Status and Trends of Wetlands in Minnesota: Vegetation Quality Baseline

To protect wetlands, both the United States (U.S.) federal government and the state of Minnesota have adopted a broad policy goal to achieve no-net-loss and promote increases in the quantity, quality, and biological diversity of wetlands. As no-net-loss is advanced through a variety of regulatory and non-regulatory programs at many levels of government, targeted monitoring efforts are required to determine whether policy goals are being met. To do so, Minnesota has initiated several random surveys to measure the status and trends of both wetland quantity and quality. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) is the lead agency for the quantity survey and currently estimates 10.62 million wetland acres in the state. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is responsible for measuring wetland quality, initially focusing on depressional marshes and ponds. Baseline depressional wetland quality for 2007-09 was predominately low based on vegetation but high for macroinvertebrates throughout the state—with better quality for both assemblages in the northern forest region, compared to more degraded quality in the hardwood forest and former prairie regions of Minnesota. The effort presented here—called the Minnesota Wetland Condition Assessment (MWCA)—was initiated to broaden wetland quality status and trends monitoring beyond depressional wetlands. Our goal was to establish a current baseline quality of virtually all of Minnesota's wetlands at statewide and regional scales, and begin to quantify the potential human impacts that may be associated with degraded conditions.