Assessment of the vegetation cover of northern high mountains in Jordan
Paper Details
Assessment of the vegetation cover of northern high mountains in Jordan
Abstract
The vegetation cover of the northern mountains of Jordan was investigated and surveyed. Line transects sampling method as well as walking through methods have been applied in this study. A total area of 15×80 km was studied and divided into grid system, and thus the selected grids have been used for the line transect sampling. The study showed that the natural forest of Aleppo pine, evergreen oak forest, deciduous oak forest, degraded forest and manmade Aleppo pine forest areas are suffering from man interference and continuous encroachment for the uses of agriculture, urbanization, grazing, fire and querying. The available plant species under forest were collected and herbarium specimens are prepared and deposited. Analysis parameters such as density (D), relative density (RD), frequency (F), relative frequency (RF), abundance (A), relative abundance (RA) and the importance value (IV) are studied. The values of the parameters are recorded for all species, but since the number of collected species is more than 500, then these parameters are listed for the highest 20 species to show clear image about the most dominant and the most abundant and other parameters. From the quantitative ecological analysis using various parameters, the species recoded as having the highest values such as Quercus coccifera, Sarcopoterium spinosum, Asphodelus aestivus, Eryngium creticum, Ononis natrix and others confirm that the study area falls within a Mediterranean biogeographic zone in Jordan. Based on the obtained results, it is highly recommended thus to exert maximum efforts to conserve such limited forest cover, since Jordan, is classified as a country with dry to semidry ecosystem. In addition some of the rare and endemic recorded species occur only under forest cover, particularly the orchid species.
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Dawud MH Al-Eisawi , Sawsan AS Oran (2015), Assessment of the vegetation cover of northern high mountains in Jordan; JBES, V6, N5, May, P93-106
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