Abstract
Estimation of tree diversity at broader scale is important for conservation planning. Tree diversity should be measured and understood in terms of diversity and evenness, two integral components to describe the structure of a biological community. Variation of the tree diversity and evenness with elevation, topographic relief, aspect, terrain shape, slope, soil nutrient, solar radiation etc. are well documented. Present study explores the variation of tree diversity (measured as Shannon diversity and evenness indices) of Majella National Park, Italy with five available forest types namely evergreen oak woods, deciduous oak woods, black/aleppo pine stands, hop-hornbeam forest and beech forest, using satellite, environmental and field data. Hop-hornbeam forest was found to be most diverse and even while evergreen Oak woods was the lowest diverse and even. Diversity and evenness of forest types were concurrent to each other i.e. forest type which was more diverse was also more even. As a broad pattern, majority portion of the study area belonged to medium diversity and high evenness class. Satellite images and other GIS data proved useful tools in monitoring variation of tree diversity and evenness across various forest types. Present study findings may have implications in prioritizing conservation zones of high tree diversity at Majella.
Highlights
Estimation of tree diversity at broader scale is important for conservation planning
Species diversity is the number of different species in a particular area weighted by some measure of abundance such as number of individuals or biomass, while evenness is the relative abundances of individuals within each species
The tree diversity and evenness maps of Majella, produced by classifying Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) image in an artificial neural network classifier were overlapped with five forest-type thematic maps available from the park office with an aim to explore the variation of diversity and evenness across forest types
Summary
The study was conducted in the Morrone Region (42°4'30"–42°14'40" N; 13°49'55"–14°1'51" E) of Majella National Park located in central Italy. Morrone is the most forest-type rich area of the park at close proximity to each other (Fig. 1). Tree vegetation of Morrone is broadly classified into five prominent forest types and named after the dominant species located sparsely or contiguously in different altitudinal levels. Forest type thematic map (shape file) of the study area was obtained from the park office. Diversity and evenness maps of Morrone produced using TM image and GIS layers were overlapped with forest type shape files separately using ArcGIS to explore the variation of diversity and evenness with forest types. Average value of Shannon diversity (SDI) and evenness (SEI) indices obtained from the field samples falling in each forest types was compared with the remotely sensed diversity and evenness levels/classes under each of forest type. Abundance of a species 1⁄4 Total number of individuals of a species in all plots
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