Stephanie Guisti, Beverly Collins, and Tom Hinton

Objectives

In June 1991, the Par Pond reservoir located on the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., was drawn down for nearly 4 years. Plans to refill Par Pond after the extended drawdown provided an opportunity to examine the potential contribution of the propagule bank to wetland revegetation at the original shoreline. We evaluated recruitment from the propagule bank under different management strategies for the hydrologic regime (fluctuating vs. stable water levels) and the source of water for refilling. In a field mesocosm experiment, we examined:
1) propagule bank contribution to the post-drawdown vegetation;
2) the effects of flooded, fluctuating, and moist water level treatments on recruitment;
3)the effects of three water sources that differ in nutrient composition (Table 1) on vegetation composition and growth.