Abstract
The disturbance is a major factor driving the decline of tropical forests and their associated fauna. Henceforth, basic information on species diversity would be useful for assessing the success of management in the fragmented and human-disturbed landscape. We accounted for tree species diversity and their regeneration pattern from the tropical dry deciduous forest of Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR), India. Considering this, random vegetation sampling along with transects was carried out in different ranges of PTR. It is spread over in an area of 2998.98 km2 that situated in the northern part of Madhya Pradesh and distributed in Panna and Chhatarpur district. The tropical dry deciduous forest inventory in the 10.6132-ha area yielded a total of 46 woody species of > 10 cm GBH, belonged to 23 Families and 40 genera. The regeneration represented 27 species of < 30 cm height (seedling) under 16 families and 24 genera while sapling, which ranges from > 30cm to 1.3m, showed 24 species of 13 families and 32 genera. The Shannon diversity of Trees, seedlings, and saplings was 2.684, 2.525, and 2.401 respectively. A total stand density and basal area of 2391 stems of trees were estimated as 225.285 stand ha− 1 and 90.016 m2ha− 1 respectively. Tectona grandis scored the highest IVI value of 59.44 (19.81% of total IVI for all species) among the dominated tree species, followed by Acacia catechu (24.94), Abrus precatorius (23.25), Zizyphus xylopyra (22.94), Anogeissus latifolia (22.16) and Lagerstroemia parviflora (22.18). Nearly 23.913% of the total number of species was recorded as rare species. The highest seedling density was obtained for Diospyros melanoxylon followed by Zizyphus xylopyra, Aegle marmelos, Wrightia tintoria, and Tectona grandis, which declined in the subsequent sapling stage and showed a reverse pattern. Hence, the highest sapling density was recorded for Tectona grandis then Aegle marmelos, Wrightia tintoria, Diospyros melanoxylon, and Zizyphus xylopyra. A total of 36.956% of tree species were found to fail to establish in the community because species were represented by only adult or tree stage that listed as Not-regenerating. In terms of the most diverse family among the plant categories; viz. Tree, Seedling, Sapling, Fabaceae had the highest species richness. The highest tree stand density (127.576 stand ha− 1) was recorded in the girth class of 31-60cm (48.687% of the total tree stand density) followed by 10-30cm and 61-90cm. Likewise, a total basal area of 20.824 m2ha− 1 was occupied by 31-60cm that contributed 23.051% of the total basal area, so our data on the population structure of forest shows a similar trend wherein the distribution curve exponentially decreases with increasing girth classes that indicates not only a mid-successional forest but also a human-disturbed.
Microclimate and sapling survival under organic and polyethylene mulch in a tropical dry deciduous forest
