TÜRKİYE’NİN ORTA TOROS DAĞLARI’NDA KÖKNAR-SEDİR ORMANLARINDAKİ ARALAMA KESİMLERİ VE OTLATMANIN YER BİTKİ ÖRTÜSÜNÜN FONKSİYONEL ÖZELLİKLERİNE ETKİLERİ

Abstract

The forests of Cedrus libani and Abies cilicica in the middle Taurus Mountains in southern Turkiye are heavily degraded by traditional land use. Population, working in the agricultural sector migrates in summer with their cattle, sheep and goats from lowlands to highlands because the pastures there are prolific due to higher precipitation. The forests have been opened up by grazing and timber cutting. Both effects on the ground vegetation of forests with cedar and fir are examined in the study. Intensive grazing changed the plant species composition as the animals prefer tasty as food. This has led to dominance of inedible plant species, like thorny, prickly, poisonous species and those armoured species with rosettes. Although the sensitive species were reduced by intensive grazing, plant diversity increased. While the rate of hemicryptophytes, camaphytes and geophytes is generally high in the study area, the rate of therophytes is quite low. Generally, the perennial plants were favoured by grazing. On the other hand, the annual species preferred by the cattle fell back. The effect of timber use by illegal logging shows that light demanding plant species have colonised the lighter parts of the formerly closed and semi-closed forests.