Floral Diversity of the Adopt-A- Mountain Project of Ramon Magsaysay Technological University in Botolan, Zambales

Abstract

Four vegetation types of the Adopt-a-Mountain project of the Ramon Magsaysay Technological University situated at Botolan, Zambales were assessed for their floral composition, vegetation structure and diversity. Vegetation types were identified as dipterocarp area, molave area, gmelina area and grassland area. The comparative study on each area was made based on the three canopy layers, namely: tree layer, understorey layer and seedling layer. The quadrat method was used for the vegetation sampling. Five square quadrats were arbitrarily established in each area. For the tree and understorey layers, a 20m x 20m quadrat size was used while an 8 x 8m quadrat was applied for the seedling layer. All species that are found within the quadrats were identified. Other parameters considered were diameter at breast height (dbh), height and number of individuals. Importance values (IV) of each species were determined per area. Indices of diversity utilized in analyzing the gathered data were species richness (R), Shannon-Weiner Diversity Index (H') and species evenness (E'). Fifty species from 24 plant families were identified in the whole area. The dipterocarp area was the most diverse in terms of species richness with 28 species identified along the three canopy layers while grassland area has the least of 5 species only. Dominant species for all canopy layers of dipterocarp area and molave area were apitong and molave, respectively, for the tree layer for both the gmelina area and grassland area, gmelina and binayuyu were dominant. On the contrary, understorey layer was dominated by binayuyu for both the gmalina and grassland areas. Nevertheless, at the seedling layer, ipil-ipil and alibangbang were the dominant species for gmelina and grassland areas, respectively. Dipterocarp area is the most diverse for both tree layer and seedling layers followed by molave area. Grassland area remained to be the least diverse at all canopy layers. Molave area is the most diverse area at understorey layer. Dipterocarp area ranked second for the said canopy layer.