Animal impact would enable new seedlings to germinate and recolonize this ground. Bennet Hills, Idaho. Most weeds thrive in exposed soils where there is little competition from other plants. To create a landscape of high-quality plant species it is necessary to optimize the use of available water to stimulate the germination and growth of desirable plants that can compete with weeds. Effective use of available moisture is especially important in environments where rainfall is unpredictable.
All environments exist somewhere on a scale between being brittle or nonbrittle.
The distinction between one and the other is not so much a measure of the quantity of moisture received, but how that moisture is distributed across time and geographic space. The degree of brittleness in an environment is largely a factor of how predictable the rains are there. Even when a region does receive its average annual precipitation, the moisture may be unevenly distributed across local geographic space. Many of the photos shown here were taken in Idaho in the Great Basin Desert, where precipitation is similarly unpredictable and may vary from as little as 3 inches in some years to nearly 20 inches in other years. The soil lost in this washout along the road is visible and obvious, but trivial compared to the amount of soil lost every year as a result of having bare ground between each and ever plant.