Water Quality

Special Projects

Water Quality | Image-based Plant Estimate Protocol (IPEP)

What is “IPEP?”
The Image-based Plant Estimate Protocol (IPEP) is designed for volunteer groups whose goal is to characterize plant communities in freshwater wetlands. The protocol allows for the accurate collection of wetland plant data without always positively identifying the plants on-site.

Objective
The objective of IPEP is to facilitate the protection and restoration of wetland resources by providing a method for volunteers to monitor and assess one aspect of wetland condition. The document provides a basic framework for trained citizens, working in teams of 2 to 5, to collect high quality wetland plant community data for monitoring purposes and to perform at least a preliminary bioassessment of wetland condition, “integrity,” or “health”.

Photography-based Approach
IPEP makes use of digital photography and careful documentation to provide critical characterization of each plant encountered during field sampling. Unknown plants can then be identified and verified by professional botanists in the lab, thereby ensuring the quality of the data collected by volunteers. The data can be used to monitor and assess wetland condition or “health”. Volunteers can thus help provide natural resource agencies and conservation organizations with information that may be used to help protect and restore wetland ecosystems.

Focus on Freshwater Wetlands
IPEP is designed for use in freshwater wetlands that have some obvious standing water. This includes marshes, vernal pools, floodplain forests, fens, and others. This protocol is less applicable in drier wetlands, such as wet meadows and many forested bogs. IPEP is restricted to these wetland types in order to standardize the methods as much as possible and nevertheless cover a large portion of the freshwater wetlands in New England and New York.

Applications
While primarily designed to measure wetland condition in concert with the New England Freshwater Wetlands Invertebrate Biomonitoring Protocol (Hicks, 2000), IPEP can also be utilized for: Inventorying vegetation within specific wetlands
Evaluating the success of restoration
Monitoring progress in created wetlands
“Before and after” studies (e.g., pre- and post-restoration monitoring)
Establishing reference sites and reference condition

IPEP Contents
The Image-based Plant Estimate Protocol includes:
An explanation of the role of plant data in wetland bioassessments
Field and lab methods
Simple metrics for analyzing data
A glossary of terms
Exhaustive references and field guides
Data sheets

We strongly encourage any and all users to download both text and spreadsheets and to use as-is or adapt them to your needs.