Floristic quality as an indicator of human disturbance in forested wetlands of northern New England

Bell, Jennifer-Lee; Boyer, Joseph N.; Crystall, Sandra J.; Nichols, William F.; Pruyn, Michele L.

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2017.08.010

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…A floristic quality assessment (FQA) was conducted for each survey to assess the change in conservation value over time. The FQA is a quantitative masurement of a site’s relative lack of human disturbance [ 43 ] and has often been used as a factor in success criteria for mitigation and habitat assessments [ 44 , 45 ]. The FQA is calculated as: where C site is the mean CoC of an entire site and S is the species richness of the site.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Successional dynamics of a 35 year old freshwater mitigation wetland in southeastern New Hampshire

et al. 2021

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The long-term ecological success of compensatory freshwater wetland projects has come into question based on follow-up monitoring studies over the past few decades. Given that wetland restoration may require many years to decades to converge to desired outcomes, long-term monitoring of successional patterns may increase our ability to fully evaluate success of wetland mitigation projects or guide adaptive management when needed. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire a 4 ha wetland was constructed in an abandoned gravel quarry as off-site compensatory mitigation for impacts to a scrub-shrub swamp associated with property expansion. Building upon prior evaluations from 1992 and 2002, we conducted a floral survey in 2020 to compare results with prior surveys to document vegetation successional trends over time. In addition, we monitored the avian community throughout the growing season as a measure of habitat quality. The plant community mirrored documented successional trends of freshwater wetland restoration projects as native hydrophytes dominated species composition. Plant species composition stabilized as the rate of turnover, the measurement of succession, declined by nearly half after 17 years. Researchers should consider long-term monitoring of specific sites to better understand successional patterns of created wetlands as we documented long time frames required for the development of scrub-shrub swamps, red maple swamps, and sedge meadows. High species richness was attributed to beaver activity, topographic heterogeneity from Carex stricta tussocks, and the seed bank from the application of peat from the original wetland. Habitat heterogeneity of open water, herbaceous cover, and woody vegetation supports a diverse avian community including 11 wetland dependent species. Although the mitigation project has not created the full area of lost scrub-shrub swamp after 35 years, it has developed a structurally complex habitat and diverse avian community that effectively provides the functions and values of the impacted system.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Successional dynamics of a 35 year old freshwater mitigation wetland in southeastern New Hampshire

et al. 2021

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“…Despite major difficulties in quantitatively assessing the current state and economic value of wetlands due to the lack of an efficient market for these wetland services [23,36], there have been many attempts (e.g., [23,37]) to evaluate the value of forests that surround wetlands at the landscape level. The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA, 2006) [38] refers to the three-tiered monitoring and assessment program for wetlands.…”

Section: Evaluation Of Forest Wetlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A GIS-Assisted Assessment and Attribute-Based Clustering of Forest Wetland Utility in South Korea

et al. 2019

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The aim of this study was to determine the characteristics of forest wetlands by developing factors for site suitability and applying these factors to 107 sites in South Korea. We developed a forest wetland assessment in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment to assess site suitability. We considered 16 factors including slope, elevation, visibility, land ownership, distance to city, and so on. We conducted an expert survey with experts to analyze the relative importance by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). We found that the order of importance of the 5 criteria applied in this study was: (1) Natural Ecology, (2) Land Use, (3) Natural Landscape, (4) Tourist Attraction, and (5) Accessibility. We then analyzed the spatial characteristics of each site based on the AHP result and divided the 107 forest wetlands into three categories by cluster analysis. Sites with high scores on the assessment were primarily the landscape ecology or land use criterion. Our differentiation of these forest wetland characteristics could help enable policymakers to develop sustainable management with the aim of balancing conservation with utilization in ecotourism destinations.

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“…The Floristic Quality Assessment Index (FQAI) is one of the most widely used wetland assessment tools in the United States of America (USA) [ 8 , 12 , 13 , 14 ] and is used for estimating the biological condition of wetlands based on the overall conservatism of the species assemblage [ 15 ]. The FQAI employs a numeric quality rating and a coefficient of conservatism (CC) to indicate the affinity of plant species to a particular habitat, or the species’ tolerance of disturbances [ 16 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evaluation of biological indices to assess the condition of hillslope seep wetlands in the Tsitsa River Catchment, South Africa

2021

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The increase in the degradation of wetlands globally has highlighted the need to assess their ecological condition. Hillslope seep wetlands are among the least studied wetland types, yet they the most vulnerable because of their small size and steep slopes. Human pressure and the vulnerable nature of these wetlands requires wetland assessment tools to assess their condition. This study sought to evaluate the performance of the Floristic Quality Assessment Index for all species (FQAIall), the FQAI for dominant species (FQAIdom), and the Floristic Assessment Quotient for Wetlands (FAQWet) in response to the Anthropogenic Activity Index (AAI) and WET-Health in eleven hillslope seep wetlands and used these indices to assess the degree and intensity of disturbance. Vegetation samples were collected in summer 2016 and winter 2017. All assessment indices, FQAIall, FQAIdom, FAQWet and WET-Health, showed that hillslope seep wetlands were impacted by human activities. FQAIall showed the strongest response to AAI in winter, while FAQWet showed the strongest response to WET-Health. To the best of our knowledge, researchers in South Africa have used only WET-Health to assess wetland condition, and this is the first study to assess the condition of hillslope seep wetlands using a combination of indices (FQAIall, FQAIdom, FAQWet, and WET-Health). Overall, the findings of this study suggest that FQAIall and FAQWet are potentially better tools for assessing the biological condition of hillslope seep wetlands in South Africa.

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Floristic quality as an indicator of human disturbance in forested wetlands of northern New England

Cited by 9 publications

References 7 publications

Successional dynamics of a 35 year old freshwater mitigation wetland in southeastern New Hampshire

Successional dynamics of a 35 year old freshwater mitigation wetland in southeastern New Hampshire

A GIS-Assisted Assessment and Attribute-Based Clustering of Forest Wetland Utility in South Korea

The evaluation of biological indices to assess the condition of hillslope seep wetlands in the Tsitsa River Catchment, South Africa

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