THE PLANT ASSEMBLAGE OF CONSTRUCTED TREATMENT WETLANDS IN SOUTH FLORIDA USED FOR EVERGLADES RESTORATION.

This paper documents the plant assemblage found in large constructed treatment wetlands built for Everglades restoration, the Stormwater Treatment Areas (STAs) in south Florida. Eighty vascular and macroalgae plant species were identified at marsh sites across all the STAs, while an additional 43 species were unique to the marsh-levee ecotone in STA-1W. The STA flora was dominated by herbaceous taxa (83% of species) whose wetland status was primarily obligate, facultative wetland or facultative (collectively 77% of species). Twenty-seven percent of species were introduced non-natives. Six species were common (present in 10% or more of samples) across all the STAs: Chara sp., Hydrilla verticillata, Lemna sp., Najas guadalupensis, Sagittaria lancifolia and Typha domingensis. Only one species, T. domingensis, was common in samples from each STA. Species richness in the STAs was significantly correlated with sampling effort but not with median water depth or wetland age, although there was a weak positive trend with age. A non-parametric estimator of species richness, the Chao 2 metric, predicted a lower bound of 89 species at marsh sites. Treatment cells dominated by submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) pooled across all the STAs were slightly more species rich than cells dominated by emergent aquatic vegetation (EAV) (64 vs. 57 species, respectively), but there was no consistent pattern in species richness between EAV and SAV cells within individual STAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]