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The success of wetland mitigation projects nationwide is typically assessed by comparing the total number of wetland mitigation acres attained to the total number of mitigation acres required by Section 404 permits. In the absence of performance measurements on mitigation wetlands, the success of compensatory mitigation in replacing the ecological values of impacted wetlands is increasingly questioned by wetland scientists. This study focuses on evaluating regulatory compliance and ecological performance of mitigation wetlands in Iowa. Regulatory compliance was determined by comparing delineated wetland areas to permitted losses and by evaluating completeness of permit conditions at 24 randomly selected Iowa Department of Transportation wetland mitigation sites. In a separate study, intensive biological inventories were used to evaluate ecological performance at 12 mitigation and three reference wetlands. Species richness and abundance data were collected on algae, protozoa, aquatic invertebrates, butterflies, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals at each site. Species richness and diversity at mitigation sites and reference sites were compared to determine if mitigation wetlands are performing differently than reference wetlands in Iowa. The results are valuable for building and expanding the tools and knowledge necessary to effectively assess and manage the ecological performance of compensatory mitigation wetlands and improve the ecological effectiveness of wetland mitigation.

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World. By MARCY NORTON. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008. 352 pp. $35.00 (cloth). Among the defining [...]

Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power. By Gene Dattel. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009. Pp. xiv, 416. $28.95, ISBN 978-1-56663-747-3.) In this [...]

Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820-1865. By Frank J. Byrne. New Directions in Southern History. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, c. 2006. Pp. x, 297. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-8131-2404-9.) [...]

Two recent releases show how studies of the Atlantic World are again being enriched by insights from economic historians. Southernists should find Joseph E. Inikori's Africans and the Industrial Revolution [...]

A Closer Look: The Antebellum Photographs of Jay Dearborn Edwards, 1858-1861. Edited by Jessica Dorman and Erin Greenwald. (New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection, 2008. Pp. [iv], 97. Paper, $17.95, [...]