Floristic Quality Assessment

[1] 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 efforts.

"[2] The concept was developed by Gerould Wilhelm in the 1970s in a report on the natural lands of Kane County, Illinois.

[3] In 1979 Wilhelm and Floyd Swink codified this "scoring system" [4] for the 22-county Chicago Region.

[1] A plant species with a higher score (e.g. 10) has a lower tolerance to environmental degradation such as overgrazing or development and therefore is naturally restricted to undisturbed, remnant habitats.

[8] Plants with a C-value of 4 or greater rarely naturally move from a remnant area to surrounding degraded land.