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¹⁷ Ibid.; Stross, Stubborn Earth, 107–10; Xu, Fei and Bangren, Zhou, eds., Nanjing nongye daxue shizhi, 1914–1988 (Beijing: Zhongguo nongye kexue jishu chubanshe, 2004), 73–77Google Scholar.

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¹⁹ Dobbs, Gordon B., “The Stream-Flow Controversy: A Conservation Turning Point,” Journal of American History 56, 1 (June 1969): 59–69Google Scholar; Saberwal, Vasant K., “Science and the Desicationist Discourse of the Twentieth Century,” Environment and History 4, 3 (1997): 309–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 314–22.

²⁰ Lowdermilk, Walter Clay, interviewed by Chall, Malca, Soil, Forest, and Water Conservation and Reclamation in China, Israel, Africa, and the United States, vol. 1 (Berkeley: Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, 1969), 66–68Google Scholar, 82–86. Sections of this oral history are reprinted in Lowdermilk, Walter C. and Chall, Malca, “Forests and Erosion in China, 1922–1927,” Forest History 16, 1 (1972): 4–15Google Scholar. The first watershed study of this kind in the United States began at Wagon Wheel Gap in Colorado in 1910, but it was not completed until 1926. See Ice, George G. and Stednick, John D., “Forest Watershed Research in the United States,” Forest History Today (Spring/Fall 2004): 16–26Google Scholar; Saberwal, “Science and the Dessicationist Discourse,” 316–17.

²¹ Lowdermilk, “Factors Influencing the Surface Run-Off of Rain Waters,” in National Research Council of Japan, ed., Proceedings of the Third Pan-Pacific Science Congress, Tokyo, October 30th–November 11th, 1926 (Tokyo, 1929), 2122.

²² Vetter, “Introduction,” 2.

²³ Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2125–27. See also Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 85. F. L. Duley and M. F. Miller of the University of Missouri made the first effort to quantify soil loss using sample plots in 1914; see Showers, “Soil Erosion,” 385.

²⁴ Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2126–27.

²⁵ Vetter, “Introduction,” 2.

²⁶ Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2127–28.

²⁷ Ibid., 2145–46.

²⁸ Ibid., 2123.

²⁹ Hall, Marcus, Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005), 128Google Scholar.

³⁰ Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2123.

³¹ Ibid., 2146.

³² Ibid., 2147. In making this claim, Lowdermilk rejected the theory expounded by American geographer Ellsworth Huntington and German geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen that the “decline and semi-depopulation of northwest China” was due to adverse climatic fluctuations. Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 63–64; “Helms, “Walter Lowdermilk's Journey.”

³³ On historical changes in forests in the middle reaches of North China's Yellow River watershed, see Nianhai, Shi, Huanghe liuyu zhu heliu de yanbian he zhili (Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1999), 179–262Google Scholar.

³⁴ Saberwal, “Science and the Dessicationist Discourse.”

³⁵ Ibid. See also Calder, Ian R. and Aylward, Bruce, “Forests and Floods,” Water International 31, 1 (2006): 87–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2128–29. The Qinyuan county gazetteer noted that trees suffered damage by domesticated animals, whose numbers had grown in recent decades. Qinyuan xianzhi (1933) colophon 2: 27a–27b.

³⁷ Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2127.

³⁸ Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu zaofu renlei—Ji shuitu baochi zhuanjia Ren Chengtong,” in Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi Shaanxi sheng Xianyang shi weiyuanhui and Yangling qu weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui, eds., Hou Ji chuanren: di yi ji (Xi'an: Sanqin chubanshe, 1996), 237–39; Zhongguo kexue jishu xiehui, ed., Zhongguo kexue jishu zhuanjia zhuanlue: Nongye bian: Linye juan (yi) (Beijing: Zhongguo kexue jishu chubanshe, 1991), 156–67Google Scholar.

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⁴⁰ Songster, E. Elena, “Cultivating the Nation in Fujian's Forests: Forest Policies and Afforestation Efforts in China, 1911–1937,” Environmental History 8, 3 (2003): 452–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 452.

⁴¹ Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu,” 237–39; Zhongguo kexue jishu xiehui, ed., Zhongguo kexue jishu zhuanjia zhuanlue, 156–67. C. T. Ren also wrote his master's thesis at the University of Nanking: “Forest Survey of Hsu Tai Tao, Northern Jiangsu” (1926), Walter C. Lowdermilk Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, box 3.

