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Intro. Perennial Forbs 8.4 0.0 <br />• <br />Native Perennial Graminoids 16.4 63.6 <br />Intro. Perennial Graminoids 28.8 1.8 <br />Shrubs 0.3 0.0 <br />As can be seen from these data, 25.6 percent of the vegetation cover is comprised of native <br />species in the seeded area, while 87.2 percent of the cover is of native species in the <br />unseeded area. This proportion of total cover comprised by native species far exceeds that of <br />any reclaimed area sampled. The fact that aggressive introduced and native species were not <br />planted seems to have allowed an impressive increase in the development of native species in <br />the unseeded area. Total vegetation cover is 46.3 percent in the unseeded area and 55.0 <br />percent in the seeded area. <br />Effects of Grazinn in the Wadge Pasture Unit <br />As of the 1990 sampling, it had been three years since grazing began in the Wadge Pasture. <br />As mentioned in the 1989 Revegetation Monitoring Report, there had been a decline in cover <br />• and production over the entire study area including reference areas during the period of 1987 <br />to1989. Cover had dropped in the 1978 Wadge by 46.8°h and by 27.8% in the 1980/82 <br />Wadge just between 1988 and 1989. By comparison, the Wadge Pasture area had <br />decreased only 10.7%. Likewise, production in the 1978, 80,82 Wadge areas had decreased <br />beween 1988 and 1989 by about 51 %, whereas the decrease in the Wadge Pasture has been <br />only 29.4°,6. In 1990, the cover in the Wadge Pasture continued to decline, by another 7.5 %, <br />while overall cover las mentioned above, an inexact average) rebounded by about 25 °~. <br />However, it should be noted that cover in the Wadge Pasture exceeds that of the Wadge <br />Pasture Comparison area, and also equals or exceeds cover of all other reclaimed areas <br />sampled. Concurrent with the decrease in cover in the Wadge Pasture area has been an <br />increase of an approximately equal amount of litter. <br />As of 1990, production levels in the Wadge Pasture were higher than in any other reclaimed <br />area sampled at the Seneca II Mine, except the 1986 Wadge Spring area where an extreme <br />development of alfalfa accompanied an extremely high level of production. Despite the fact <br />that vegetation cover decreased slightly between 1989 and 1990, production rose by 24.5 <br />percent. Whereas, speculation in the 1989 Revegetation Monitoring Report on the cause of <br />the resilience of the production land cover) of the Wadge Pasture centered on the release of <br />nutrients bound in accumulated litter, the fact that the Wadge Pasture Comparison area <br />19 <br />