Abstract The economic yardstick now used to determine the best use of land is by no means a safe one from an ecological or biological point of view. Economics has given us strip lands over coal beds and stone fields in rich narrow valleys over gold bearing gravels. Much the same approach gives us barren moss and lichen-covered hills where redwood forests stood; bracken fields where Douglas-fir or cedar and hemlock were produced; great areas of downey chess where bluebunch wheat grass, or Idaho fescue produced a dense cover; snakeweed and burrow-weed where valuable gramas covered the soil, and nearly bare soil on our mountains once knee-deep in lush vegetation. The sustained high price of wheat has reduced much of the grass cover of the High Plains to nearly bare soil—a potential dust bowl.
H. L. Shantz (Sun,) studied this question.