Floristic quality assessment index (FQAI) for vascular plants and mosses for the State of Ohio Barbara K. Andreas John J. Mack James S. McCormac Appropriate Citation: Andreas, Barbara K., John J. Mack, and James S. McCormac. 2004. Floristic Quality Assessment Index (FQAI) for vascular plants and mosses for the State of Ohio. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Division of Surface Water, Wetland Ecology Group, Columbus, Ohio. 219 p. This entire document can be downloaded from the website of the Ohio EPA, Division of Surface Water: http://www.epa.state.oh.us/dsw/wetlands/wetland_bioassess.html ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not have been possible without the generous and continued support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 (Sue Elston, Catherine Garra, Lula Spruill) and was funded under Wetland Program Development Grant CD975762-01. Special thanks are extended to Jennifer Martin and April Morrison of Ohio EPA for fiscal support in arranging for the printing of this manuscript. We are grateful for the support offered by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Natural Areas and Preserves, and the Ohio State University and Kent State University Herbaria for generous assistance with their collections and for allowing use of their meeting spaces. Acknowledgements are made to Gerould Wilhelm, Kim Hermann, and Robert Lichvar for their assistance in the establishment of the methodology, and to Nancy Slack, Diane Lucas, and Donn Horchler for reviewing the moss database, and to our outside reviewers John Baird, Siobhan Fennessy and Rick Gardner. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................iii CONTRIBUTORS AND REVIEWERS ..................................................vi INTRODUCTION ................................................................... 1 METHODOLOGY AND APPLICATION ................................................ 4 METHODOLOGY ............................................................ 4 APPLICATION .............................................................. 9 Sampling Method and Sampling Effort ...................................... 9 Plant Community Effects ................................................ 10 Example Calculations .................................................. 13 Example Scores from Selected Natural Areas in Ohio ......................... 13 EXPLANATION OF APPENDICES ................................................... 19 EXPLANATION OF APPENDIX A ............................................. 19 EXPLANATION OF APPENDIX B ............................................. 21 EXPLANATION OF APPENDIX C ............................................. 22 EXPLANATION OF APPENDIX D ............................................. 23 EXPLANATION OF APPENDIX E ............................................. 23 LITERATURE CITED .............................................................. 24 APPENDICES ..................................................................... 27 APPENDIX A - OHIO VASCULAR PLANT DATABASE .....................A1 - A112 APPENDIX B - OHIO MOSS DATABASE .................................. B1 - B21 APPENDIX C - SELECTED VASCULAR PLANT SYNONYMS ................ C1 - C18 APPENDIX D - FOOTNOTES FOR OHIO VASCULAR PLANT DATABASE .....D1 - D20 APPENDIX E - OCCASIONAL ADVENTIVE VASCULAR PLANT SPECIES ..... E1 - E11 Cover photographs (from top row): Ranunculus flabellaris and Glyceria septentrionalis at Slate Run Metropark, Pickaway Co., Ohio (Credit: John Mack, Ohio EPA); Baker Swamp, Jackson Co., Ohio (Credit: John Mack, Ohio EPA); Daughmer Savannah, Crawford Co., Ohio (Credit: John Mack, Ohio EPA); Shawnee State Forest (Credit: James McCormac, Ohio DNR-DNAP); Cypripedium parviflorum var. parviflorum (Credit: James McCormac, Ohio DNR-DNAP), Geauga County, Ohio. iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1. Summary of coefficients of conservatism. ......................................... 4 Table 2. Representative FQAI scores from quantitative sampling of wetlands in Ohio. ............ 14 Table 3. Example FQAI calculations a leatherleaf bog ..................................... 15 Table 4. Summary table of Appendix A and E ............................................ 19 Figure 1. Hypothetical communities showing differences in diversity .......................... 1 Figure 2. Hypothetical communities illustrating species richness and evenness ................... 2 Figure 3. Hymenoxys acaulis (Lakeside Daisy) ............................................ 5 Figure 4. Trifolium stoloniferum (Running Buffalo Clover) .................................. 5 Figure 5. Populus balsamifera (Balsam poplar) ............................................ 6 Figure 6. Comparison of mean C of C score with FQAI score for 156 Ohio wetlands .............. 