| Forested floodplains were seen by early European settlers as areas to be exploited for timber, then drained for agricultural use of their fertile soils. Government programs were designed for federally subsidizing this land use conversion, and more than half of these ecosystems were indeed destroyed with no realization of the value being lost. In recent years several scientists have sought to define the value of these systems, but this valuation has been elusive. These ecosystems perform numerous functions, to include flood control, sediment prevention, retention and removal, removal of contaminants, carbon sequestration, sustainable timber production, recreation, and habitat for game, non-game, and declining species. These services are performed simultaneously though at different degrees, with each ecosystem being unique. Of those scientists who have worked in this field, teams of plant physiologists, foresters, agriculturalists, sociologists and economist have in fact successfully performed defensible appraisal analysis of large tracts of land, while acknowledging their methods to be quite meticulous and expensive. Due to this expense and complexity, such valuations have not been available for smaller tracts of land. In this study, rapid and inexpensive small tract valuation for floodplain forests has been accomplished and explained. These methods were devised in this study for such implementation, and are outlined in such a manner that they may be adopted by field personnel to derive meaningful, defensible and reasonably accurate valuations. The methods developed in this study may be used by planners, agriculturalists, National Environmental Policy Act officers, natural resource managers, and other field personnel assigned rapid assessment of project feasibility of tracts of land ranging from less than one hectare to several thousand hectares, and demonstrations of this utilization in real situations are presented with explanations. |
