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COLORADO RIVER BASIN ,. RANGELAND SALINITY CONTROL PROJECT o STATEOFUT~ l\;I ~ RASELY, Robert C., 1991, US Department of Agriculture, Soil ~ Conservation Service, Salt Lake City, Utah ABSTRACT Historically, salinity control work in the Colorado River Basin' has been accomplished solely by irrigation water management projects. Rangeland watershed salinity control was determined to be too expensive due to the very large number of acres of rangeland within the basin. Soil Conservation Service watershed planning wor~ has shown that severely eroding rangeland can be successfully tr$ated in a cost effective manner using the principle of resource p~oblem targeting. Studies have also shown that most of the watersheds will haVe approximately 5% to 15% of the surface area in sev~rely eroding condition. and in need of improved conservationtreat~ent. A two phase project was implemented that inventoried watersheds in the State of Utah that are in the Colorado River Basin. Phase Iof the project involved an interdisciplinary team of specialists from the US Soil Conservation Service (SCS), US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and US Geological Survey. The project ~ad 8:," steering.committee composed of many federal and state agencies interested in control of salt and sediment nonpoint source . pollution in the Colorado.River Basin. The project was supported by the Colorado River Basin Salinity Forum. The 218 watersheds in the Colorado River Basin within the state of Utah were inventoried for various resource parameters includ~ng potential sediment yield, potential salt yield, rangeland coi').dition and annual precipitation range. This inventory gave eachwat:ershed a rating on a scale of one to twelve with the highest ratings in those watersheds most in need of conservation planning to control' offsite nonpoint source sediment and salt problems. The ste~ring committee and cooperating agencies identified eight watershe~s for detailed planning in Phase II of the project based on the Phase I parameters and individual agency needs. Phase II of the project consisted of field inventories and r~ports characterizing eight individual watersheds and was accomplisHed by an augmented interdisciplinary team composed of the project team and various field specialists from SCS and BLMfield offices with planning responsibility within the watershed area. The Pacific Southwest Interagency Committee (PSIAC) 1968 Sediment Yield Procedure was revised and used to cHaracterize the sediment and salt yields from individual geomorphic units within the target watersheds. The Phase II procedure was accomplished in a four , '.,:}, '" , ., -1 i "3 :f