The purpose of this study was to evaluate vegetation, soils, infiltration rates, and sediment production as they relate to livestock exclusion, continuous heavy grazing, continuous moderate grazing, and rotation grazing on a homogeneous plant-soil complex. The exclusion of livestock resulted in infiltration rates significantly higher than when the pastures were grazed in any system. No differences were found between heavily and moderately stocked pastures. This was attributed to organic matter additions from forbs that replaced grasses when the area was heavily grazed. The rotation treatment had infiltration rates that were lower than the exclosures or continuous grazing treatments. Sediment production from interrill erosion was similar in all treatments except when the livestock were concentrated into a fourth of the rotation system's area, which resulted in higher sediment levels. Better use and protection of limited soil, vegetation, and water resources are vital to the welfare, if not survival, of civilization as global population continues to expand. Development of these resources on rangeland watersheds has been largely neglected, although these watersheds occupy 40% of the earth's land surface80% of which lies within arid and semiarid regions. In these drier regions, overgrazing and short-term droughts drive a cycle of decreasing soil surface micro-roughness and macroporosity, decreasing water infiltration, increasing surface runoff and evaporation, increasing sediment production, decreasing vegetation production, and increasing land barrenness (Dixon and Simanton 1977). This cycle leads to desertification and irreversible deterioration of soil, vegetation, and water resources. Infiltration rate is an important process on rangeland watersheds because it influences soil water content, sediment, and on-site vegetation production. It should be controlled by resource managers through the manipulation of vegetation. Grazing systems based on assumptions that they improve production, cover, and composition of vegetation have been recommended as best management practices for improvement of rangeland watershed conditions (Wood 1980). Although this recommendation appears valid, only a small amount of investigation has been carried out to quantitatively describe effects of grazing systems on rangeland watersheds through time (Knight et al. 1980, McCalla et al. 1984). No such investigation has been conducted in New Mexico. The objective of this study was to describe quantitatively the influence of selected grazing schemes and grazing exclusion on infiltration rates, sediment production, forage production, microrelief, plant cover, and litter cover through time.