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Determining Tree-habitat Associations at the Raghunandan Hill Reserve Forest in Bangladesh

Corresponding Author : Swapan K Sarker (swapan-fes@sust.edu)

Authors : Krishna K Gupta1 , Sourav Das , Sanjay S Sonet , Sontosh K Deb , Nusrat Islam , Swapan K Sarker

Keywords : Biodiversity, Hill forest, Species composition, Tree communities, Tropical forest

Abstract :

The Raghunandan Hill Reserve (RHR) Forest is situated along the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot and comprises natural vegetation patches in the northeastern Bangladesh. Despite being a high conservation priority area, this is one of the least studied reserves in the tropics. In this paper, we classified the tree communities of the RHR and provided a first comprehensive investigation on tree-soil relationships. We collected vegetation and environmental data from 61 sample plots and recorded 40 tree species belonging to 22 families and 29 genera. Existing tree community types were determined using Hierarchical Agglomerative Cluster Analysis and Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DCA). Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) was performed with associated Monte Carlo permutation tests to explore tree distributions in relation to the soil variables. Soil moisture and two macro-nutrients (phosphorus and potassium) were the most influential variables accounted for tree compositional variation in the reserve. Finally, we discuss the potential applications of these preliminary findings in vegetation management and biodiversity conservation of the RHR.

Published on June 30th, 2019 in Volume 29, Issue 1, Agriculture and Mineral Science