS/CES and the DNR, articles by anyone from farmers to biologists to schoolkids to, well,
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anyone with personal experiences to share about "meeting the expectations of the land", lots of
letters, and the winners of essay contests on such topics as "what do you think about while
Chopping down trees for firewood?" It would be at once a celebration of what we understand
and have accomplished and an assurance and reminder that we actually know very little and
can always do better.
It could also provide publicity for such projects as water monitoring and restoration
efforts in the area. Restoration ecology is a growing branch of conservation science which
attempts to reconstruct, as close as we can, ecosystems which are almost gone from the
landscape today. Such attempts are valuable both to ecological Scientists and as educational
tools for the community. The previously mentioned planting and annual burning of a prairie
on the dike or the floodplain in Decorah is a great example of such a project. One which I
would like to see attempted is the restoration of an oak savanna similar to efforts around
Chicago. Though the uplands of the watershed probably consisted of large areas of variations
On the oak savanna, there is none left today than I know of, making it even rarer than the
prairie, which is preserved in the largest tract in Iowa north of Cresco, in Howard County.
This would be quite an undertaking, requiring the identification of a fairly large piece of land
(preferably with some open-grown oaks still on it) which is likely to have been savanna, the
gathering or long-distance acquisition of seeds of understory herbs and shrubs to try, the
burning, the keeping of long-term records on species, and many other tasks which would
require a lot of organization, Skill, and dedication.
These are all simply various means of fostering, through experience, the "warm
personal understanding of land" Leopold was trying to do in his Wildlife Ecology course, and
the reader can come up with many more. Much of this understanding is place-specific, and it
is different from the teaching of science in that it is not attempting to train scientists, but to
enable normal folks to better understand and so care for their home place. This subject matter
is often referred to as natural history, or our natural heritage, and I believe it has much
potential to be taught and learned in ways other than the traditional classroom Setting. Part-
day, daily, or weekend field trips could be organized during the summer around topics such as
geology, plants, birds, tracking, or an endless variety of topics, and open to all interested
participants. Alternative "courses" could be offered winter evenings, a couple times a week,
for nontraditional students (again - all interested participants, from business people to farmers
to the elderly). Luther College could develop a natural history program, where students get
paired up with a local farmer. They would learn about the farming operation, the demands,
the conservation efforts attempted, and in return could do biological surveys and ecological
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evaluations as an exercise in human-land relations.
Imagine college students and farmers learning from each other, gaining mutual respect
and understanding, and in the process pursuing a better understanding of the land Community
of which they are a part. Imagine farmers comparing bird counts, and the burning of the
prairie through town drawing numbers, participants, equal to the biggest Fourth of July
celebration. Imagine the day when people will read, on the front page of the newspaper, of
the appearance of a new grass species on the savanna outside of town with as much eagerness
as they read the obituaries, the engagements, or the Presidents new tax plan, and the blooming
of wildflowers has as much meaning as the famous President’s birthdays. Imagine land
consumers becoming land citizens. Today it may only be a dream, but if Scientists,
conservationists, policymakers and the rest of us can together become more creative and
imaginative educators, that dream will be just a little bit closer. For in the end, as Norman
MacLean knows, "eventually, all things merge into one, and the river runs through it."
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Chapter 7: Summary and Conclusions
To Aldo Leopold, a "warm personal understanding of the land" was at the core of his
land aesthetic and land ethic and fundamental to his idea of conservation; harmony between
people and the land. It was the primary pursuit of his work both as a teacher and as a
Scientist. Unfortunately, the fostering of such an understanding among present-day scientists,
conservationists, and policymakers has taken the backseat to an approach which uses
knowledge to direct or restrict behaviour on a large scale. This project is an attempt to buck
this trend, to think locally. It is a focus on place, a perspective on the landscape of a place
and our role in it, and hopefully holds potential for the promotion of a warm personal
understanding of the land.
