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EVALUATING DESIGN AND VERIFYING COMPLIANCE OF CREATED WETLANDS IN THE VICINITY OF TAMPA, FLORIDA
Citation:
Gwin, S., M. Kentula, AND D. Frostholm. EVALUATING DESIGN AND VERIFYING COMPLIANCE OF CREATED WETLANDS IN THE VICINITY OF TAMPA, FLORIDA. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/3-91/068.
Description:
Completed mitigation projects are being studied by the Wetlands Research Program nationwide to identify critical design features, develop methods for evaluating projects, determine the functions they perform, and describe how they change with time. his report is the second in a series designed to evaluate the physical adequacy of created wetlands by comparing field measurements of wetlands created as compensatory mitigation with their construction plans and permit conditions. ecause the information contained in the project fields was limited to hydrology, wetland area, wetland shape, slopes of banks, and vegetation, our evaluation was also limited to these elements. etland hydrology and vegetation are important to study on their own merit because they are two of the factors required to indicate a wetland exists (Federal Interagency Committee for Wetland Delineation 1989). t is important to examine wetland area created to ensure that losses in area do not occur as a result of compensatory mitigation, and wetland shape and slopes of banks are structural features which influence wetland type and wildlife habitat. n light of the above, quantitative measurements were taken to 1) determine if the wetland creation projects conformed to their permit specifications, 2) verify that the wetlands were created according to their construction plans, and 3) evaluate the design of those projects in terms of their resemblance to natural wetlands and their attributes as discussed in the literature.