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Table 20.1--Composite of National Wetland Inventory (NW) wetland status and trend information for the Conterminous and Southeastern United States

Time period	Geographic extent of estimate	Total wetland (Ac)	Forested wetland (Ac)	Source
1780	Conterminous U.S	221,000,000	No Estimate	Dahl (1990)
1980	Conterminous U.S	104,000,000	No Estimate
% change		47%
1950	Southeast U.S. (10 states)	54,257,000	38,000,000	Hefner and Brown (1985)
1970	Southeast U.S. (10 states)	46,500,000	32,000,000
% change		15%	16%
1970	Southeast U.S. (10 states)	51,200,000	35,300,000	Hefner and others (1994)
1980	Southeast U.S. (10 states)	48,900,000	33,004,000
% change		5%	7%
1986	Conterminous U.S	106,135,700	51,929,600	Dahl (2000)
1997	Conterminous U.S	105,500,000	50,728,500
% change		1%	3%
1986	Southeast U.S. (10 states)*	49,883,779	33,735,000
1997	Southeast U.S. (10 states)*	49,585,000	32,643,000
% change		1%	3%

* estimated from percentages , specific to the South, from Hefner and others (1994) applied to National data from Dahl (2000). Wetland acreages derived from NWI reports and/or calculated from reported percentages.