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Approximately eighty-six percent of Nevada's land area is owned by the federal government. Although limited in productive capacity by widespread aridity, these federally owned lands serve a variety of uses and constitute an integral part of the state's overall resource base. Federal grazing allotments, indispensable to the privately operated range livestock industry, may provide the basis for something like forty percent of all farm market cash receipts. In recent years both the Homestead and Desert Land acts have been used to bring new acreage under irrigation. Recreational lands, mineral lands, and lands used for national defense purposes exert strong influence on the livelihood structure of various cemmunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship of climate to land-surface morphology and genesis has been investigated by numerous writers for well over half a century. Such studies have focused in part upon interpreting erosional cycles, but more importantly they have to an increasing degree been oriented toward understanding the areal variation of specific surface forms and geomorphic processes. Especially pertinent to the geographer are recent attempts in the United States, and particularly by Julius Büdel in Germany, to use climatic influence as a basis for establishing morphogenetic and climato-genetic regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]