Understorey diversity of tropical dry deciduous forest of eastern plateau, India

Abstract

The effort has been made in tropical dry deciduous forest of eastern plateau, Ranchi during the year 2018-2019. The floral composition and diversity in shrub and herb layer were quantified which is mostly ignored all time due to lack of methodologies. The entire region divided into two sites based upon the physiognomy. Randomly selected quadrates of 10x10 m2 were taken for shrubs while 0.5x0.5 m2 quadrates for herbs were taken. A total of 7540-7740 shrubs 299600-476400 herbs were encountered. The basal area was varied between 1.002- 2.25 m2 ha-1 for shrubs and 0.68- 1.35 m2 ha-1 for herbs. Lygodium japonicum showed highest value of IVI in shrubs and Cynodon dactylon showed highest value of IVI in herbs. Shannon index ranged from 1.53-1.65 for shrubs and 3.30-3.39 for herbs. The Concentration of dominance varied between 0.46-0.48 for shrubs and 0.13-0.14 for herbs. Equitability ranged from 0.85-0.86 for shrubs and 1.0 for herbs. Species richness ranged from 0.56-0.67 for shrubs and 1.27-1.6 for herbs. The herbal diversity is more than the shrubs in both the sites, which creates a great scope for wild fauna as well as fodder requirement of local live stock and livelihood for forest dwellers.