PNW 98 Session - Full AbstractsPNW 98 Session - Full AbstractsI have embarked on a project to generate checklists of vascular plants for Washington State counties. Whether I continue with this largely volunteer venture depends partially on feedback received at this meeting of the Society of Wetland Scientists. The checklists will incorporate information from published sources, electronic data bases, documented observations and herbaria records. Data fields for each species are: Scientific name, synonyms, common name, family, source of information (i.e. identification of specific publications and/or observations on which the record is based), herbarium voucher (i.e. identification of one or more herbaria which have a specimen), source for current name (e.g. Hitchcock and Cronquist 1973 or another author if the name in Hitchcock is no longer current), native or non-native in the county, wetland indicator status, listed as sensitive, endangered or threatened by state or federal agency, listed as noxious by the county or state weed boards.
Granted, the borders of counties do not delineate an ecological basis for a checklist of plants. However counties do represent a legally defined natural resource management boundary, and we cannot expect sound stewardship of a resource which has not even been inventoried. In this regard, the completed checklists would have multiple uses in the wetland management arena e.g. implementation of function assessment methods, developing restoration/mitigation designs, wetland delineation etc. Additionally, several people have indicated to me a strong interest in knowing the names of plant species that occur within the county where they live or work. Another major incentive for county based lists is that nearly all herbaria records include a county where the specimen was collected but often have little other geographic information. County based lists also represent a standard approach in several eastern states. On the other hand a more sound ecological grouping would be based on ecoregions, watersheds, or major river basins. Such an approach would have obvious limitations in terms of data availability, particularly for herbarium vouchers.
I will present the structure and results of my work to create a draft checklist of vascular plants for King County, Washington and solicit input/discussion on a number of issues: Is development of county checklists a worthwhile/useful effort?; should the effort be shifted to an ecoregion or some other geographic basis ? what additional data fields should be added?; how important are herbarium records vs published records? are there obvious data sources that I am not aware of?