ABSTRACT
The US Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that, as of the mid1970s, the conterminous United States contained approximately ninety-nine million acres of wetlands (US Fish and Wildlife Service, 1983). These statistics do not include approximately fifty-eight million acres of marine and inland lake areas, which can also be considered wetlands, or over two hundred million acres of tundra and other wetlands located in Alaska and Hawaii (Office of Technology Assessment, 1984). Inland freshwater wetlands account for approximately ninety-five per cent of the total. The rest are coastal, saline areas.
