USING VEGETATION COMMUNITIES TO COMPARE NATURAL AND CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS IN THE RED RIVER BASIN IN TEXAS AND LOUISIANA

Wetland vegetation provides an abundance of ecosystem services such as water quality regulation, flood control, and it provides habitat space for fish, amphibians, and macroinvertebrates. Not only that, but these plants also act as excellent indicators of wetland conditions as dominant vegetation types are often used as biological criteria for classifying wetlands and other habitats (Cowardin and Golet, 1995). This project will assess the structure of vegetation communities to determine how they differ in constructed and natural wetlands within the Red River drainage basin to see if Agricultural Conservation Easement Program – Wetland Reserve Easement (ACEP-WRE) constructed wetlands are effective mitigation options for restoring lost or damaged wetlands. Twenty-eight wetlands in northwestern Louisiana and northeastern Texas along the Red River basin were sampled, eight of which were naturally occurring wetlands used to establish a baseline of vegetation communities, and the remaining 20 were constructed wetlands used to draw a comparison between the structure and function of both wetland types. Using a series of tests to analyze community composition, wetland indicator status and Floristic Quality Assessment of the vegetation communities in each wetland, comparisons could be drawn between the different wetland types. The results of these tests indicate that the natural and constructed wetlands sampled in this study show no significant differences in vegetation community quality or wetland indicator status. Future research should vibe done to determine if similar environmental variables, such as soil chemistry and hydrology, are influencing these vegetation communities to share similar compositions and how these community compositions change over long periods of time.