Determining and Mapping of Vegetation using GIS and Phytosociological Approach in Mount Tahan, Malaysia

Abstract

The study on lowland tropical forest plants is complicated by the extreme species diversity, very complex plantmosaic and time constraints. These impediments however do not occur in mountain forest, where habitatdiversity is clearly distinguished by small homogenous plants types. Plant association and composition studywere presented in this work from two locations of Mount Tahan, Malaysia the relatively untrampled and thetrampled site. In each site, plant species number, vegetation cover, plant height, and species cover and frequencyin untrampled and trampled areas were counted or measured. The analysis included a field survey following therelevance method of Braun-Blanquet and mapping using a GIS. The study focused on altitudinal distribution ofspecific plants communities located between 1900 m and 2140 m altitude. The data from field survey weremapped and analyzed in GIS. The phytosociological classification revealed that untrampled areas in Botak andPuncak sites were high in species more diversified communities compared to the trampled areas. The resultsshowed that Leptospermum flavescens was the dominant species most in both sites (Botak and Puncak), with48%, specifically at the untrampled site. The abundance class and sociability value are also high for this specieswith score 4.5 out of 5, respectively. A total number of trees in the area probably play an important role inquantifying the species richness and diversity parameters. From the study it can be concluded that GIS techniqueuseful in developing a tree mapping system and creating a geo-database for spatial analysis. Further studies arerecommended to integrate more data into the system for better evaluation.