Soil Information for Range Resource Evaluation

Abstract

Soil is a major physical component of the ecosystem. To ignore soil or treat it superficially merely restricts knowledge of the resource. The amount of soil detail needed depends upon the character of the landscape, the complexity of the resource, the uses to be made of the survey data, and the amount of money available to do the job. Too much soil detail should be avoided and too little detail may make the survey worthless for evaluating the range resource. There is flexibility in how soil mapping units can be designed to meet the needs.