Wetland vegetation is an obvious choice for developing wetland assessment protocols. Plants are one of the primary factors, like soil or water, which define wetland structure and function. Plants have several advantages as indicator species for wetland assessment methods: (1) they are relatively large, obvious parts of wetland ecosystems; (2) they have a well-studied taxonomy with regional and state-specific taxonomic treatments for most of the United States; (3) the number of plant taxa growing in wetlands is large and offers numerous potential attributes for the method development; and (4) vegetation sampling methods are well developed, 'low-tech', and cost effective (Fennessy et al. 2001).