Cheat grass both enables the erosion its presence is blamed for preventing

Evidence

As is true of the carp, the starling, and the Russian thistle, the cheat-afflicted regions make a virtue of necessity and find the invader useful. Newly sprouted cheat is good forage while it lasts; like as not the lamb chop you ate for lunch was nurtured on cheat during the tender days of spring. Cheat reduces the erosion that would otherwise follow the overgrazing that admitted cheat. (This ecological ring-around-the-rosy merits long thought.) — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 557

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The ring-around-the-rosy — an invader both a symptom and partial remedy of the very disturbance that admitted it — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting lens for reading degraded landscapes.
• XREF: connects to: Cheat grass is an annual weed whose name derives from its roof habitat — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 549; Winter snow confines game to a slender foothill belt that cheat fires are shrinking — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 554; Overgrazing caused cheat to replace native grasses on foothill rangeland — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 551