• Overview: Effort in this area is relatively new. Wetland determination/delineation is required before most land use changes can proceed on wet soils. Evaluation criteria and techniques are being developed and presented to regulatory personnel responsible for making wetland determinations. Guidelines for restoring wetland hydrology on prior converted wetlands are being developed and evaluated.

 
• Goal: Provide landowners, consultants, and regulators quantitative methods for evaluating wetland hydrology.

 
• Importance: Over half of the original wetlands in North Carolina are reported to have been loss (i.e., converted to other non-natural land uses). There is tremendous interest in protecting existing wetlands and restoring wetland functions to some prior converted wetlands. Establishing appropriate hydrologic functions will inherently influence wetland restoration success. While recognizing the need to preserve some natural areas, many landowners feel their rights to use some of their lands have been taken away by recent changes in wetland protection rules. There is tremendous ongoing debate about what constitutes a wetland, and how to equitably determine if a particular piece of property is jurisdictional. Current wetland determination procedures rarely utilize quantitative methods to delineate wetlands from uplands.

 
• Cooperators: R. Skaggs (BAE), G. Chescheir (BAE), J. Parsons (BAE), D. Lindbo (Soil Science), M. Vepraskas (Soil Scienct), T. Shear (Forestry), B. Gardner (Forestry)

 

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