PERMFILE126992

• Permit No: M1999002
• IBM Index Class Name: Permit File
• Doc Date: 1/21/1999
• Doc Name: Vegetation Information
• Section_Exhibit Name: EXHIBIT J
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

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S ~: EXHIBIT J
VEGETATION INFORMATION
Affected lands for the Yankee Gulch Project include the solution mining well field and
the initial processing plant area at the Piceance Site, a 50-foot-wide permanent corridor
along the 44-mile-long pipeline route, and the final processing plant area at the
Parachute Site.
Vegetation communities occurring within the affected Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) lands and private lands to about 5 miles south of the Rio Blanco County-Garfield
County line have been classified and mapped by the BLM (BLM 1998). Vegetation data
were mapped on USGS 7.5 minute quadrangles using Geographical Information System
(GIS), and the maps were then used to identify vegetation communities and to calculate
the acreage of each vegetation type within this portion of the affected lands. Similar
detailed information is not available for the rest of the affected lands, which includes
the southern approximately 11 miles of the pipeline corridor and the Parachute Site in
Garfield County. Information on vegetation types occurring along the proposed project
pipeline corridor not covered by BLM GIS mapping was taken from environmental
assessments for two natural gas pipelines that the project pipeline corridor would
largely parallel (Barrett 1994, CIG 1995). Additional information on local plant
communities is presented in the BLM White River Resource Area Draft Resource
Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement (BLM 1994) and the Phyto-
Edaphic Classification of the Piceance Basin (Tiedeman and Terwilliger 1978), in which
plant communities are described in terms of the overall ecosystem, including species
composition, soil type, climate, and other information such as land use, reclamation
limitations, and revegetation requirements.
For conciseness, the detailed classification scheme used for the GIS mapping and the
somewhat broader classification scheme used by Tiedeman and Terwilliger have been
summarized into the broader plant associations presented in the BLM Resource
Management Plan (BLM 1994). For example, there are 48 BLM GIS mapping categories
for pinyon-juniper-dominated communities, based on variations in percent canopy
cover and various subdominant cover types. Likewise, Tiedeman and Terwilliger
identify three categories for pinyon-juniper-dominated communities, based on
elevation, soil type, and dominant understory cover types. For this analysis,
information from both sources has been combined and summarized to describe, in
genera], the plant communities occurring within the affected lands. Table J-1 provides a
summary of the areal extent of major vegetation associations within the affected lands.
Because the Piceance Site will support all the project mining activities, it is the project
area that will experience the greatest disturbance to vegetation, and, therefore, a
vegetation map of the Piceance Site is also provided in Figure J-1. The table and the
vegetation map of the Piceance Site summarize information compiled in the process of
J-1