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Updated: 09-12-10

DETRENDED  CORRESPONDENCE  ANALYSIS  OF VEGETATION ALONG MOTORWAY  (M-2), PAKISTAN

SHEIKH SAEED AHMAD^1*

Abstract: Road verges are identified as natural habitat to conserve the native flora and provide the basic environment for the growth of indigenous flora. For this purpose a field survey was carried out along the road verges of motorway (M-2). The road verges data collected along the road verges was analysed using ordination technique, DECORANA, computer programme in order to classify the data. Deterended Correspondence Analysis (DCA) identifies clusters of species in ordinate space and verifies groups of species. The road verges data was collected from 397 quadrats and 227 vascular plants species belonging to 75 families were recorded. DCA eigenvalues for the first two axes were 0.59 and 0.46. These values suggest a good dispersion of data along the axes. However, scatter diagram is more easily interpretable in ecological terms. A total of four communities were identified which differs mainly on the basis of their ecological amplitudes. This data will be used as initial source data which can be used to study the successional changes in future with reference to different environmental conditions.

¹Department of Environmental Sciences, Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

^*Corresponding author E-mail: drsaeed@fjwu.edu.pk; 00 92 0321-5167726 

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