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Performance Criteria, Compliance Success, and Vegetation Development in Compensatory Mitigation Wetlands

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Abstract

The US Army Corps of Engineers often requires wetland creation or restoration as compensation for wetlands damaged during development. These wetlands are typically monitored postconstruction to determine the level of compliance with respect to site-specific performance standards. However, defining appropriate goals and measuring success of restorations has proven difficult. We reviewed monitoring information for 76 wetlands constructed between 1992 and 2002 to summarize the performance criteria used to measure progress, assess compliance with those criteria, and, finally, to evaluate the appropriateness of those criteria. Goals were overwhelmingly focused on plant communities. Attributes used to assess the quality of restored plant communities, including percent native species and the Floristic Quality Index, increased over time but were apparently unrelated to the number of species planted. Compliance frequencies varied depending on site goals; sites often failed to comply with criteria related to survival of planted vegetation or requirements that dominant plant species should not be exotic or weedy, whereas criteria related to the establishment of cover by vegetation or by wetland-dependent plants were often met. Judgment of a site’s success or failure was largely a function of the goals set for the site. Some performance criteria were too lenient to be of value in distinguishing failed from successful sites, whereas other criteria were unachievable without more intensive site management. More appropriate goals could be devised for restored wetlands by basing performance standards on past performance of similar restorations, identifying consistent temporal trends in attributes of restored sites, and using natural wetlands as references.

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Acknowledgments

Original project monitoring was performed by the Wetlands Group of the Illinois Natural History Survey, under the direction of Allen Plocher, with funding from the Illinois Department of Transportation. Additional hydrologic monitoring was performed at some sites by personnel from the Illinois State Geological Survey. Greg Spyreas, Allen Plocher, Ben O’Neal, and anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Illinois Natural History Survey, 1816 South Oak Street, Champaign, IL, 61820, USA

    Jeffrey W. Matthews

  2. Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, 1101 West Peabody Drive, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Anton G. Endress

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  1. Jeffrey W. Matthews
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  2. Anton G. Endress
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Correspondence to Jeffrey W. Matthews.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 3 Goals and Performance criteria for 76 Compensatory Mitigation Wetlands Sites in 38 Illinois Project Areas
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Matthews, J.W., Endress, A.G. Performance Criteria, Compliance Success, and Vegetation Development in Compensatory Mitigation Wetlands. Environmental Management 41, 130–141 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-007-9002-5

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