Kraenzel of Montana State University once wrote that semi-arid shouldn't 

 raean halfway between arid and humid but instead half the time arid and half 

 the time humid. 



Many years ago while working with a South Dakota rancher in a bad drought, 

 I overheard a memorable conversation when a neighboring rancher drove up. 

 The neighbor wanted to know if he could buy some native hay. He said, "You 

 still got plenty old grass and all that hay." There was a lot of baled 

 hay put up the previous year on some deferred native pastures. He asked $30 

 a ton for it. The neighbor said, "Man! I could have bought all I wanted last 

 fall for $15 a ton." The neighbor said, "But, how could I know were were going 

 to have a drought?" When the answer came, it was, "What are you, a tourist?" 



Now concerning soil. Soils that store very little water tend to be 

 rangeland, even in forest climates. Right here in Montana I've seen a moun- 

 tain in forest climate covered with range vegetation, surrounded by others 

 of equal height covered with forest. The reason was not fire. The one had 

 shallow clay soils over solid limestone and the others had coarser soils of 

 greater depth. The Shepherd of The Hills country in the Ozarks receives over 

 45 inches of rainfall but is rangeland because the soils are very shallow 

 over solid dolomite. A soil with much available water may produce forest 

 even in a rangeland climate — as we've all seen along major streams in the 

 climat" of the prairies and plains. It is well to remember that soil is not 

 the same as land. When you buy land, you buy the kind of soil on the tract 

 but also the climate that goes with it. In eastern Montana there is range 

 country with less than 12 inches of average annual precipitation and country 

 with 16 inches where the soils may appear similar. 



All agricultural lands were once either natiiral timberlands or natural 

 rangelands. The growth form of vegetation from short grasses to tall trees 

 originally reflected differences in climate and soil. Any cropland we have 

 was derived by man's technology from rangeland or timberland. Abandoned 

 fields return to the general type of forest or range vegetation from which 

 they were derived. The process is termed secondary succession; a natiiral 

 law of ecology — sometimes called self-healing. 



The Society for Range Management is agreed that rangeland may be char- 

 acterized as follows: "1) the potential natural vegetation is predominantly 



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