A Federal program established under the Food Security Act of 1985 to assist private landowners to convert highly erodible cropland to vegetative cover for 10 years. Noncultivated cropland includes permanent hayland and horticultural cropland. No data are collected for any year that land is in this ownership. When viewed vertically, canopy cover is 25 percent or greater. For classification as forest land, an area must be at least one acre and 100 feet wide.
Land cover is the vegetation or other kind of material that covers the land surface.
Pastureland may consist of a single species in a pure stand, a grass mixture or a grass-legume mixture. Management usually consists of cultural treatments-fertilization, weed control, reseeding, or renovation and control of grazing. This would include areas where introduced hardy and persistent grasses, such as crested wheatgrass, are planted and such practices as deferred grazing, burning, chaining, and rotational grazing are used, with little or no chemicals or fertilizer being applied. Grasslands, savannas, many wetlands, some deserts, and tundra are considered to be rangeland. Certain communities of low forbs and shrubs, such as mesquite, chaparral, mountain shrub, and pinyon-juniper, are also included as rangeland.