⁴² Zhongguo kexue jishu xiehui, Zhongguo kexue jishu zhuanjia zhuanlue, 157.

⁴³ Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 86–87.

⁴⁴ Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu,” 239.

⁴⁵ Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 99. Shanxi shuitu baochi zhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Shanxi shuitu baochi zhi (Zhengzhou: Huanghe shuili chubanshe, 1998), 374–75.

⁴⁶ Chengtong, Ren, “Jingying cunyou lin de haochu he banfa,” Jinling daxue nonglinke congkan 34 (1930 [1925]): 1–15Google Scholar, 1.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 2.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 4.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Gillin, Warlord, 66–70.

⁵¹ Ren, “Jingying cunyou lin,” 8.

⁵² Harrison, Henrietta, “Village Identity in Rural North China: A Sense of Place in the Diary of Liu Dapeng,” in Faure, David and Liu, Tao Tao, eds., Town and Country in China: Identity and Perception (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 94–101Google Scholar.

⁵³ Ren, “Jingying cun you lin,” 8–9.

⁵⁴ Chenguang, Li, “Jindai Taiyue senlin jianshi,” Qinyuan wenshi ziliao 3 (1987), 291–94Google Scholar. An outstanding study of the North China famine of 1876–1879 is Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathryn, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)Google Scholar. On the development of Taiyuan, see Harrison, Henrietta, The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man's Life in a North China Village, 1857–1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, ch. 4.

⁵⁵ Qinyuan xianzhi (1933), colophon 5: 85b. For another reference to the lack of large trees, see ibid. colophon 2: 26b.

⁵⁶ Gillin, Warlord, 47–48.

⁵⁷ Ren, “Jingying cun you lin,” 9.

⁵⁸ Li Huipei, Shanxi linye zhi, 27–35; Li Sanmo and Li Zhen, “Minguo qianzhongqi Shanxi de linye huodong,” 104–9; Wang Shejiao, “Minguo chunian Shanxi diqu de zhishu zaolin ji qi chengxiao,” 105–9. The only two tree species artificially planted in Qinyuan were poplar and willow. Because Qinyuan already possessed forests, the local government did less to promote afforestation there than in other counties. Qinyuan xianzhi (1933), colophon 2, 28a; Li Chenguang, “Jindai Taiyue senlin jianshi,” 302.

⁵⁹ Qinyuan xianzhi (1933) colophon 2, 23b.

⁶⁰ Ren, “Jingying cunyou lin,” 7–8.

⁶¹ Ibid., 6–7.

⁶² Ibid., 7.

⁶³ Swizlocki, Mark, “Seeing the Forest for the Village, Nation, and Province: Forestry Policy and Environmental Management in Early Twentieth-Century Yunnan,” Twentieth-Century China 39, 3 (2014): 195–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 203.

⁶⁴ Ren, “Jingying cun you lin,” 10.

⁶⁵ Swizlocki, “Seeing the Forest for the Village,” 213.

⁶⁶ Ibid.; Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2133.

⁶⁷ Vetter, “Introduction,” 6; Kuklick and Kohler, “Introduction,” 2.

⁶⁸ W. C. Lowdermilk, “The Problem of Forest Conservation in Shansi,” typescript (Nov. 1924), 1–2, Walter C. Lowdermilk Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, box 9; W. C. Lowdermilk, “Forest Destruction and Slope Denudation in the Province of Shansi,” Publications of the University of Nanking College of Agriculture and Forestry, Bulletin 11 [repr. from China Journal of Science and Arts 4, 3 (Mar. 1926): 127–35], 1–9, 2. Ren Chengtong translated this essay into Chinese; see Demin, Luo and Chengtong, Ren, “Shanxi senlin zhi lanfa yu shanpo tuceng zhi boxue,” Jinling daxue nonglinke nonglin congkan 35 (1927): 1–11Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Lowdermilk, “Field Trips, 1924, Shansi,” 17 July 1924, 28, W. C. Lowdermilk Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. BANC MSS 72/206, carton 2: diaries and notes.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 15 July 1924, 27.

⁷¹ Ibid., 17 July 1924, 28.

⁷² Lowdermilk, “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 2.

⁷³ Ibid., 4–5. See also Lowdermilk, W. C., “Some Practical Possibilities for Forestry in China,” Journal of the Association of Chinese & American Engineers 6, 4 (1925): 1–6Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Lowdermilk, “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 6.

