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The following details the criteria for comparison to be made between reference area information and <br />revegetation communities to be returned on the postmining landscape. These comparisons reflect <br />reclamation experience and revegetation monitoring data from the nearby Seneca II and Seneca II -W <br />Mines. The criteria attempt to provide realistic and achievable standards 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 toward plant <br />communities that include to greater or lesser degrees, the presence of woody plants and forbs. <br />Standards, therefore, must be derived which not only take into account premining 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 reclaimed areas <br />in the semiarid west after so little time as ten years. <br />For the Yoast mine area, the four dominant affected types in the permit area include aspen woodland, <br />mountain brush, sagebrush, and steep mountain brush. These types are well distributed across the <br />undisturbed north, east, south, and west portions of the mine permit area. After careful consideration <br />for maximum life -of -mine disturbance impacts, the following minimum acreages of the four major <br />upland types will be available for comparison sampling. aspen woodland - 100 acres, mountain brush <br />- 600 acres, steep mountain brush — 30 acres, and sagebrush - 200 acres. A minimum of eight acres <br />will remain undisturbed for the mesic drainage and improved pasture- subirrigated types. These <br />acreages represent the minimum acreages to be used; however, whenever possible, comparisons will <br />consider the maximum undisturbed area available at any given time as the sampling universe. These <br />types will serve as the 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 area. For purposes of <br />creating these weighted averages, the following percentages of vegetation types that were present in <br />the premining surface to be affected by mining (as determined during baseline studies) will be used: <br />Aspen — 24.4 %; Mountain Brush — 48.9 %; Steep Mountain Brush — 2.7 %; and Sagebrush /Snowberry <br />24.0 %. <br />RN -03 34 Revised 10/10 <br />