Western Tennessee Low GradientThis Guidebook was developed to assess the functions of frequently flooded, forested wetlands on floodplains of low gradient rivers. These wetlands are known locally, and throughout much of the southeastern United States, as bottomland hardwoods (Wharton et al. 1982). Exact estimates of the acreage of this type of wetland in Tennessee are lacking, but an average of several data sources including the National Wetland Inventory (Hefner and Brown 1984) and the USDA National Resource Inventory (USDA Soil Conservation Service 1987) indicated that there are 814,000 acres of palustrine wetlands in Tennessee with the majority occurring in the western portion of the state (Tennessee Department of Conservation 1988) (Figure 2). Most of these wetlands are classified as palustrine forested (PFO) (Cowardin et al. 1979) and would be considered to be within the HGM low gradient riverine regional subclass. Guidebook
Web Date: October 1997 |
