talis), and slender wheatgrass. McCarty's 

 studies of mountain brome demonstrated that 

 its annual growth was in well marked cyclical 

 stages. He also showed that growth rates vary at 

 different times during a season and that a 

 plant's supplies of nutrients decrease whenever 

 the plant speeds up its growth (McCarty 1938). 



McCarty pioneered physiological research 

 concerning food storage and depletion related 

 to phenology and clipping. His work has been 

 widely quoted in range management literature 

 and has inspired much similar work on other 

 species. 



The pattern of growth of mountain brome 

 was characteristic in a general way for other 

 forage plants found commonly on high- 

 elevation range. The final report on these 

 studies, a Bulletin published after McCarty's 

 death (McCarty and Price 1942), carried spe- 

 cific recommendations for management of 

 range on the Wasatch Plateau and similar 

 areas. Grazing such areas, this report advised, 

 "should be so coordinated with the critical 

 growth and developmental stages of the prin- 

 cipal perennial forage plants that the plants 

 may assimilate and store sufficient foods to 

 maintain growth and produce herbage for for- 

 age in subsequent years." Harvesting plants 

 during their normal period for storing food 

 prevents this . storage ; so grazing should be 

 slackened then. Early grazing (plants 4 to 6 

 inches high) and grazing when herbage is dry 

 or drying seemed to them to be well timed, 

 but they cautioned against grazing so early 

 that plants would be uprooted and trampled. 

 They advised moderate grazing of mountain 

 brome and slender wheatgrass (to a height of 

 3 or 4 inches at approximately monthly inter- 

 vals) as "the key to practical and sound con- 

 tinued use of the annual forage crop produced 

 on high western mountain ranges." Finally 

 they restated one of Sampson's ideas and they 

 urged rotation of grazing so that no given area 

 would be grazed at the same time in succes- 

 sive years. "This provision," they wrote, "will 

 allow for the production of seed and the re- 

 seeding of the range previously found to be 

 necessary and may also obviate the necessity 

 of slackened grazing during the critical peri- 

 ods of plant growth." This is one of the basic 

 principles of the rest-rotation grazing systems 

 now being widely applied. 



■ Silvicultural 

 Studies 



Though Raphael Zon was one of the first 

 men to approve establishment of the Station 

 and some of the early studies suggested by 

 Sampson, silvical research has never been a 

 major activity at the Great Basin Station. As 

 early as 1917, the Annual Report of the Dis- 

 trict Investigative Committee 1 for District 

 Four stated: "It has been the feeling from the 

 beginning that the Utah Station is not located 

 advantageously for the prosecution of the 

 greater part of our silvicultural investigations 

 which are to a large extent local and not rep- 

 resentative of those parts of the District in 

 which silviculture is of primary importance. 

 Our most important forest types are yellow 

 pine, Douglas fir and lodgepole, and of these 

 yellow pine is the most important." The com- 

 mittee concluded by recommending establish- 

 ment of a silvicultural experiment station in 

 central Idaho. This statement contrasts sharp- 

 ly with W. R. Chapline's comment in a letter 

 to The Forester in 1922: 



The [Great Basin] Station is fortunately 

 situated, in that it is located where the 

 northern and southern flora of the west- 

 ern United States meet, so that conditions 

 that cover a wider area perhaps than any 

 other single Station could cover are found 

 here. 



However, the Utah Experiment Station 

 was involved in one major silvicultural project 

 that still has interest even though it was ter- 

 minated many years ago. This was a study of 

 the possibility of growing merchantable tim- 

 ber, specifically ponderosa pine, in the oak- 

 brush zone. 



10 Members were L. F. Kneipp, District Forester, 

 Chairman; W. N. Sparhawk, Forest Examiner, Secre- 

 tary; C. B. Morse, Forest Supervisor; Homer E. Fenn 

 and C. G. Smith, Assistant District Foresters; and 

 Arthur W. Sampson, Director of Utah Experiment 

 Station. 



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