Methane

Of the non-reservation sites, 147 had enough data to permit analysis with the T test.  The available data does not show that the number of changing, increasing and decreasing sites is more than would be expected by chance.   The Sen and Mann-Kendall tests give similar findings.  The Mann-Kendall test does gives some evidence of homogeneity of trend across sites in this case; however, there is no evidence that this trend is anything but randomly fluctuating.

 

An important reason for lack of significance in the off-reservation sites appears to be that the latter have been monitored for a much shorter period of time, so that sample variances are much larger.  This makes it more difficult for the set of readings at a site to pass a T-Test.  Results for CH4 levels at non-reservation sites are summarized in Tables 6 and 7.

Table 9.  Summary of T-Test results, CH4_LEL for 147 off-reservation sites.

Significance Level

Number of Sites with Upward Trend

Number of Sites with Downward Trend

Number of Sites with Any Trend

Expected Number of Sites with Any Trend

99.9%

0

0

0

0

99.0%

0

2

2

1

95.0%

0

2

2

7

 

Table 10.  Summary of T-Test results, log(CH4_LEL) for 147 off-reservation sites.

Significance Level

Number of Sites with Upward Trend

Number of Sites with Downward Trend

Number of Sites with Any Trend

Expected Number of Sites with Any Trend

99.9%

0

0

0

0

99.0%

0

0

0

1

95.0%

1

0

1

7

 

Table 11.    Sen and Mann-Kendall statistics, CH4_LEL for 147 sites off the Southern Ute Reservation.

Significance Level

Sites with Positive Sen estimator

Sites with Negative

Sen estimator

 

Sites with Positive Mann-Kendall statistic

Sites with Negative Mann-Kendall statistic

99.0%

3

0

3

1

95.0%

9

1

7

4

Chi-square estimate of homogeneity for the Mann-Kendall scores: about 59%.