 The management of South Dakota's grazing lands is paramount to the healthy functioning of our soil and water resources. Sound management practices not only lead to economic but ecological sustainability, while improper management reduces the resources capacity to function and can lead to the invasion of non-native species. Recently, conservationists have been studying the effects that management has on soil properties such as infiltration and the results have been dramatic. I'm Stan Bolts. I'm the State Range Management Specialist here in South Dakota with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. We've come out here today to look at a difference between these different sites of grassland. On the other side of the fence, we have one of the common grazing systems that you see out here, basically what we call a continuous season-long grazing. What you have is a real uniform plant community. Blue grandma, Kentucky bluegrass, not a whole lot of diversity. As you can see on the west side of the fence here, we have a very high diverse plant community, very productive. We've got big blue stem, western wheatgrass, and a lot of forbs coming in as well. So the diversity on the west side of the fence is much higher as well as the productivity and the health and vigor of the plants are much higher as well. Infiltration rates reflect a combination of factors on the surface of the soil as well as underneath the surface, such as litter and contact with the soil, biological and chemical soil crusts, structure, porosity, bulk density, and soil aggregate stability. So we use the single-ring infiltrometer to measure infiltration rates on different types of management to give us an overall picture of soil health on grasslands. Let's take a look at these results on well-managed, rotationally grazed rangeland. 10.1 seconds. We often see good granular structure on grassland soil across the state. The better the management, the deeper that is, and the better the infiltration and the lower the runoff will be. Well-managed grasslands not only benefit the plant and soil resources, but also pay dividends in the management of livestock. Well-managed grasslands have higher diversity, and this leads to higher overall palatability and a higher plane of nutrition for a longer period during the growing season. In addition, well-managed grasslands have a positive effect on production. And some have said as much as 150 to 200 pounds per acre of production will be lost with every inch of water that runs off the soil. So this infiltration matters quite a bit in terms of how productive the rangeland will be, and it ties into the bottom line, the economics of an operation as well. So we've run through and it took seven minutes and three seconds to get that inch of water into this soil profile. Overgrazing, either by overstocking land with too many animals, or allowing the animals to graze for too long of a period, which leads to repeated grazing of individual plants, leads to negative changes in the plant community. This affects not only the plant health and production, but also results in changes to the soils. You can just see that that nice granular structure that we had all the way through the profile across the fence is just not there. Another thing you can kind of see is right in here is this platey, these layers of soil that are going more sideways than up and down. There's a good example right there. The soil breaks apart in horizontal layers as opposed to the blocky structure we had down further, or the granular structure. That is due to some compaction going on that is mostly due to a long history of heavy livestock grazing that has caused that compaction below the surface there. Every minute that goes by is another inch of rain that's going to run off the land and not come down into the soil profile and grow grass. Now let's take a look at land that was converted to cropland just nine months before these tests were run. The existing grass was treated with a herbicide and the corn was drilled into the grass residue without any tillage being performed. So we've let this run its course and our water has finally infiltrated. Looks like we ended up with 31 minutes and 13 seconds that it took for it to infiltrate on this recently converted cropland. We've seen the effects that different types of management can have on infiltration. And we've also looked at some of the soil properties on well-managed grassland and grassland managed with continuous season long grazing. But you can't get a complete picture of the effect of management on soil health until you look at the soils side by side underneath the different types of management. Well-managed grasslands have deeper rooting of the plants, better structure, and the darker soils extend further down into the profile. These are characteristics we can see and by measuring infiltration we can also quantify the impacts of healthy soils. Studies like these show that infiltration is significantly impacted by the management practices being implemented on the land. Increased infiltration resulting from better management means the water that falls on an operation will benefit that operation. Changes in management don't have to be drastic to have a positive influence on infiltration and ultimately improve your natural resources and your bottom line. I encourage you to learn ways to improve your soil health, increasing infiltration, being selfish about the rainfall that falls on your farm or ranch.