Mapping Green Life: Quantitative Vegetation Study of Agoo Eco-Park | InformativeBD

Robelyn S. Lizardo, from the  institute of Philippines.  Ginalyn G. Laron, from the institute of Philippines. Derick T. Boado, from the institute of Philippines and Beatriz E. Aspiras, from the institute of Philippines. wrote a Research Article about, Mapping Green Life: Quantitative Vegetation Study of Agoo Eco-Park. Entitled, Quantitative vegetation analysis of Agoo Eco-park in Sta. Rita West Agoo, La, Union using grid-based mapping. This research paper published by the Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences | JBES. an open access scholarly research journal on Biodiversity. under the affiliation of the International Network For Natural Sciences| INNSpub. an open access multidisciplinary research journal publisher.

Abstract

The quantitative vegetation analysis in Agoo Ecopark is assessed. This study is aimed to identify the plants present and classify them based on distribution, conservation status, and their ecological indices. This study also assessed the soil physicochemical composition. A quantitative and naturalistic observation was employed. Transect sample was used to obtain samples. There were 17 plants identified, 7 are native, 4 are naturalized, 3 exotics,1 cultivated, and 2 undocumented. Sonneratia alba recorded the highest Importance Value Index (IVI), the dominant plant family are the Fabaceae. Seven of the plants found are also native species and only two species are exotic. Moreover, this study shows that native species are dominant in the sampled area over exotic species. This study also shows that the soil conditions tolerable for the identified plants are extremely low Phosphorus, extremely high Potassium, normal pH range, which is acidic, and lightly textured due to the high presence of sand, and electrical conductivity which is non-saline. It is highly recommended that the Agoo Eco-park may be evaluated against other locations with the same ecosystem and a complete enumeration of vegetation may also be considered to create better results.

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Introduction

Biodiversity is important to most aspects of lives. People heavily rely on the various vegetation for resources in order to survive. Biodiversity, in general, has utilitarian and intrinsic values, complexity, diversity, spiritual significance, wildness, beauty and wonderness. Utilitarian values include the other basic needs humans receive from biodiversity such as food, fuel, shelter, and medicine. Among the richest in biodiversity globally has been the Philippine rainforest, which used to conceal about 90% of the country’s land area. During the last decades, the forest cover has been minimized to less than 10% of the original, only a fraction of which is old-growth forest During the 1970 to 1990 period, the percentage of remaining rainforest in the country was drastically reduced from about 70% of what it was in the 1900s to less than 10% (Perez, 2020). Vegetation can even affect the weather conditions. It is of vital importance to maintain healthy forest ecosystems and provision of multiple services of ecosystem (Felipe-Lucia et al. 2018). Vegetation such as trees, bushes, wetlands, and wild grasslands naturally slow down water and help soil to absorb rainfall. Trees and other plants clean the air we breathe and help us tackle the global challenge of climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide.

In 2021, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) started to reforest the place under its national greening program (NGP). The park is a part of the Agoo- Damortis Protected Landscape and Seascape (ADLPS), which covers 10,774.68 hectares as core zone and 135 hectares as buffer zone. Of this area, only 3 percent is land and rest is marine ecosystem. The Agoo Eco-Park, which was once identified as Agoo-Damortis Protected Landscape has been designated as a Protected Landscape and Seascape at national level in 2018 (DOPA, 2021). Agoo Eco-Park has been developed. Transects and quadrats are two ecological tools that permits quantifying the relative abundance, richness, diversity and evenness of species in an area. To track changes over time, it is important to be able to quantify changes in abundance. This method allows estimation of plant densities, frequency based on scattered points over a larger geographic area. This study utilized transects due to the vast extent of sampling sites. Measuring importance value can aid understanding the succession stages of a forest habitat. Importance values are one objective way of measuring this dominance. The three factors that are used to determine the importance value of a species are the density, dominance and frequency. The significance of this study is to analyze the vegetation Agoo Eco-Park in Sta. Rita West, Agoo, La Union.

In this light, this study was a quantitative vegetation analysis of the Agoo Ecopark in Sta.Rita Agoo, La Union. The foci of the study were to identify the plants (family and genus) and its ecological importance; identify the conservation status of the plant species based on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list; identify the distribution status of the plant species based on Co’s Digital Flora of the Philippines, (2011); and determine the physicochemical composition of the soil. The study is mainly focused on the vegetation analysis of floristic diversity in the forest areas of Ecopark Sta. Rita West, Agoo, La Union which was covered 10,648.94 hectares of coastal area, including mangrove swamps, stretches of fine black sand beaches, and seagrass beds. It was the first posted as a national park in 1965 and known as the Agoo– Damortis National Seashore Park. It covers approximately 30 kilometers of coastline of the Lingayen Gulf shared between the municipalities of Agoo, Santo Tomas and Rosario. In previous years the seascape has 10,197.61 hectares and 315.59 hectares landscape. The study area of Agoo Ecopark showing in Google Earth map where each line in the grid accounts 300 meters away from the seashore. It is evident that with the change in the seascape, there was also a change in the landscape. A lot of pioneer species are teeming in the Ecopark due to the expansion of land.

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Article source : Quantitative vegetation analysis of Agoo Eco-park in Sta. Rita West Agoo, La, Union using grid-based mapping