Baseline Environmental Impact Assessment of Phytodiversity in a Proposed Floor Sweeping Canalization of Abonnema Wharf Adjoining Water Ways and Aiteo Jetty Development Project

Abstract

This report describes the results of an ecological baseline impact assessment study of the Aiteo operational area. This baseline has merit based on the context of a proposed canalization / floor sweeping of adjoining water ways, construction and development of a Jetty project in Abonnema Wharf Area, Port Harcourt, Rivers State. This study was aimed at establishing the existing conditions of the environment and envisaged degrees of potential impact on the area against which future changes may be assessed and secondly, reviewing the possible risks to the environment likely to arise from the canalization, construction and operation of the Jetty. A standard procedure of integrated field study was adapted to qualitatively and quantitatively assess floristic profile of the vegetation in the area. The result of the study has recorded climax mangrove forest vegetation, though with some levels of heterogeneity and discrete homogeneity as a result of imbalances in the local environmental conditions incursioned by both natural and human factors. However, the ecosystem still maintains the status of abundance, richness and evenness with obvious similarity in floristic composition and forest structure to that in tropical forest elsewhere in the world. It is obvious that the Abonnema wharf forest ecosystem is gradually being destroyed without proper articulation of its wealth of flora diversity. Its mangrove forest vegetation is variable in size, form and plant community structure. It is one of the most productive ecosystems with enormous benefits to the people in this part of Niger Delta, Nigeria, and the store house of bio- diversity providing suitable habitats for plants, important areas for rare and endangered wildlife. The application of phyto-sociological indices of assessment for the mangrove vegetation complex in terms of species diversity in richness and evenness, density, abundance, IVI, distribution pattern and defined vegetation structure has been highlighted, indicating the area to be of high conservation potential if protected from both natural and human perturbation.