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Assessment of BRB-3 for Compliance with Permanent Program Phase 111 Performance Standards The following four sections relate to an assessment of the correspondence of the observed cover, herbaceous production, woody plant density and species diversity tot BRB-3.. COVER Calculation of 90 percent of the cover perrormance standard appropriate for 2006 sampling is demonstrated below. Mountain Brush Reference Area herbaceous cover* = 14.2 x 2 = 28.4 Sagebrush/Snowberry Reference Area herbaceous cover' = 34.7 x 2 = 69.4 90 percent of the Cover Standard = 0.90 [0.83(27.8) + 0.17(69.4)] = 31.8% * Herbaceous cover adjusted by subtracting noxious weeds if any and annual plant cover in excess of 10% relative cover As can be seen in Figure 1a, the allowable herbaceous cover of BRB-3 (45.1%) falls above 90% of the Permanent Program standard set by the Mountain Brush and Sagebrush/Snowberry reference areas (i.e. 31.8%). Inasmuch as cover sampling efforts met sample adequacy (see Table 16} the fact That the reclaimed area sample mean exceeds 90% of the Permanent Program standard is sufficient to demonstrate success (Colorado Coal Regulations 4.15.11 (2)(a)). HERBACEOUS PRODUCTION Calculation of 90 percent of the production performance standard appropriate for 2006 sampling is as follows: 90 percent of the Herbaceous Production Standard set by the weighted average of the measured production of the Mountain Brush Reference Area and the Sagebrush/Snowberry Reference Area = 0.90[0.83(637) + 0.17(1038.5)] = 634.7 oven-dry Ib/ac. As can be seen in Figure 2, all reclaimed areas sampled far exceeded 90 percent of the herbaceous production standard. The data in Figure 2 have had no need to be corrected for "allowable' production (i.e. subtracting production from annual/biennial species that exceed 10% of total production) because annual/biennial species were in all cases far below 10% of total annual production. 23