Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) is a tool used to assess an area's ecological integrity based on its plant species composition. Floristic Quality Assessment was originally developed in order to assess the likelihood that impacts to an area "would be irreversible or irretrievable...to make standard comparisons among various open land areas, to set conservation priorities, and to monitor site management or

restoration Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to: * Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage ** Audio restoration ** Film restoration ** Image restoration ** Textile restoration * Restoration ecology ...

efforts." The concept was developed by

Gerould Wilhelm Gerould S. Wilhelm (born 1948) is an American botanist and lichenologist. He is known as author of several floras of the Chicago Region and the development of the Floristic Quality Assessment methodology, a tool to assess the integrity of natura ...

in the 1970s in a report on the natural lands of

Kane County, Illinois Kane County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 515,269, making it the fifth-most populous county in Illinois. Its county seat is Geneva, and its largest city is Aurora. Kane County is ...

. In 1979 Wilhelm and

Floyd Swink Dr. Floyd Allen Swink (1921-2000) was an American botanist, teacher of natural history, and author of several flora (publication), floras of the Chicago region. Early life Floyd Swink was born in Villa Park, Illinois in 1921. While attending Y ...

codified this "scoring system" for the 22-county Chicago Region.

Coefficient of conservatism

Each plant species in a region is assigned a coefficient of conservatism, also known as a C-value, ranging between 0 and 10. A plant species with a higher score (e.g. 10) has a ''lower'' tolerance to

environmental degradation Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment (biophysical), environment through depletion of resources such as quality of air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems; habitat destruction; the extinction of wildlife; an ...

such as

overgrazing Overgrazing occurs when plants are exposed to intensive grazing for extended periods of time, or without sufficient recovery periods. It can be caused by either livestock in poorly managed agricultural applications, game reserves, or nature res ...

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development hell, when a project is stuck in development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting *Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped *Photographi ...

and therefore is naturally restricted to undisturbed, remnant habitats. Non-native plants are either assigned a C-value of 0 or are excluded from assessments. In the Chicago Region, 84% of the native plant species have a C-value of 4 or greater. Plants with a C-value of 4 or greater rarely naturally move from a remnant area to surrounding degraded land. For example, the federally

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...

Dalea foliosa ''Dalea foliosa'', commonly called leafy prairie clover, is a species of flowering plant in the legume family ( Fabaceae). It is an endangered species in the United States, where it occurs in three states: Illinois, Tennessee, and Alabama.USFWS' ...

'' has a C-value of 10. C-values are assigned within specific ecological and geographic regions by botanical experts familiar with the species'

autecology Autecology is an approach in ecology that seeks to explain the distribution and abundance of species by studying interactions of individual organisms with their environments. An autecological approach differs from both community ecology (synecology) ...

within the respective regions. , there were more than 50 different FQA databases ranging from the

Gulf Coastal Plain The Gulf Coastal Plain extends around the Gulf of Mexico in the Southern United States and eastern Mexico. This coastal plain reaches from the Florida Panhandle, southwest Georgia, the southern two-thirds of Alabama, over most of Mississippi, wes ...

to western

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

, though most databases represented regions in the eastern and central United States and Canada. The mean C-value (

\bar

) is calculated based on an inventory of plants. An area with a native mean C-value of 3.5 or higher likely has "sufficient floristic quality to be of at least marginal natural area quality." Remnant natural areas with mean C-values of 4.0 or greater are unmitigable.

Floristic Quality Index

The Floristic Quality Index (FQI, or Rating Index according to Swink and Wilhelm) is calculated by multiplying the mean C value by the square root of the total number of species:

\bar\sqrt

For example, the FQI fo
Nelson Lake Marsh
was 78 in 1994 and that for Russell R. Kirt Prairie was about 30 in 1999.

References

{{Reflist, refs= {{cite book , last1=Wilhelm , first1=Gerould , last2=Rericha , first2=Laura , author-link2=Laura Rericha , date=2017 , title=Flora of the Chicago Region: A Floristic and Ecological Synthesis {{cite report , first1=Gerould , last1=Wilhelm , author-link1=Gerould Wilhelm , first2=Linda , last2=Masters , date=June 1995 , title=Floristic Quality Assessment in the Chicago Region and Application Computer Programs , publisher=The Morton Arboretum {{cite journal , last1=Freyman , first1=William A. , last2=Master , first2=Linda A. , last3=Packard , first3=Stephen , date=2016 , title=The Universal Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) Calculator: an online tool for ecological assessment and monitoring , journal=Methods in Ecology and Evolution , volume=7 , issue= 3, pages=380–383 , doi=10.1111/2041-210X.12491 , doi-access=free {{cite journal , last1=Matthews , first1=Jeffrey W. , last2=Spyreas , first2=Greg , last3=Long , first3=Colleen M. , title=A null model test of Floristic Quality Assessment: Are plant species' Coefficients of Conservatism valid? , journal=Ecological Indicators , date=May 2015 , volume=52 , pages=1–7 , doi=10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.11.017 {{cite book , last1=Swink , first1=Floyd , last2=Wilhelm , first2=Gerould , date=1979 , title=Plants of the Chicago Region, 3rd Edition {{cite book , last1=Swink , first1=Floyd , author-link1=Floyd Swink , last2=Wilhelm , first2=Gerould , date=1994 , title=Plants of the Chicago Region, 4th Edition {{cite report , first1=Gerould S. , last1=Wilhelm , date=1977 , title=Ecological assessment of open land areas in Kane County, Illinois , publisher=Kane County Urban Development Division

External links

Universal FQA
Biodiversity Environmental conservation Community ecology Measurement of biodiversity Index numbers Summary statistics for categorical data