Protection Forests: Intersections of Law and Science

The national forests of the eastern United States are where and what they are today based in good part on a mistake. When they were being acquired and established in the early twentieth century, hydrology was in its infancy. Yet many hydrologists and their students in government were promising that these forests would provide significant protection from floods. They promised more than they should have.

Forests as protection from floods were embroiled in a contentious and prolonged factual inquiry almost immediately thereafter. Indeed, that inquiry would later mature into a distinct scientific subfield, forest hydrology, that went on to influence how we govern—and do not govern—watersheds today. This article traces that maturation and the co-evolution of the federal laws of forestry, flood control, and watershed governance with forest hydrology, geomorphology, and other branches of hydrologic science. It reveals important lessons for today’s intersections of law and scientific inquiry, especially for legislation that rests on unproven hypotheses.