From a hilltop among the upland slopes of Whitehall, Montana, he pointed out a few patches of bare earth on the horizon and some gullying out of trails across the rangelands in the distance.
Rangelands are areas of land on which livestock are left to roam and graze.
Traditionally the great plains and rolling hills of the Western States have been dominated by rangelands left to cattle and bison, and though it has long been acknowledged that cattle grazing and roaming can alter the features of the land, the extent and depth to which they can do this has been underestimated and at times ignored. With the numbers of grazing animals growing and the lands for them to occupy getting smaller, a better understanding of how and to what degree these animals affect the soil is needed. Most changes in processes of soil formation and soil erosion are indirectly affected by the presence of livestock and more directly associated with the geomorphic changes these animals generate. Changes in geomorphology are controlled by the local topography, rainfall and hydrology, and groundcover, as well as the type and size of the animal population. In many cases, the actual effects that different animals have depends greatly on biological factors characteristic of their particular species, such as how large their populations tend to be, their average weight and how they distribute their weight when they walk or climb, feeding patterns, migration patterns, and other differences that depart too far from the focus of this essay to be considered in any great detail.