6 Figure 8. Epifagus virginiana (beech-drops) .............................................. 7 Figure 7. Justicia americana (water-willow) .............................................. 7 Figure 9. Comparison of FQAI scores from Daughmer Oak Savannah ......................... 10 Figure 10. Box and whisker plots comparing FQAI scores for different plant communities ......... 11 Figure 11. FQAI score versus Ohio Rapid Assessment Method v. 5.0 score .................... 11 Figure 12. Box and whisker plots comparing FQAI scores for different buffer classes ............ 12 Figure 13. Box and whisker plots comparing relative cover of tolerant plant species .............. 12 Figure 14. Histogram of coefficient of conservatism for vascular plants ........................ 20 Figure 15. Histogram of coefficients of conservatism mosses ................................ 20 v CONTRIBUTORS AND REVIEWERS Authors: Barbara K. Andreas teaches botany at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. Her areas of expertise are the ecology of Ohio’s peatlands and the identification and distribution of Ohio’s vascular plants and bryophytes. She received her Ph.D. from Kent State University. Additional post-doctoral studies were done at the University of Michigan Biological Station. She is the author of Vascular Flora of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau Region of Ohio, and co-authored the Floristic Index for Establishing Assessment Standards: A Case Study for Northern Ohio, which is a regional floristic quality assessment index. She also wrote A Catalog and Atlas of the Mosses of Ohio. John J. Mack is a wetland ecologist and botanist with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. He received a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, an M.S. in Environmental Science from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, a Juris Doctor from Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, and an M.S. in Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology from The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. His work at Ohio EPA includes developing and applying biological indicators to assess wetland condition including the development of a Vegetation Index of Biotic Integrity for Ohio wetlands. He also has done research on the history of the Prairie Peninsula in Ohio and the floristics and ecology of Ohio prairie and savannah. His most recent paper is An Ordination and Classification of Wetlands in the Till and Lake Plains and Allegheny Plateau. James S. McCormac is a botanist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Natural Areas and Preserves. His work there involves protection of Ohio’s highest quality natural areas, statewide surveys of significant habitats and rare species, and ecological assessments of rare plant communities. He attended the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. He was a founder of the Ohio Rare Plant Advisory Committee, a 16 member panel of Midwestern botanists that convenes biennially to refine changes to the Rare Native Ohio Plants Status List, the legal list of imperiled Ohio flora published by the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves. Research interests include plant migration and phytogeography, and the effects of fire and substrate disturbance on rare plant communities. He has published seven scientific papers on these subjects. Reviewers: Richard Gardner is a botanist and ecologist with the Ohio Chapter of The Nature Conservancy and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Natural Areas and Preserves. He received a B.S. in Botany from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He has been studying Ohio’s flora for over 10 years. His work involves monitoring eco-management on preserves, inventorying rare vascular plants species and sampling plant communities. Research interests include floristics, Ohio flora, wetland ecology, and xeric limestone prairies. John Baird is an environmental specialist with the Ohio Department of Transportation. He received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Cincinnati where he is an adjunct instructor teaching Tri-State Native Plants. He has worked as a botanist for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Natural Areas and Preserves. M. Siobhan Fennessy is associate professor of Biology at Kenyon College where she teaches and vi advises students, and conducts research on freshwater wetland ecosystems, their plant communities and the development of biological indicators of wetland condition. She received her undergraduate degree in Botany in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Biology from The Ohio State University in 1991. Dr. Fennessy previously served on the faculty of the Geography Department of University College London and held a joint appointment at the Station Biologique du la Tour du Valat (located in southern