The importance of conserving fragmented forest patches with high diversity of flowering plants in the northern Western Ghats: an example from Maharashtra, India

Amol Dilip Jadhav,Amol Kishor Kasodekar,Narendra Yashwant Kadoo,Rakesh Mahadev Pawar,Rani Babanrao Bhagat,Vidya Shrikant Gupta

doi:10.11609/jott.3296.11.7.13833-13849

Abstract

The northern Western Ghats (NWG) comprises of a patchy continuum of forests that have been severely fragmented mainly due to anthropogenic activities. We documented tree diversity within a representative fragmented forest patch of the NWG to study the effects of fragmentation on forest structure and composition. The floristic survey was conducted by replicated strip transect sampling method leading to a total sampling area of 0.3ha. A total of 444 individual trees (Girth>10cm) were sampled, which represented 49 tree species belonging to 42 genera and 23 families. Species richness per unit area and tree density were higher than previously reported values from similar forest type in various regions of NWG. These variations, however, could have resulted due to differences in the sampling area, sampling method, and girth classes used across different studies. Nevertheless, various diversity parameters such as N/S ratio, Simpson’s index, Shannon’s index, and Fisher’s α index were comparable with those reported in previous studies in the Western Ghats. The observed species richness was close to species richness estimates such as abundance-based coverage estimate, Chao-1, and Jackknife estimators. The present study also enumerates 108 species of understory flowering plants, which is provided as a checklist. While access restrictions are imposed in protected areas having high conservation priority, such restrictions are not imposed in non-protected areas, which make them much more vulnerable to anthropogenic activities. Hence, this study recommends that owing to their high diversity, the fragmented forest patches of NWG should also be given high conservation priority.

Highlights

Biodiversity hotspots have been defined as the areas featuring exceptionally high concentrations of endemic species as well as those experiencing exceptional loss of habitat mainly due to anthropogenic activities (Myers et al 2000)
34 biodiversity hotspots have been defined in the world (Mittermeier et al 2005) and two of these biodiversity hotspots, the Western Ghats/Sri Lanka (WG/SL) and Indo-Burma regions, belong to the Indian subcontinent
While some habitats like northern Western Ghats (NWG) are patchy by nature, the patchy continuum of forests has further been severely fragmented due to anthropogenic activities (Watve et al 2003)

Summary

Introduction

Biodiversity hotspots have been defined as the areas featuring exceptionally high concentrations of endemic species as well as those experiencing exceptional loss of habitat mainly due to anthropogenic activities (Myers et al 2000). 34 biodiversity hotspots have been defined in the world (Mittermeier et al 2005) and two of these biodiversity hotspots, the Western Ghats/Sri Lanka (WG/SL) and Indo-Burma regions, belong to the Indian subcontinent. WG/SL hotspot, is experiencing a rapid loss of habitat and, out of the 190,037km of primary vegetation, only 6.3% area has presently remained as natural intact vegetation (Sloan et al 2014). WG, listed as a world heritage site, is surrounded by one of the most densely populated areas of the world, creating huge anthropogenic pressure on the biodiversity hotspot (Cincotta et al 2000; Williams 2013). In 1920, 95,446km (73.1%) area of WG was under forest cover, of which an estimated 33,579km (35.3%) of forest cover was lost during the period 1920–2013 (Reddy et al 2016)

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