Floristic Quality Assessment of Wisconsin Lake Plant Communities with Example Applications

Abstract

ABSTRACT Floristic quality is a rapid assessment metric designed to evaluate the closeness of the flora of an area to undisturbed conditions. To be useful for a variety of monitoring applications it has to be calibrated for local conditions. Based on data from 554 lakes, this paper develops a floristic quality metric for Wisconsin lake plant communities and calibrates it for ecoregional and lake type differences. The Northern Lakes and Forests ecoregion had the highest floristic quality with flowages having the highest number of species and lakes having the highest average coefficient of conservatism (Ȼ). Floristic quality in lakes and flowages in the North Central Hardwoods region and the Southeastern Till Plain region were not significantly different and were combined into a single group. Their floristic quality was intermediate between the Northern Lakes and Forest groups and the final group that was a combined Driftless Area and Mississippi River Backwater lake group. When applied to a limited number of examples the floristic quality index appears to give reasonable results but more trials of use under well documented disturbance conditions is needed to determine its sensitivity.