- UF’s Howard T. Odum Center for Wetlands is leading Florida’s participation in the National Wetland Condition Assessment.
- The center has participated in every assessment since they began in 2011.
- Data collection is largely handled through grueling fieldwork by student researchers and early career scientists.
Researchers at the University of Florida’s Howard T. Odum Center for Wetlands are once again leading Florida’s participation in the 2026 National Wetland Condition Assessment, a nationwide survey conducted every five years to assess the ecological health of wetlands across the US.
The Center for Wetlands, directed by David Kaplan, Ph.D., professor in UF’s Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences, has participated in every National Wetland Condition Assessment, or NWCA, since the program began in 2011. The center serves as Florida’s field and science partner for implementing the assessment based on its long-standing expertise in wetland science, education and outreach.
The NWCA is a recurring nationwide effort that uses standardized field and laboratory methods to evaluate wetland conditions across the country, allowing scientists to compare results across states and over time.
The center’s participation in the 2026 cycle is funded by a $450,000 grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. The grant funds field crews, project coordination, sample collection and processing, data analysis and reporting. The project also provides hands-on training opportunities for students and early career scientists.
“We’ve trained a lot of the people who work across state and federal agencies over the years,” Kaplan explained. “We have well over 150 alumni who are all over the world, including in state agencies, and so it made sense when there was a direct inquiry to the center back in 2011, asking, ‘Hey, would you all be available to run this program?’”
Kaplan said the center has also developed other ecosystem assessment tools Florida agencies already use, making the Odum Center a natural partner for the statewide effort.
Coordinating fieldwork at nearly 60 sites across Florida is a major logistical undertaking, led by project manager and center alumna Kelly Reiss, Ph.D., a professor in the American Public University System.
“She runs the logistics from Rhode Island,” Kaplan explained. “She’s sort of like the den mother in the control room while the students are out in the field. She’s the one staring at the maps, checking the weather reports in real time and advising the students if they need to move to a different site.”
The fieldwork, primarily carried out by student researchers, can be grueling. The team spends much of the hot Florida summer tromping through the mud and water to collect vegetation, soil and water samples from wetlands from the Panhandle to the Keys.
“It’s 100 percent in the field,” Kaplan said. “After a day in the swamp, students come out lugging backpacks full of soil and water samples, put them on ice in coolers and FedEx the samples to either the EPA or the NRCS, the Natural Resources Conservation Service laboratories for analysis.”
The data collected through the assessment help the EPA and state agencies understand the overall health of wetland resources, identify major environmental stressors and determine whether conditions are improving or declining. The results also help evaluate the effectiveness of wetland protection programs and support reporting required under the Clean Water Act.
Kaplan emphasized that the assessment is not intended to regulate individual wetlands. Instead, it provides the broad scientific picture needed to guide policy, funding priorities and long-term management decisions.
For the 2026 cycle, Kaplan colleagues in EES are taking advantage of the statewide field effort to launch a complementary research project to assess levels of microplastics and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly known as forever chemicals, in Florida’s wetlands.
Kathy Deliz Quiñones, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences, will lead the PFAS analyses, and Sungyoon Joon, Ph.D., also in EES, will oversee the microplastics work.
“We were chatting, and we realized we were already going to be taking samples at sites that they were interested in,” Kaplan recalled. “We happen to be out at wetlands across the state—from freshwater to coastal systems, and in urban to pristine environments. So, we’re just going to take additional samples and see what they tell us about microplastics and PFAS in these systems. It’ll be an interesting data set.”
While the scientific data are valuable, Kaplan says the experience is just as transformative for the student research crews who log all those miles in the mud.
“We call it the NWCA crew for a reason,” Kaplan said. “They’re traveling together three or more days a week all summer. They don’t really know each other when they start, and they’re logging thousands of miles together in a crew-cab Chevy Silverado, working long, demanding days in the field. They’re sweaty and stinky, and they take care of each other. They become a very tightly knit crew.”
For Kaplan, that’s one of the program’s greatest strengths. The NWCA not only provides the long-term scientific information needed to guide wetland conservation and management across the country, but it also trains the next generation of wetland scientists and resource managers through immersive, hands-on field experience.
