Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

PHYTO-REGENERATION AND DIVERSITY INDICES OF WEST RAJABHATKHAWA RANGE OF BUXA TIGER RESERVE OF WEST BENGAL, INDIA

Devbratha Pradhan, Amarendra Nath Dey, Sumit Chakravarty, Dibyendu Mukhopadhyay,Arup Sarkar and Aranava Ghosh

Abstract

The present study was carried out to investigate tree species diversity, population dynamics,and treespecies regeneration patterns at Rajabhatkhawa Range of Buxa Tiger Reserve of West Bengal to betterunderstand the regeneration dynamics and population structure of tree species. A total of 140 quadrats(size 2m × 2 m) were set with the sampling intensity 0.1% for regeneration survey of the area by followingrandom quadrat sampling method. This study documented about ”106" regenerating tree species,representing “74” genera and “40” families from the study area from which about “47” percent of treespecies showed “good” regeneration status. Monoonsimiarum had highest seedlings density with 8125.00seedlings ha-1 followed by Aglaia spectabilis (4642.86 seedlings ha-1). Monoonsimiarum showed highest IVIindex of 15.19, followed by Aglaia spectabilis (10.41). About 9 percent of the species had “fair” regenerationstatus and 8 percent had “poor” regeneration status, the fair or poor regeneration might be dueto insufficientseed dispersal that limits native species colonisation. However, it was observed that a total of 18 percent oftree species were classified as “not regenerating” and again 18 percent of tree species that werepresent ineither sapling or seedling stage but no adult stage were categorized as new regeneration.