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. 35 • <br />an original cover of but 3 percent is a small actual reduction, but does <br />demonstrate that abandoned farmlands with soils that were not seriously re- <br />structured or homogenized and stockpiled to not recover unaided to any <br />acceptable degree within an observational period of several decades. <br />Under normal grazing pressures, plant succession cannot occur within to- <br />day's range of climatic stresses. <br />The Black Thunder, Wyoming, project study for Atlantic-Richfield (Ries, Fisser and <br />Harrison) has similarly compared vegetation on abandoned farmlands and <br />adjacent less disturbed grazing lands. Their conclusions differed some- <br />what from those of Lang but they extended the observational base from the <br />drought/Depression abandonment period of the 1930's through 1973. This <br />work lacks the perspective of tang's in which he was able to demonstrate <br />an initial period of range improvement during the nine years following <br />abandonment, but does include more detail. They found that agricultural <br />lands which may or may not have been reseeded upon abandonment, now possessed <br />a 24 percent vegetative cover with an additional 27 percent litter cover, <br />3 percent erosion pavement plus lichens, and 46 percent bare soil. In <br />three intensively studied old-field areas, present vegetative cover varied <br />from 16 to 23 percent; as compared with a native cover in adjacent unplowed <br />areas of 33 to 36 percent. Coverage by litter was 15 to 20 percent greater <br />on the unplowed areas so that areas of bare soil were approximately 2 <br />times as great on the abandoned fields in comparison to the adjacent less <br />disturbed areas. <br />The Soil Conservation Service range condition classification <br />