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. 29 • <br />reclamation is possible if climate is favorable and if fertilizer issued when <br />needed and if water is available for the first five years and thereafter when <br />conditions of drought prevail and if grazing pressure is reduced until commun- <br />ities are sufficiently established and if no insects develop resistance to <br />pesticides used, etc. However, it would be more reassuring to be able to state <br />that this reclamation effort has succeeded in establishing a viable soil/plant <br />community that is developing under today's climatic conditions through predict- <br />able stages toward a set of communities resembling those found >n undisturbed <br />sites and, although it may never reach that state of productivity and stability, <br />its successional progress is predictable and understood and will proceed through <br />all expectable ranges of climatic extreme. This means that successful reclama- <br />tion should not strive toward green ground cover throughout the growing season <br />nor species of a particular palitibility or dependence upon seasonal soil moist- <br />ure, but those that combine to form plant communities that can survive normal <br />climatic extremes. <br />Use of fertilizer and irrigation water to 'accelerate' soil/plant evolution <br />at a reclamation site is not inherently wrong and may be the only practical <br />method of securing some sort of effective ground cover for the first few <br />decades of rehabilitation. However, one must understand the consequences of <br />this method of getting a soil started in arid lands. Irrigation and fertil- <br />ization creates a geochemical soil microenvironment very different from that <br />to which vegetation must adapt at the si•:e. It permits the establishment of <br />non-native species and the development of geochemical profiles that are very <br />