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A tremendous amount of soils and vegetation data have been collected through the National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS). Soil Interpretation Records (SCS‐SOI‐5 data) and Map Unit Use File (MUUF) information have been stored on the Iowa State University Computation Center computer for correlated soil surveys. The Soil Resource Information System (SRIS) program developed through cooperation of the Colorado State Soil Conservation Service (SCS), Laboratory for Information Science in Agriculture (LISA), and the Agriculture Research Service (ARS) on the Fort Collins Computer Center System 2000 provides a data management system where any data element and nearly any combination of data elements can be queried. All soil property, vegetation, and map unit information for six Major Land Resource Areas, primarily in the Great Basin Region, were entered on the SRIS program to test its application for documenting soil‐plant relationships and improving site correlation. The program was initially queried for soil depth, pH, clay content, rock fragment, and classification relationships to establish some soil‐plant relationships for four major sagebrush species (Artemisia spp.) as recorded on SCS‐SOI‐5 data. Information from 1092 data sets containing greater than or equal to 10 % composition by weight of one or more of the sagebrush species supported some previous studies and concepts while apparently contradicting others. The same process used would be applicable for evaluating soil‐plant relationships for any other species or group of species in the data set.
Few ecological sites have been described sufficiently to interpret the specific functions and processes unique to riverine riparian areas. The utility of using ecological site'concepts for riparian classification has also been debated due to the dynamic nature of the systems and the paucity of unaltered vegetation. We evaluated riparian sites associated with streams or rivers in 9 western states to determine the feasibility of using ecological site concepts in describing and evaluating riverine riparian ecosystems. Associated water features must be described in riparian site descriptions to establish relationships and understand "process pathways." A concept of "site progression" is proposed to differentiate between secondary succession associated with vegetation changes within a given physical environment and physical "state" changes that lead to a "new" or different potential natural plant community (i.e., a change in ecological site and secondary succession sequences). We have concluded that ecological site classification and inventory techiques utilized on uplands can be used on riparian areas with some enhancements to maintain consistency in evaluations at a "management unit* level.
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