TY  - JOUR
T1  - Tree species composition, structure and regeneration status in Munessa natural forest, Southeastern Ethiopia
AU  - Ahmedin, Annissa
AU  - Eliasb, Eyasu
PY  - 2020
DA  - March
DO  - 10.31195/ejejfs.622956
JF  - Eurasian Journal of Forest Science
JO  - Eur J For Sci
PB  - Hüseyin Barış TECİMEN
WT  - DergiPark
SN  - 2147-7493
SP  - 21
EP  - 39
VL  - 8
IS  - 1
LA  - en
AB  - Munessaforest is one of the undifferentiated afromontane forests in Ethiopia. The forest has threatened by deforestation, free grazing and illegallogging. This study aimed to estimate the structure,composition and diversity of tree species and their regeneration status inMunessa natural forest. Vegetation datawere collected from 54 plots of 20 m x 20 mfor trees and 162 subplots of 5 m x 5 mfor seedlings and saplings that were laid along six parallel transect lines.Vegetation structure, basal area, IVI and species prioritization were analyzedusing spreadsheet programs. Correlation coefficients, vegetationclassification, frequency, Shannon diversity index and Shannon evenness wereanalyzed using R softwareversion 3.2.2 for windows 8. A total of 41 tree speciesbelonging to 27 families were recorded. Fabaceae was the most dominant familyrepresented by four species followed by Oleaceae and Rutaceae, each havingthree species. The hierarchical cluster analysis revealed four community types,of which Syzygium guineense - Croton macrostachyus community type,exhibited the highest species diversity and evenness. The Shannon diversity andevenness index for the entire study area was 2.6 and 0.39 respectively. Thecorrelation between elevation and species richness was negative andinsignificant (r= -0.545, p < 0.05). The densities of seedlings, saplings and maturetrees were 6,934, 1,686 and 481 individuals ha-1 respectively. This indicated that the regeneration status wassignificantly lower compared to other similar sites. The total basal area of the forest was 91.75 m2ha-1and its IVI ranged from 0.62 for Calpurniaaurea to 70.29 for Podocarpusfalcatus. The estimated values of population structure and regenerationstatus of the forest indicated that there was a huge disturbance induced byanthropogenic factor particularly free grazing and tree cutting. Thereforesustainable forest management strategies need to be implemented for sustainableutilization of the forest.
KW  - Basal area
KW  - Hierarchical cluster
KW  - Importance value index
KW  - Regeneration
CR  - Reference1: Dr. Gudina Feyisa. Email: fgudina@gmail.com
CR  - Reference2: Professor Teshome Soromessa. Email: soromessa@yahoo.com
CR  - Reference3: Dr Bekele Abebie. Email: bekeabb57@gmail.com
UR  - https://doi.org/10.31195/ejejfs.622956
L1  - https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/995458
ER  -