Wetlands of the Interior Southeastern United States

The early 1990's marked an environmental watershed for our countly. Under two federal administrations significant environmental legislative, regulatOly and institutional changes took place which affected our Nation's wetland resources. Injust a few years, we have seen rapid evolution in the way in which we view wetlands with more emphasis on specific wetland types and the geographic provinces in which they occur. This Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere (SAMAB) conference on "Wetland Ecology, Management and Conservation" represents just one example of our desire to understand wetlands in non-coastal regions of the southern United States. The backdrop to this conference was one where the government, universities, and private sector have come together to create a broader and more sophisticated understanding of environmental stewardship for our water resources, especially wetlands. Although enforcement of environmental legislation by federal and state government agencies - limited by manpower shortages, budgetary constraints and undermined by weak enforcement - remains strong as measured by world standards; the realization that environmental degradation of wetlands is likely to get much worse necessitates a greater commitment and increased resource allocation for wetland protection and management. These contiIUled pressures on the wetland resource will create substantial opportunities for the application of environmentally-sound technologies and interdisciplinmy modeling teams to keep abreast of the factors influencing wetland integrity and function in the last half of the 1990's.

Texte du rabat

Wetlands are widely recognized for their important role in sustainable landscape functions and for societal values derived from wetland-dependent processes. The wetland resource in the southern United States is particularly important because it comprises approximately 50% of the total wetland area in the nation. Eight southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia) contain approximately 7.8 million hectares of wetlands, approximately 21% of the United States total. Wetlands in those areas include many different types ranging from coastal marshes, bottomland swamps, pocosins, riparian zones, and mountain bogs. Most wetland research in the southern United States has focused on the coastal plan region or on the Mississippi delta, encompassing wetland types such as bottomland swamps, pocosins and flatwoods. In September 1993, about 95 scientists gathered in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, for a conference on southeastern United States wetlands and to develop recommendations for future research programs. This book contains 20 papers that were presented at the conference and it is divided into six parts. Part I is a Conference Summary paper that reports major findings discussed at the conference. Parts II through VI contain papers divided into the topical areas of Wetlands Resources, Biogeochemical Processes of Wetlands, Wetland Vegetation Dynamics and Ecology, Managed Wetlands, and Wetland Restoration and Creation.

Contenu
I Conference Summary Statement.- Wetlands of the Interior Southeastern United States: Conference Summary Statement.- II Wetland Resources.- Classification and Inventory of Wetlands in the Southern Appalachian Region.- Identification of Wetlands in the Southern Appalachian Region and the Certification of Wetland Delineators.- III Biogeochemical Processes.- Hillslope Nutrient Flux During Near-Stream Vegetation Removal. I. A Multi-Scaled Modeling Design.- Plant Community Composition and Surface Water Chemistry of Fen Peatlands in West Virginia's Appalachian Plateau.- Carbon Dynamics in Appalachian Peatlands of West Virginia and Western Maryland.- IV Vegetation Dynamics and Ecology.- Hydrologic and Wetland Characteristics of a Piedmont Bottom in South Carolina.- Landscape-Level Processes and Wetland Conservation in the Southern Appalachian Mountains.- Vegetation of Three High Elevation Southern Appalachian Bogs and Implications of Their Vegetational History.- Wildlife Use of Southern Appalachian Wetlands in North Carolina.- Non-Aulluvial Wetlands of the Southern Blue Ridge Diversity in a Threatened Ecosystem.- Rare and Endangered Plants and Animals of the Southern Appalachian Wetlands.- V Managed Wetlands.- Riparian Forest Buffer System Research at the Coastal Plain Experiment Station, Tifton, Georgia.- Rapid Wetland Functional Assessment: Its's Role and Utility in the Regulatory Arena.- Forest Management and Wildlife in Forested Wetlands of the Southern Appalachians.- Best Management Practices for Forested Wetlands in the Southern Appalachian Region.- A Seasonally Hydric Reservoir Riparian Zone in the Tennessee River Valley.- VI Wetland Restoration and Creation.- Meeting Technical Needs for Wetlands Restoration, Establishment, and Management.- Design andImplementation of Functional Wetland Mitigation: Case Studies in Ohio and South Carolina.- Evaluation of Planned Wetlands (EPW).- Conference Participants.- Author Index.