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• Areas where range condition was rated fair was restricted to the areas near the drainage areas <br />and especially watering ponds. These areas were concentration areas for livestock and <br />commonly experienced range deterioration. The remainder of the unmined lands within the <br />permit area were and continue to be- in "good" range condition. <br />In most cases, the soils within the permit area currently are being utilized for rangeland <br />purposes with the agronomic usefulness of these soils being limited to usage- as rangeland. <br />Additional information on soils is found in Section 2.04.9. <br />Productivity of the rangeland and pastureland areas in the permit area, in terms of forage <br />production, and major uses as obtained from Range Site Descriptions prepared by the USDA <br />- Soil Conservation service, are found in Exhibit 9, Soils Information. The annual forage <br />production in terms of pounds of air dry forage per acre during normal precipitation years <br />averages 400 Ib/acre across the permit area with a range from 100 to 1,000 pounds per acre. <br />Based on information from the Bureau of Land Management, the ability of the vegetation to <br />support domestic animals is broken down as follows: 27.5 acres/AUM (Animal Unit Month) <br />in pinyon juniper vegetation type, seven acres/AUM in sage brush type, 5.5 acres/AUM in <br />mountain shrub type, and 3.5 acres/AUM in the bottomlands that are used for grazing. <br />Hvdroloeical Capability <br />As explained and detailed in the discussions under Sections 2.04.5 and 2.04.7, the available <br />ground and surface water supplies in and adjacent to the permit area are limited in quantity <br />and highly variable in quality. No major groundwater discharge points occur in the permit <br />area. Several small seeps do occur as a result of infiltration of snowmelt and rainstorm <br />activity, but these are highly dependent on seasonal precipitation. Groundwater occurrence is <br />very limited in the mining area. <br />Surface water flows are also extremely limited. Two of the surface drainages are intermittent <br />and two are perennial, but yield only slight amounts of water in the post snowmelt runoff <br />period. The <br /> <br />2.043-3 <br />