tentative Indicator assignment assigned by the compiler and not 

 confirmed by Regional Interagency Review Panel concurrence. The 

 1986 National Wetland Plant List - Regional Indicator Compilation 

 (Reed 1986) reported the status of the review process. 



The National Review Panel reexamined the review process and current 

 list in 1986 and directed the Regional Panels to complete the 

 review of the regional lists . The Regional Review Panels met 

 during the spring and summer of 1987 to complete the initial 

 assignment of as many unassigned species remaining on the regional 

 lists as possible. The Review Panels also considered species 

 suggested for addition by reviewers . Additional Regional Indicator 

 assignments and changes to previous assignments were made based on 

 new review received from reviewers, ecological information from the 

 Annotated National Wetland Plant Species Data Base, or information 

 from botanical manuals . 



The task of the Regional Interagency Review Panels was to interpret 

 and synthesize reviewers' comments and the range of habitat 

 descriptions given for each species by the various authors of the 

 botanical manuals into a single wetland Indicator category for 

 their regions. There was an overwhelming similarity of independent 

 Indicator assignments made by both the reviewers, based on their 

 field experience, and the Regional Review Panel members, based on 

 the habitat expressed in the botanical literature. This 

 repeatability of Indicator assignments derived in a variety of ways 

 by ecologists with a wide variety of backgrounds confirmed that the 

 Indicators were both reproducible and defensible. The Regional 

 Review Panels were able to assign, with the highest degree of 

 confidence, Indicators to those species which had been reviewed by 

 a number of regional reviewers and also had a large literature 

 base. The comparability of the Indicator designations is also 

 demonstrated by the large number of species (6,114 species, 91% of 

 the species assigned an Indicator) that were assigned only a single 

 Indicator or a narrow range of Indicators by the independently 

 functioning Regional Review Panels. An analysis of the National 

 Indicator range shows that 483 species (7%) were assigned an NI (no 

 indicator), and 675 species (10%) have a question mark following 

 the Indicator. The question mark signifies a tentative assignment. 

 An analysis of the Regional Indicators for all regions shows that 

 an * was added to 729 Regional Indicators and an NA was assigned 

 to 28 species. The National List of Plant Species That Occur in 

 Wetlands represents our progress to date and is provided both for 

 current use and as a base for future revisions. 