The Upper Iowa River watershed lies in the extreme northeastern corner of Iowa, in
the heavily dissected region of the state known as the Paleozoic Plateau. The region is so
named due to the bedrock-controlled physiography. Contrary to the earlier belief that this
region was part of the driftless area of Wisconsin, it was glaciated during pre-Illinoian times,
though the thin layer of drift was quickly removed by erosion in much of the watershed. The
sandstones, shales, and carbonates (limestones and dolomites) outcropping in the watershed
were deposited during the Paleozoic era, and the strata dip slightly to the southeast.
Characteristics of these sedimentary layers give rise to unique landscape features, such as
numerous springs appearing just above a layer of impermeable shale, or the extensive karst
formations of the carbonate rockS.
The age of these carbonate formations, as determined from the dating of speleothems,
along with valley terraces and other sediments, provide evidence of the fluvial history of the
watershed. It is a relatively young landscape, with major valley downcutting apparently
occuring largely within the last 150,000 years. The river had maximally deepened its valley to
well below the present floodplain levels by about 30 thousand years ago, after which time
fluvial depostion filled the valleys to the level of terraces seen in rock-cored meanders.
Subsequent to the cutoff and abandonment of these meanders about 15 thousand years ago,
episodes of erosion and deposition related to glacial retreat and Mississippi levels produced a
multitude of younger terraces and left the streams at their present levels, which have probably
been relatively steady for 8-9 thousand years.
Various Native American peoples have been integral components of the landscape for
at least the last 12 thousand years, their cultures changing with the landscape around them.
108
With the retreat of the Wisconsinan ice sheets, windblown loess was deposited across most of
the watershed and became parent material for the area's soils; other parent materials include
glacial till and fluvial deposits. Post-ice vegetation gradually shifted from spruce-tundra-
grassland mosaic through an elm-oak and mesic forest to a hypsithermal prairie. Interestingly,
the hypsithermal appears to have occured significantly later here than in much of eastern North
America, between 3.5 and 5.5 thousand years ago, after which time oak savanna dominated to
the present.
Though located in the most wooded portion of the state, the general perception that the
watershed was predominantly forested preceeding European-American settlement is unfortunate
and incorrect. The western reaches were mostly tallgrass prairie, while mesic oak-maple-
basswood forests occured in many protected ravines, increasing to the east as a function of
climate and the increasing degree of landscape dissection. A large portion of the hillsides and
uplands, however, consisted of various types of Savanna; prairie with a significant component
of woody vegetation. These Savannas ranged from Scrub Savanna to open oak woodland, but
of most importance was the widespread presence of the bur and white oaks over much of the
landscape.
Ever since settlement in 1848, the watershed has supported a variety of animal and
crop agriculture. The alterations in the landscape this land use has caused are reflected in the
streams. Animal waste, pesticides, fertilizers, and Sediment are all Serious nonpoint pollutant
problems, with bacteria and farm chemicals of serious concern in the groundwater also. Point
source pollution, largely from municipal waste, has been addressed through the construction of
a new treatment plant in Decorah. Such intensive land use has replaced most natural
ecosystems, and ecological and so biological diversity has been and continues to be lost.
Major efforts to address such negative impacts from humanization of the landscape are
of two types; natural areas/river protection and soil and water (agricultural) conservation. The
river was proposed as a National Wild and Scenic River, but due to landowner opposition and
lack of federal funds this designation was not achieved. The Iowa DNR has attemted other
coordinated river protection programs, but to date has succeeded only in buying various tracts
of land adjoining the river or its tributaries as they came available. Agricultural conservation
has relatively recently broadened its goals to address water quality, which has resulted in
important legislation and new approaches to reducing the negative off-farm impacts.
Though encouraging, efforts in both of these areas of conservation have relied upon
government action to achieve conservation goals. I believe that if we are truly going to move
towards what Aldo Leopold described as "harmony between people and the land", a land
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aesthetic and ultimately a land ethic is necessary to make conservation a "positive exercise of
- skill and insight" rather than a negative exercise in restraint. Policymakers, conservationists,
and Scientists all need to pursue creative new ways of fostering a "warm, personal
understanding of the land", rather than solely creating goals in efforts at problem-solving. A
focus on place is an integral part of this process, and prerequisite to the perception of a farm
as a portrait of the farmer, a landscape as a portrait of a community.
1 10
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