Comparative study on structural composition and community association of Nambor Wildlife Sanctuary and its South-Westward extended Bornewria forest, Assam, India

Abstract

Knowledge of species composition and diversity are of utmost importance, not only to understand the structure of a forest community but also for planning and implementation of conservation strategy of the community. An extensive field study was undertaken to ascertain the structural composition, species diversity and community association of two forest sites i.e. Nambor Wildlife Sanctuary (NWLS) and its South-Westward extended Bornewria forest of Assam, India. The forests represent Tropical moist semi-evergreen and moist mixed deciduous type. The entire area was embraced with a fragmented block of Gondowana formation. A total of 261 plant species were observed from the two forests sites in floristic assessment. Out of which 247 species were recorded from NWLS and in Bornewria forest 136 were enumerated. The overexploitation and shifting cultivation adversely affected the total forested area and species composition of Bornewria forest. Phytosociological studies showed that Vatica lanceaefolia (15.47) followed by Magnolia hodgsonii (10.97), Castanopsis hystrix (10.02) and Mesua ferrea (9.56) were dominated in NWLS. However, in case of Bornewria forest, Hydnocarpus kurzii expressed its dominance with highest IVI values (15.98), followed by Dysoxylum excelsum (13.52), Mesua ferrea (12.37) and Stereospermum tetragonum (11.87). Plant species diversity was quantitatively higher in NWLS in comparison to Bornewria forest because of ecological destabilization and disturbance in their natural abode. Study on regeneration status of NWLS revealed that 67.42% trees were naturally regenerated. Mesua ferrea and Vatica lanceifolia were the most ecologically successful species with IVI of 7.66 and 5.27 in the seedling stage. In Bornewria forest site 42 regenerating tree individuals were recorded. The maximum quantity of seedlings of Hydnocarpus kurzii was noticed in the forest which showed mass regeneration status of the species. Both the forest desires to curb the anthropogenic disturbance, so that protect the integrity of the forest.

Phytosociological and floristic evaluation of Kuldiha Wildlife Sanctuary, Odisha, India

“…The floristic composition of the reserve forest reveals 38 species in the upper storey, 38 species in the middle storey and 32 species in the ground flora (Table 1, 2 & 3). The findings of the present study are comparable with that of different ecosystems under tropical climates (Bhadra et al 2010, Jaykumar & Nair 2012, Mishra et al 2013, Rabha 2014, Bajpai et al 2015, Borah et al 2016, Barua et al 2018. Krishnamurthy et al (2010) reported 46 species from a tropical dry deciduous forest in Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary, Karnataka.…”

The complete chloroplast genome sequence of Lirianthe hodgsonii, a tree species of Magnoliaceae as least concern

“…The species is native to SW China (S Xizang, SE and SW Yunnan), Bangladesh, Bhutan, NE India, N Myanmar, Nepal, and Thailand (Law and Wu 1996;Xia et al 2008;Kundu 2009;Nooteboom and Chalermglin 2009;Sima and Lu 2009). It is a subdominant tree species in tropical moist forest (Barua et al 2018) and used medicinally (Kijjoa 2002;Nascimento et al 2004). In 2007, it was evaluated as least concern in the book, The Red List of Magnoliaceae (Cicuzza et al 2007).…”

“…It is a subdominant tree species in tropical moist forest (Barua et al . 2018 ) and used medicinally (Kijjoa 2002 ; Nascimento et al . 2004 ).…”

Comparative Study of Diversity and Community Characteristics of Trees in Natural (NFS) and Planted (PFS) Forest stands of Patharia Hills Reserve Forest (PHRF), Assam

“…Many oristic studies have been undertaken in the state of Assam. Plant diversity, population structure and regeneration status were investigated in the four tropical forests in Barak Valley Hojai (Borah et al, 2011), Reserve Forest and Kumortoka Reserve Forest (Dutta and Devi, 2013), comprehensive population structure of tree species in Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary (Sarkar and Devi, 2014), reserve forests and private tropical forests of Barak Valley (Borah et al, 2016) and Bornewria forest, Assam (Barua et al, 2018).However, only few studies has been conducted for Patharia Hills Reserve Forest (PHRF) such as assessment of forest health (Talukdar et al, 2019), biodiversity of mushrooms (Vyas et al, 2014), importance of non-timber forest products (Talukdar et al, 2020a)and a few signi cant zoological studies like habitat suitability of the Asiatic elephant in the trans-boundary (Talukdar et al, 2020b), conserving wildlife wealth (Talukdar et al, 2017), as this reserve forest has always been ignored due to trans-border location (with Bangladesh) which is fairly inaccessible. Considering the gap in the study, the PHRF was selected as the study site for the dissertation work.…”