Rangeland Health New Methods to Classify, Inventory, and Monitor Rangelands (1994) / Chapter Skim
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1 RANGELANDS ARE IMPORTANT
1 RANGELANDS ARE IMPORTANT
Pages 18-28
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From page 18... ...
At least 110 million hectares (272 million acres) of the rangelands present at the time of European settlement in the coterminous United States have been converted from rangelands to croplands, forests, urban areas, industrial sites, highways, and reservoirs (KLopatek et al., 1979~.
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From page 19... ...
Grazing lands in the United States include rangelands, forests, and pastures. Federal and nonfederal lands produced some 399,567,000 an~mal-unit months (the amount of forage consumed by an animal unit, usually estimated at 363 kilograms [800 pounds]
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From page 20... ...
As Spanish missionaries established and fostered outposts in the 1700s in areas that are now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, they brought an estimated 50,000 sheep and 20,000 cattle north from Mexico (Wallace, 1936~. The Mexican government liberally granted rangelands to people interested in establishing ranches in what is now the southwestern United States.
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From page 21... ...
rangelands have lord been a source of concern. The Europeans who brought sheep and cattle to the rangelands of the western United States overestimated Me ability of the land to support to railroads in Sedalia, Missouri, and Abilene, Kansas, encouraged the beef boom.
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From page 22... ...
The combination of too many livestock, improper management practices, and drought accelerated the rate of soil erosion; depleted the amount of forage; and altered the species composition, density, and production of rangeland vegetation over extensive areas of the western United States. Federal Management of U.S.
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From page 23... ...
as the Civilian Conservation Crops, brought more-sophisticated largescale water management and irrigation practices to the western United States. The Great Plains Drought Committee was formed in 1936, the same year that the secretary of USDA wrote to the Senate, highlighting the need to revitalize the rangelands while acknowledging changing demands for the land, including watershed and wildlife protection and the provision of recreational space.
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From page 24... ...
(The soil loss tolerance level is the estimated maximum annual rate of erosion that can be tolerated without damaging soil productivity.) These data included rangelands eroding because of watercaused sheet and rill erosion only.
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From page 25... ...
Environmental impact statements prepared by BLM and USFS reported rangeland degradation from soil erosion (U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S.
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From page 26... ...
All national assessments suffer from the lack of current, comprehensive, and statistically representative data obtained in the field. No data collected using the same methods over time or using a sampling design that enables aggregation of the data at the national level are available for assessing both federal and nonfederal rangelands.
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From page 27... ...
The fact that available data do not allow investigators to reach definitive conclusions on the relative proportions of rangelands that are improving or degrading or on the relative rates of improvement or degradation seriously impedes efforts to resolve the debate over proper use and management of the nation's federal and nonfederal rangelands. The data that have been available for assessing the status of rangelands are obtained by many different methods and from many different sources.
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From page 28... ...
Although the available data show that some rangelands continue to deteriorate, the full extent and the causes of that degradation are the subjects of debate. Given the importance of rangelands and the potential for serious degradation from both mismanagement and natural events, it is essential that the responsible agencies marshal the resources needed to develop and implement the data collection systems needed to provide policymakers, ranchers, environmentalists, and the general public with more definitive information on the state of federal and nonfederal rangelands.
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