Laserfiche WebLink
Kent Gorham <br />June 12, 2006 <br />Page 4 <br />Herbaceous Production Sampling <br />Herbaceous production samples on the two reclaimed areas and each corresponding reference area <br />will be collected in July of 2006. Herbaceous production will be determined by hand clipping one 0.5 <br />square meter quadrat along each randomly located point-intercept transect. The sample plot will be <br />placed to the right side ofineter-mark 4. The vegetation will be clipped and separated by life form. <br />The life form categories include perennial grass, annual grass, perennial forb, undesirable perennial <br />forb, biennial forb, and annual forb. Additionally, alfalfa (Medicago saliva) will be separated for <br />evaluation of production data. Clipped vegetation will be separated and weighed to the nearest 0.1 <br />gram with the corresponding "wet" weight recorded. The clipped vegetation will be oven dried and <br />re-weighed as a field "dry" weight. The dry weights will be converted to pounds per acre for each <br />sampled area. Productivity on each reclaimed area will be considered successful if the sample mean <br />is at least 90 percent of the productivity sample mean measured on each corresponding reference <br />area. Fifteen transects will initially be evaluated for success comparison and statistical evaluation <br />purposes on each sampling area. The Snedecor-Cochran sample adequacy formula (Equation 2) will <br />be utilized to evaluate whether an adequate number of samples are collected. If sample adequacy is <br />not achieved with fifteen through twenty-nine transects, data collection will cease with the thirtieth <br />transect and revegetation success evaluated utilizing a two sample reverse null t-test. <br />Post Mining Success Demonstration <br />Post-mining demonstration of revegetation success for vegetative cover and herbaceous production <br />within the reclaimed areas will be assessed through use of the One-Sample T-Test (Equation 3). <br />This statistical test is used only when the sample mean for the reclaimed area is less than 90 percent <br />of the mean value for the reference area. <br />(3) <br />x <br />t~ _ - <br />ss <br />Where: <br />t~ = Calculated t value <br />Q = 90% of the standard <br />x = Bond release block sample mean <br />sx = Standard error of the mean (s/fin) <br />s = Sample standard deviation <br />n = Sample size <br />