Tree regeneration in the disturbed reaforested parts of mount Elgon national park forest, Uganda.

Abstract

Around the world today, deforestation has become one of the most serious threats to biodiversity conservation, livelihood systems and regeneration rates of forest ecosystems. Study was carried out in the formerly disturbed reforested areas within Mt Elgon National Park Uganda. The aim was to generate information on the overall tree regeneration patterns in the formerly disturbed and reforested MENP forest sites. This would highlight the current forest status and also guides management of the park in designing tree protection strategies in the community that will result in successful tree recovery in Mt Elgon forest. Comparisons done were abundance of different tree size classes for existing tree species, abundance of tree damage for different tree life categories and different sources of current tree regeneration for the existing tree species in formerly enriched UWA-FACE project sites under years of enriching planting. Field Measurements were carried out according to the IFER (2002) methodology designed for the FACE-UWA inventory of 2002. Species diversity comparison' for the study sites were done using Shannon and Simpson diversity indices. Tree diversity was higher in earlier enriched planted sites, and tree size distribution for all species combined across all sites followed the reverse J. curve, a sign of healthy forest recovery. Very low densities for shade tolerant specie seedlings in forest with the longest history of enrichment planting were a surprise. Communities still harvest hard wood species as source of fire wood and poles. The continued forest disturbance and lowered levels of enrichment planting decreased natural regeneration of species in forest. This suggests that anthropogenic activities still exist and continues to influence the regeneration of trees in all sites where enrichment planting took place. Keywords: Enrichment planting; Diameter size distributions; Reforestation, Forest disturbance, Tropical rain forest, Regeneration,