Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Cathcart, Thomas P.

Committee Member

Pote, Jonathan W.

Committee Member

Melby, Philip O., III

Committee Member

Peterson, Mark S.

Date of Degree

8-4-2001

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Biological Engineering

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Engineering

Department

Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering

Abstract

Inception of the Clean Water Act in 1972 resulted in regulation of activities in wetlands through Section 404. Regulatory agencies like the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources (MDMR) have tried to find methods to rapidly evaluate wetlands. This study compares three rapid evaluation methods, Hydrogeomorphic Approach (HGM), Wetlands Rapid Assessment Procedure (WRAP), and Wetland Evaluation System (WES), based on their scoring of a group of reference and mitigation wetland sites. Repeatability was studied by scoring a group of sites twice. The non-parametric Spearman?s correlation was used to compare the three methods. In this study, HGM was most repeatable followed by WES and WRAP. Comparisons of overall scores using the Spearman correlation found the strongest correlation between HGM and WES, although all pairings were significantly correlated (p< 0.05). This study determined HGM was the optimum method for the MDMR because due to repeatability and producing results similar to the other two methods.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/20281

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