National Wetland Team

The National List of Plant Species that Occur in Wetlands is currently being revised by a National Plant Panel and 10 Regional Plant Panels composed of botanists and wetland ecologists from NRCS, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS).  The list is used for a presence/absence determination of hydrophytic vegetation -- one of the three mandatory factors in the process of identifying and delineating wetlands in accordance with the Swampbuster Provisions of the 1985 National Food Security Act and Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. The list currently contains approximately 7,000 wetland plants, each with an assigned wetland indicator status rating identifying the species’ frequency of occurrence in wetlands.  It has not been revised since originally developed in 1988. Since its original publication, several thousand taxonomic and synonymy changes to species currently on the list have occurred, changing their scientific names. 

In addition to addressing these plant taxonomy and synonymy changes that have occurred during the past 21 years, the regional format of the list is changing and will be ecologically based by using Major Land Resource Regions and Land Resource Regions instead of arbitrary geopolitical boundaries.  This change in regional structure is consistent with the USACE’s Wetland Delineation Manual Regional Supplements.  A map identifying this new regional format can be found at the USACE webpage.  It is anticipated that the revised list will be available for public review and comment during fiscal year 2010.
Your contact is NRCS Wetland Team Leader Dr. Norman Melvin at 817-509-3572.