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Impacts of slope aspects on altitudinal species richness and species composition of Narapani-Masina landscape, Arghakhanchi, West Nepal

2021; Elsevier BV; Volume: 14; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.japb.2021.04.005

2287-9544

Babu Ram Nepali, John Skartveit, Chitra Bahadur Baniya,

Forest ecology and management

This study aimed to find out the roles of altitude, slope aspect, and soil factors in species richness in the Narapani-Masina landscape, Arghakhanchi, Nepal. We surveyed forest plant communities by sampling 192 statistically representative 10 × 10 m sample plots from 64 sites representing all 100 elevation bands of 4 slope aspects (East, South, West, and North) of the landscape. We considered the species present in all plots of each 100 m contour elevation of four aspects as species richness of that elevation band. We collected the soil sample from 10 × 10 × 10 cm plot of 10 cm below the ground level at four corners of plant sampled plots to estimate the soil nutrients in a laboratory. We estimated the correlation, regression, Tukey post hoc test, PerMANOVA, and canonical correspondence analysis to show the relationship between environment and response variables. We found a significant negative relationship between species richness and altitude and soil nitrogen. The species richness showed a unimodal structure with elevation. The slope aspect showed a significant effect on species composition, but not on species richness. This study concludes that the increasing trend of soil N, P, and K with altitude showed a negative relation with species richness.