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Show 97 Chapter Three. The Henry Mountains. Early-morning wind blowing through pinyons and junipers makes a sound somevihat between a whistle and a howl. It blows Jan's straight blond hair into her eyes - she brushes it back so that she can see to jot figures on the forms in her clipboard. She wishes she had an extra hand, because the wind is r i f f l i n g the papers, too. Her partner, Pam Cordery, paces off the ground. Two steps make one pace; every two paces Pam describes what she finds beneath a notch in the toe of her boot. "Gravel, persistent l i t t e r , " Pam says as Jan marks it down. Gravel is any piece of rock under three-inch size. Persistent l i t t e r does not mean trash l e f t behind by determined campers; it refers to a surface layer of slightly decomposed leaves. Standing in the same spot, Pam describes the growth from the ground up. She speaks in botanical shorthand, "Pi ed, Am u t . " Pi ed stands for Pinus edulis, the Latin name for pinyon pine, or prrlon as most dictionaries spell i t . Am ut is Amelanchier utahensis - it would be easier but less scientific to call it by i t s common name, serviceberry. Pam continues walking in a straight line until she's gone twenty paces, having called out the ground cover and t a l l e r vegetation ten times. Where Pam stops, Jan comes to sample a "plot", putting dovin a marker made of three lenghts of aluminum pipe joined at right angles to form an open-ended square. With hand shears, the g i r l s clip every bit of vegetation in the plot down to the roots, afterward weighing each individual species. The gram-weights will l a t e r be converted to total production in pounds per acre for every type of plant in the area. When |