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• 4 • <br />t mass beneath the ground. T}iese roots must absorb moisture from a wide <br />area and resulting competition leads to wide spacing between plants. Since <br />the root systems are adapted to make use of surficial seasonal moisture, they <br />serve the function of the major soil binder and thus retard soil erosion. <br />The aridity of the northern plains and its short growing season serve to <br />discourage plant cultivation except on the disproportionally valuable sub- <br />irrigated bottomlands. Over the bulk of the land the major human activity <br />is cattle ranching with about 20 ha (50 acres) required to sustain each animal and <br />resultant large ranch sizes of several thousand acres per unit. This gives <br />rise to a characteristic open-space landscape appearance where the influence <br />of man is not visually obvious to most people and thus concern about recla- <br />mation success and appearance is high. <br />Reclamation attempts in the Northern Great Plains have had highest success in <br />terms of plant cover establishment where non-native species have been used <br />but no experimental plots or reclamation attempts have been carried on for <br />sufficiently long periods to test their abilities to withstand the drought,_ <br />wind, and erosive conditions that occur infrequently in this highly continen- <br />tal climatic region and serve to limit and define natural vegetation. Thus, <br />~on~-term stability data are wholly lacking and response Qf__non~aYive_species <br />to natural conditions is unlmown. Current experimentation with native species <br />suffers in that insufficient attention has been given to the critical relation- <br />ships between degree of soil development and degree of survival of native <br />