Tree species diversity and structural composition: The case of village common forest in Bandarban District, Bangladesh
Abstract. Jannat M, Kamruzzaman MD, Hossain MK. 2020. Tree species diversity and structural composition: The case of village common forest in Bandarban District, Bangladesh. Asian J For 4: 76-83. The study was conducted to explore indigenous tree species diversity of Babu para village common forest (VCF) in Bandarban District. Tree species diversity was assessed through stratified random sampling method using sample plots of 20 m × 20 m in size. Babu para VCF with an area of 40 acres has more than 406 individuals of 74 tree species belonging to 30 families, including eight unidentified species. Euphorbiaceae and Moraceae were the dominant families containing 7 species followed by Anacardiaceae (5 species), Mimosaceae (6 species), and Meliaceae (5 species). Both the number of tree species and number of individuals decreased regularly with the increase of total height except ≥ 30 m height range. Number of species and number of individuals was highest in the height range of (5-<10) m. Similar trend was found for dbh (cm) class distribution. Both the number of species and number of individuals were highest in the dbh range of (5-<15) cm. Babu para VCF has diverse floristic resources that seemed from the Shannon-Wiener’s diversity index (3.94), Simpson’s diversity index (0.025), Margalef’s richness index (12.15) and Species evenness index (0.92). The results depict the presence of rich indigenous tree species diversity in studied VCF.