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There are only about 1,500 acres of irrigated land in this grouping and all of it is on Alluvial soils. Native vegetation consists primarily of Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, Engleman spruce, alpine fir and aspen, with an under- story of plants such as kinnikinnick, vaccinium at higher elevations and creeping juniper. In the park areas vegetation is generally sagebrush, Thurbers fescue, Columbia needle grass, blue wild rye, mountain brome and many forbs. Wet areas have sedges and rushes. , ' 5. Alpine Meadow-~pine Bog Soils of this grouping have developed under high precipitation in moderately sloping depressions of alluvium and colluvium and on strongly sloping ridge- tops and steep side slopes in residuum from tuff, breccia, rhyolite, andesite, basalt and granite, at elevations sbove timberline and above 11,500 feet. They are very shallow to moderately deep, moderately coarse to medium tex- tured, high organic soils, highly leached and acid in reaction. Most of this grouping (65 percent) consists of miscellaneous land types, which are bare of vegetation except for lichens. Vegetation on the soils consists of sedges, rushes, grasses, forbs, willows and other woody species. There is a short period of grazing on the alpine meadows. There is high sustained water yield and low sediment yield in watersheds made up of soils in this grouping. Topography The Gunnison River Basin ranges in elevation from approximately 4,550 to 14,300 feet and has an extremely variable topography. The lower river basin has broad, nearly level to moderately sloping valleys, flanked by low rolling hills which break rather abruptly into uoderately to steeply sloping mesas highly dissected by steep sided drainageways or canyons. Above the mesas on the northeast and south are steeply sloping dissected ,plateaus which extend to the headwaters of the major streams. The streams ,are shallow at this elevation and topography is characterized by gently to strongly sloping valleys. These valleys are interspersed with steeply sloping smooth rolling hills at the north boundary of the Basin and very steep rough glaciated peaks on the south boundary. The upper portion of the Gunnison River Basin is typified by very high gla- ciated peaks whose slopes descend into gently to strongly sloping high mountain basins and into long steep sided ridges. They are separated by strongly sloping, narrow valleys that become less steep and considerably wider at the confluence of major streams and at lower elevations. Land Use, Cover Conditions and Management Lands of the Gunnison River Basin are used primarily for the production of timber, range-forage, mountain meadow hay, and irrigated crops. There are approximately 264,000 acres of irrigated land within the Basin. Fruit and truck crop farming, together, with general and cash-crop farming and the - 8 -