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• The following details die criteria for comparison to be made between reference area information and <br />revegetarion communities to be returned on the postmining landscape. These comparisons reflect <br />reclamation experience and revegetation motritoring data from the nearby Seneca II and Seneca II-W <br />Mines. The criteria attempt to provide realistic and achievable standazds that ensure erosional stability <br />of the landscape, provide adequate productivity for the postmining land use, and establish vegetative <br />composition and successional levels sufficient to ensure continued plant community development. <br />Because of a number of factors, both natural and as a result of applied current technology, reclaimed <br />plant communities will be dominated by stabilizing herbaceous vegetation which will provide a stable <br />and productive beginning point from which vegetation change (succession) may move towazd plant <br />communities that. include to greater. ox lesser degrees, dte presence of woody plants and foxbs. <br />Standazds, therefore, must be derived which not only take into account premising native vegetation <br />conditions, but also consider the inherent reclaimed community characteristics resulting from applied <br />technologies and realistic successional (community development) rates achievable in reclaited azeas <br />in the semiarid west after so little time as tea Yeats. <br />• For dre Yoast mine azea, the four dominant affected types in the permit azea include aspen woodland, <br />mountain brush, sagebrush, and steep mountain brush. These types aze well distributed across the <br />undisturbed north, east, south, and west portions of dte mine permit azea. After cazeful consideration <br />for maximum life-of--mine disturbance impacts, the following minimum acreages of the three major <br />upland types will be available for comparison sampling. aspen woodland - 100 acres, mountain brush <br />- 600 acres, and sagebrush - 200 acres. A minimum of eight aces will remain undisturbed for the <br />merit drainage and improved pasture-subirrigated types. These acreages represent the minimum <br />acreages to be used; however, whenever possible, comparisons will consider the maximum <br />undisturbed area available at any given time as the sampling universe. These types will serve as dte <br />basis for developing weighted averages for cover and production comparisons. <br />Quantitative cover and production data from these types will serve as the basis for developing <br />weighted averages for cover and production comparisons in the Yoast Mine azea. For purposes of <br />creating these weighted averages, the following percentages of vegetation types that were present in <br />the disturbed azea prior to mining (as detemtined during baseline studies) will be used <br />Aspen - 24.4%; Mountain Brush - 48.9%; Steep Mountain Brush - 2.7%; and Sagebrush/Snowbetry <br />• 24.0%. <br />PR-02 34 Revised 01/06 <br />