Successful revegetation of arid and semiarid rangelands of the western United States relies on careful planning to ensure that reclamation measures are well suited for site conditions. Although extreme temperatures and lack of rainfall may impede revegetation success, reclamation commonly fails when soil resource limitations go unidentified and unaddressed. By applying a soil-landscape perspective to reclamation, one can make important interpretations about soil surface and subsurface conditions that aid in reclamation planning and implementation. We present an approach to use USDA Soil Survey data to: (1) quantify surface and subsurface soil resource availability, (2) identify soil features or conditions that could limit revegetation success, (3) apply landscape relationships to customize treatment plans, and (4) tie soils data to ecological sites to tailor seeding or planting methods. We further describe approaches for using landscape relationships to break down Order 3 soil survey data (which contain multiple soil types) into site-specific soil interpretations.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.