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This is a collection of color photographs (35mm slides) and descriptions of range vegetation types (= range cover types) taken across western North America. Included are most of the major range or native grazing types traditionally featured in Range Management texts and generally accepted by workers in Range Science and Range Management. The collection is not complete. There are still range types, a few of them major types, to be "collected" and added to this publication (eg. Florida Everglades, Great Lakes forests, Pacific Northwest rain forests, some of the more restricted desert communities). Contrariwise, included herein are some range types that formerly were very important but that were destroyed by European man (and usually ignored in texts or references) and that exist only as ecological remnants or as of local or historic importance (eg. bamboo canebrakes, California bunchgrass prairie, southern mesophytic forest). As with essentially all works on vegetation this is a started not a finished product.
The range types were arranged under headings of the major biomes (or plant formations if the reader wishes to think more restrictively in terms of vegetation): grasslands, shrublands (deserts and chaparral), tundra, alpine, savanna, forest. The wetland communities of marsh and swamp were included with grassland and forest, respectively, for convenience.
Range subtypes (or whatever term is preferred for the major subunits of dominance or cover types) were often shown at the levels of range site (= ecological site, a term purposely avoided in these descriptions/discussions), habitat type (a term not used with range shown), natural community, vegetation series, etc. depending upon the definitive published authority from the region, state, or county in which the vegetation or land unit occurred.
Below is a list of various topics included in the introduction portion of this presentation.
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