Abstract | There are 137 million acres of usable range in Arizona and New Mexico, and livestock production is an outstanding industry in the Southwest. Basic resources of this industry are the soils and the vegetation they support. Continued production of range grasses is, in large measure, dependent on forage utilization. The importance of knowing what constitutes proper use of a given kind of grass and of having an accurate method of measuring its utilization becomes evident when one realizes that a 10 percent variation in the use of the herbage volume may result in continued productivity or gradual death of the plant. |