Tree species diversity and structural composition of village common forest in Bandarban District, Bangladesh

Abstract

Abstract. Jannat M, Kamruzzaman MD, Hossain MK. 2020. Tree species diversity and structural composition of village common forest in Bandarban District, Bangladesh. Asian J For 4: 76-83. Village common forests (VCF) are community-based forest management that has been practiced for a long time in Bangladesh. Currently, this form of forest management is threatened with various anthropogenic factors, urging for study regarding the state of its biodiversity. The study was conducted to explore indigenous tree species diversity of Babu Para village common forest (VCF) in Bandarban District, Bangladesh. Tree species diversity was assessed through stratified random sampling method using sample plots of 20 m × 20 m in size. Babu Para VCF with an area of 40 acres had more than 406 individuals of 74 tree species belonging to 30 families, including eight unidentified species. Euphorbiaceae and Moraceae were the most dominant families containing 7 species followed by Anacardiaceae (5 species), Mimosaceae (6 species), and Meliaceae (5 species). Both the number of tree species and number of individuals decreased regularly with the increase of total height except ? 30 m height range. Number of species and number of individuals was highest in the height range of (5-<10) m. Similar trend was found for dbh (cm) class distribution. Both the number of species and number of individuals were highest in the dbh range of (5-<15) cm. Babu Para VCF had diverse floristic resources that were reflected from the Shannon-Wiener’s diversity index (3.94), Simpson’s diversity index (0.025), Margalef’s richness index (12.15) and Species evenness index (0.92). The results depict the presence of rich indigenous tree species diversity in the studied VCF.