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In order to bring the negatively skewed distribution of woody plant data into closer conformance <br />• with normality, a square root transformation was undertaken before sample adequacy calculation. <br />CONFIDENCE LIMITS <br />Confidence limits for comparisons to reference area based performance standards and technical <br />standards were calculated using a 1-tailed t-value for alpha error probability of 0.10 at (n-1) <br />degrees of freedom multiplied by the standard error of the mean of the sampled area. <br />C.I. = to ~ Jn <br />where: <br />to =one-tailed t-value with (n-1) degrees of freedom, a=0.10 <br />s =sample standard deviation (n-1) <br />n = number of samples <br />Performance Standards <br />COVER <br />. A cover performance standard was calculated in accordance with procedures contained in the <br />Seneca II permit and is based on twice the weighted average of herbaceous cover in the <br />Mountain Brush and Sagebrush reference areas. An acreage weighted reference area <br />comparison based on the relative acreage of each pre-disturbance plant community was used. <br />Weighting was based on Mountain Brush Reference area as 83 percent and Sagebrush <br />Reference area as 17 percent of pre-mining vegetation cover. Although quantitative sampling of <br />reclaimed areas was conducted at Seneca II Mine in 2002 for purposes of monitoring and not for <br />the purpose of bond release, a line that demarcates 90 percent of this standard has been placed <br />on Figure 1 for illustrative purposes. When sampling for bond release occurs and the parameter <br />mean for a bond release block is at least 90 percent of the calculated success standard or <br />approved technical standard, then revegetation should be considered successful for that <br />parameter. <br />HERBACEOUS PRODUCTION <br />The performance standard for this parameter is calculated similar to the cover performance <br />standard, except that the factor of 2 is omitted. <br />I• <br />