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Rangeland Health assessments follow a five-step process to evaluate the degree of departure from reference conditions for the three Rangeland Health attributes. �Before field operations to conduct assessments begin, there are several activities that must be considered to ensure good, accurate and useful assessments are obtained.� Selecting evaluation locations is often one of the most difficult aspects of conducting the assessment.� Evaluation areas need to be large enough to show some variability within the ecological site being assessed, but small enough to see and move around in easily.� Locations may be stratified into ecological sites or groups of ecological sites, may be completely random, or selected to sample specific conditions.� Each of these methods of selection may be appropriate depending on the reason for making the evaluation.� After the evaluation areas are selected, maps, soils information, ecological site descriptions, reference sheets and available inventory and monitoring data may be assembled.� This information and data is useful to organize tools, and needed support items as well as providing information about what to expect on site.� �Once in the field, a determination of the ecological site is necessary to ensure proper reference sheets are used.� Supplementary information including the identification and organization of existing vegetation into functional/structural groups and determination of the relative dominance of each group should then be done.� Other data may be collected to aid in the evaluation of the indicators such as percentages of bare ground and litter cover, soil stability ratings, etc.� After all additional information and data is collected, the 17 indicators are evaluated against the information on the reference sheet.� Notes are recorded explaining indicator ratings and the indicators summarized into the appropriate attributes.� Attribute ratings are made using a preponderance of evidence approach and notes are recorded to explain final attribute ratings.