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Areas where range condition was rated fair was restricted to the <br />areas near the drainage areas and especially watering ponds. These <br />areas were concentration areas for livestock and commonly experi- <br />enced range deterioration. The remainder of the unmined lands <br />within the permit area were and continue to be in "good" range <br />condition. <br />In most cases, the soils within the permit area currently are being <br />utilized for rangeland purposes with the agronomic usefulness of <br />these soils being limited to usage as rangeland. Additional <br />information on soils is found in Section 2.04.9. <br />Productivity of the rangeland and pastureland areas in the permit <br />area, in terms of forage production, and major uses as obtained <br />from Range Site Descriptions prepared by the USDA - Soil Conserva- <br />tion Service, are found in Exhibit 9, Soils Information. The <br />annual forage production in terms of pounds of air dry forage per <br />acre during normal precipitation years averages 400 lb/acre across <br />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 <br />• ability of the vegetation to support domestic animals is broken <br />down as follows: 27.5 acres/AUM (Animal Unit Month) in pinyon- <br />juniper vegetation type, seven acres/AUM in sage brush type, 5.5 <br />acres/AUM in mountain shrub type, and 3.5 acres/AUM in the <br />bottomlands that are used for grazing. <br />Hydrological Caoabilitv <br />As explained and detailed in the discussions under Sections 2.04.5 <br />and 2.04.7, the available ground and surface water supplies in and <br />adjacent to the permit area are limited in quantity and highly <br />variable in quality. No major groundwater discharge points occur <br />in the permit area. Several small seeps do occur as a result of <br />infiltration of snowmelt and rainstorm activity, but these are <br />highly dependent on seasonal precipitation. Groundwater occurrence <br />is very limited in the mining area. <br />Surface water flows are also extremely limited. Two of the surface <br />drainages are intermittent and two are perennial, but yield only <br />slight amounts of water in the post snowmelt runoff period. The <br />., <br />2.04.3-3 <br />