This Technical Reference contains the rangeland inventory and monitoring techniques historically used in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) since formation of the Grazing Service. It is designed to be a reference document. BLM contains numerous files and documents containing historical vegetation and other resource data. Much of this data is being used today to determine grazing preference on public lands and the carrying capacity on nonfederal lands. However, the procedures employed to gather this data are now obscure. This document explains how data was collected in the past and provides instructions on how to collect data for future comparison.
Historical procedures are described as they were originally published. Historical inventory and monitoring data is often useful for making long-term analyses of trends and ecological change. Although some historical techniques may be considered technically inadequate by today's standards, older data may be useful in making general interpretations. Knowledge of the intent or purpose of historical methods aids in understanding why previous range managers managed the range the way they did, and in determining if certain reports, such as range condition, can be compared to.the concepts and reports used today.