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<br />THE ROCKCASTLE COMPANY <br />Technical Adequacy Resopnse <br />The following are responses to questions raised by the Division of Mined <br />Land Reclamation in their review of the Rockcastle Company's permit ap- <br />plication for the Grassy Creek Mine. <br />The Division's questions are given, followed by Rockcastle's response. If <br />acceptable to the Division, these responses are intended to he incorporated <br />as an addendum to the permit application. <br />XII. Vegetation--Rules 2.09.10, 2.05.9(2Xe) and 4.15 <br />The following deficiencies have been identified with respect to vegetation <br />information and Lhe revegetation plan as presented in the application. <br />1. In the statistical analyses, proposed reference areas were included in <br />the neneral population. Proposed reference areas were not compared to the <br />baseline population. Reference aren data should be removed from the affected <br />urea data and ca mpnred to the baseline data to determine equivalence. <br />• The vegetation composition of the mine lease area is shown in Tables <br />1, 2 and 3 of this addendum. They differ from Tables 1, 2 and 3 <br />of the original vegetation baseline inventory in that the reference <br />area data have been removed. These tables show the percent floristic <br />composition (relative species composition) for the aspen, mountain <br />brush and sagebrush types, respectively. Comparable tables for the <br />reference areas are shown in Tables 6, 7 and 8, respectively, of the <br />original vegetation baseline inventory. <br />Similarly, Table 5 of this addendum presents relative percent foliage <br />cover, grams biomass per meter square plot, and density of woody <br />species per plot (10 x 10 meters) for the three vegetation types, <br />exclusive of reference area sampling. Table 5a gives an analysis <br />of variance of these data. <br />Table G, 7 and 8 of this addendum show the species for each of the <br />vegetation types that make up approximately 5 percent or more of <br />the total herbaceous cover. In most cases the dominant species- <br />and even the minor species-are comparable for the inventoried areas <br />and the reference areas. <br />Information in Table 9 of this addendum shows information used to <br />compare cover, biomass and woody plant density for the three vege- <br />tation types inventoried on the mine lease. In this case the "t" values <br />are calculated for each parameter for each of the two reference <br />areas in each of the three vegetation types. Ot the "t" values cal- <br />culated, five may be considered somewhat high. Three of these are <br />2-85 II.J-26 <br />