The Effect of Type of Marginal Land Use on the Production of Biomass and Plant Diversity

Abstract

The objective of this study closely focuses on the settlement of the effect of marginal land use on plant diversity. The location of this study was Sar Firouze Abad region with rainfall of over 350 mm and slope of over 12%. Five treatments in terms of land use (exclusion area, grazed range, fallow, annual medic cultivation, wheat cultivation) done with the repetition of five times. The factors, such as the number of species, the number of plant bases in each species, the percentage of plant cover and biomass in each sampling were measured. The method used here is based upon complete randomized design applying Duncan test and Raunkiaer method for classification of plant species and also Shannon's diversity index of diversity and homogeny utilized. The results show that there are 76 species belonging to 60 genus and 19 families spreading in the region under study. The most dominant families are Fabaceae with 15 species covering 20% and Poaceae with 13 species covering 17%, respectively. According to Raunkiaer method the life form of the region species can be classified as Therophytes 66%, Geophytes 3%, Hemicryptophytes 26% and Chamaephytes 5%. The results also illustrate that the treatment of exclusion area has the most plant diversity, the percentage of plant cover and biomass in comparison with the rest of treatment cultivation and range grazed.