Oxygen

Of the 133 sites with sufficient data for the T-tests, there were many more sites showing change (both upward and downward trends) in measured O2 than could be explained by chance.  The number of sites showing significant downward trends outnumbered that showing significant upward trend.  This conforms to the results for methane levels, since decreases in oxygen are expected to accompany increases in other gases such as methane.  However, the figures in Tables 4–6 do not match exactly those in Tables 1–3.  The relationship between decreasing oxygen and increasing methane could be confirmed by correlating the significance level of trend at each site.

 

Table 4.   Summary of T-Test results, O2 for 133 sites on the Southern Ute Reservation.

Significance Level

U

Number of Sites with Upward Trend

D

Number of Sites with Downward Trend

U+D

Number of Sites with Any Trend

Expected Number of Sites with Any Trend

Probability of D out of U+D Sites Decreasing

(see Note 3)

Probability of U+D Sites with Any Trend

(see Note 2)

99.9%

6

21

27

0

0.003

1.08E-53

99.0%

16

31

47

1

0.020

1.02E-58

95.0%

34

41

75

7

0.244

3.59E-61

 

Table 5.  Sen and Mann-Kendall statistics, O2 for 183 sites on 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%

9

44

10

51

95.0%

11

60

17

65

Chi-square estimate of homogeneity for the Mann-Kendall scores: less than 0.0001%