Tree communities and floristic composition of freshwater swamp forest remnants in Perak

摘要

Much areas of freshwater swamp forest in Malaysia have been developed into urban settlement leaving small fragments ofudisolated habitat. This study was conducted to determine the plant communities and floristic composition of freshwater swampudforest in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Sri Iskandar, Perak. A total of 17 plots measuring at 20 m × 20 m (0.68) haudwere established in the study area. A total of 575 trees with diameter breast height (dbh) > 5 cm were enumerated, whichudgives tree density estimates of 845 trees ha-1. Floristic composition of tree communities at the study area comprises of 165udspecies, 88 genera and 36 families. Olacaceae is the most specious family, whereas the most dominant species is Nepheliumudcostatum Hiern with an Importance Value Index (IVi) of 17.75%. Total tree basal area (BA) was 22.14 m2 ha-1. The Shannon-udWeiner diversity index (H’) for the study is 1.15 (H’max = 6.35). Findings from this study may contribute in identifyingudspecies of special concerns results from freshwater swamps forest habitat fragmentation.