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<br />Geological Survey for these two areas patterned after the prototype series for
<br />the Salina Quadrangle, Utah (Covington, 1972; Covington and Will iams, 1972;
<br />Hackman, 1972, 1973; Price, 1972a, 1972b; Williams, 1972; Wi 11 iams and Coving-
<br />ton, 1973; Wi 11 iams and Hackman, 1971), These include areal depiction of such
<br />topics as potential landslide areas, coal beds and amount of overburden,ground-
<br />water aVailability and quality, springs, and vegetation,
<br />
<br />The U.S, Bureau of Land Management has compiled detailed information for
<br />one of their planning unIts within the Yampa River basin at a scale of 1:126,720
<br />with 73 overlays (Gary Carson, oral commun., 1975).
<br />
<br />Remote~Sensing Applications
<br />
<br />There is a wide variation of vegetative cover within the Yampa basin--
<br />both s'patially and temporally, To help assess this variation a computer
<br />program developed at Purdue University .and described by Landgrebe (1969) may
<br />be used, Color-infrared Imagery from the Landsat (ERTS) satellite Is avail-
<br />able for all seasons 'of the year and will be. reduced at the U,S, Geological
<br />Survey's EROS Data Center, Sioux Falls, S, Oak., using an "image-100" system
<br />(G, K, Moore, written commun, , 1975),
<br />
<br />The: basis of the computer program developed at Purdue University revolves
<br />around a multispectral approach to pattern recognition as appl ied to a digital-
<br />processing system. Using the Landsat (ERTS) imagery as input, the program can
<br />assess. the spectral, spatial, and. temporal variat.ions of energy reflected from
<br />the earth's surface. The program can tabulate the output for the area of the
<br />basin to give percentage vegetation cover over the basin, By assessing sever-
<br />al image frames for the Yampa region over an annual cycle, the percentage
<br />changes of vegetation as a function of season can be assessed, Remote sensing
<br />also might provide information to evaluate (1) impacts of strip-mining, parti-
<br />cularly erosion, (2) extent and progress of vegetative rehabilitation, (3)
<br />most efficient use of land resources where competition exists, (4) effective-
<br />ness of solid-waste disposal, and (5) best areas for recreation use.
<br />
<br />ENVI RONMENTAL ANALYS I S FOR SELECTED
<br />ENERGY-DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS
<br />
<br />Procedures, from simple to complex, will be Imposed in. evaluating the
<br />various environmental implications of the several proposed coal-development
<br />plans that might be implemented In the Yampa River basin, .In the basin as-
<br />sessment, screening procedures shol!ld be defined to evaluate the feasibility
<br />of each proposal. The criteria for these procedures, in tu.rn, will help In-
<br />d i cate the types of env i ronmenta 1 mode I s anc;l extent of env i.ronmenta I ana I ys i s
<br />needed to determine the Implementation of a given development plan, These
<br />screening criteria will be made as quantitative as possible, The successful
<br />outcome of this research, however, cannot be guaranteed for the reslduals-
<br />management analysis,
<br />
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