⁷⁵ Lowdermilk, “Some Practical Possibilities,” 4.

⁷⁶ Lowdermilk, “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 6. See also Lowdermilk, “Some Practical Possibilities,” 4.

⁷⁷ Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2125–26. See also Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 64.

⁷⁸ Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu,” 239.

⁷⁹ Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2123, 2126–27; Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 64.

⁸⁰ Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 66.

⁸¹ Ibid.; Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2133.

⁸² Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2133.

⁸³ Lowdermilk, “Field Trips,” 13 July 1924, 22b.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 23a.

⁸⁵ Chengtong, Ren, “Shanxi Ningwu xian senlin jingji tan,” Zhonghua nongxuehui congkan 62 (1928): 43–50Google Scholar, 43–44, 49.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 44–45.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 47–48.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 49–50.

⁸⁹ Lowdermilk, “Field Trips,” 30 July 1924, 64a.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 64b.

⁹¹ Lowdermilk, “Some Practical Possibilities,” 4. See also his, “Forest Destruction,” 12; and “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 3.

⁹² Lowdermilk, “Forest Destruction,” 12.

⁹³ Lowdermilk, “Field Trips,” 29 July 1924, 61a.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 8 Aug. 1924, n.p.

⁹⁵ “Shanxi sheng qudi baomai senlin ji lanfa xiaoshu buchong tiaoli” (1924), in Wen Guichang, ed., Shanxi linye shilao (Beijing: Zhongguo linye chubanshe, 1988), 197–98.

⁹⁶ Lowdermilk, “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 10; see also “Some Practical Possibilities,” 6.

⁹⁷ Lowdermilk, “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 11.

⁹⁸ Ibid., 1.

⁹⁹ Ren Chengtong, Shanxi linye huiyi (Nanjing: Shanxi lü Jing xueyouhui, 1929), 4.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid.,16–17.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 19–20.

¹⁰² Ibid., 21–24.

¹⁰³ Wang, Zhai and Wenjing, Mi, Shanxi senlin yu shengtai shi (Beijing: Zhongguo linye chubanshe, 2009), 270–71Google Scholar. On the railway, see Gillin, Warlord, 181–85.

¹⁰⁴ On this incident, see Wilbur, C. Martin, The Nationalist Revolution in China, 1923–1928 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 91–93Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Lowdermilk, Conquest of the Land, 17.

¹⁰⁶ See, for example, Person, H. S., Little Waters: A Study of Headwater Streams and other Little Waters, Their Use and Relations to the Land (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1936)Google Scholar; C. R. Enlow and G. W. Musgrove, “Grass and other Thick-Growing Vegetation in Erosion Control,” in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soils and Men: Yearbook of Agriculture 1938 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office), 621. Both refer to Lowdermilk, W. C., “The Role of Vegetation in Erosion Control and Water Conservation,” Journal of Forestry 32, 5 (1934): 529–36Google Scholar. There, Lowdermilk cites his studies in China as evidence for the influence of vegetation on runoff and erosion. See ibid., 530.

¹⁰⁷ A visit to Palestine during this trip won Lowdermilk over as a supporter of Jewish settlement. After retiring from the Soil Conservation Service, he worked closely with the newly founded state of Israel to implement soil conservation and irrigation programs. See Helms, “Walter Lowdermilk's Journey”; Radkau, Joachim, The Age of Ecology (Malden: Polity Press, 2014), 54–55Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁸ Agricultural experiments in Suiyuan are discussed in Merkel-Hess, Kate, The Rural Modern: Reconstructing the Self and State in Republican China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 103–8Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu,” 249–55.

¹¹⁰ Before Lowdermilk arrived in 1942, Ren resigned from his post in the Yellow River Commission because of antagonism that built up against him among political leaders in northwest China, so he could not join the expedition. Letters dated 25 Dec. 1942 and 11 Apr. 1943, in “Typed Transcripts of Handwritten Letters from Walter C. Lowdermilk, Agricultural Adviser to the Chinese Government, to his Wife and Family October 1942–November 1943,” W. C. Lowdermilk Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. BANC MSS 72/206, carton 8; Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu,” 248.

¹¹¹ Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu.” For Ren's report on his visit to the United States, see “Nonglinbu fu Mei shixi renyuan Ren Chengtong shixi shuitu baochi baogao” (1947), Institute of Modern History Archives, Academia Sinicia, Taiwan: 20-21-034-03.