A Forest Inventory in Amazonian Bolivia

Abstract

A tree inventory was conducted in a terra firme Amazonian rainforest of northeastern Bolivia. A 1-ha linear transect (10 x 1000 m) was sampled for all trees with a DBH of 10 cm or greater to provide information about diversity, frequency, density, and dominance. Species and family importance values (FIV) were also calculated. The results show that 94 species, represented by 649 individuals with a total basal area of 214,844 cm2, occur in the hectare. Iryanthera juruensis, Pseudolmedia laevis, Euterpe precatoria, and Socratea exorrhiza are the most frequent species, occurring in at least 85 percent of the sampling subunits. The forest is dominated by relatively few species: 10.6 percent of them account for 47.4 percent of the importance value of the sample. The five most important families in order of importance are Moraceae, Myristicaceae, Palmae, Leguminosae sensu lato, and Melastomataceae. These five account for 60 percent of the total family importance values.