Impact Of Small-Scale Mining and Agricultural Expansion On Plant Community Composition In Raigarh
Keywords:
Small-scale mining, Agricultural expansion, Plant community composition, Species richness, Diversity indices, Raigarh districtAbstract
Small-scale mining and agricultural activities have also resulted in land-use change as a significant environmental issue in resource-rich areas of India, which have caused considerable changes in the structure of the vegetation and biodiversity. This research paper assesses how the above land-use practices affect the composition of the flora in the Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh (species richness, diversity, life-forms composition, and community similarity). The stratification of the random sampling was used, and the vegetation records were taken in 200 sampling plots covered by three types of land-use, that is, small-scale mining-derived areas, agricultural expansion areas, and the relatively intact reference areas. Plant species were recorded with the help of the standard quadrat techniques and were categorized into trees, shrubs and herbs, and quantitative analyses were conducted with the help of the Shannon Wiener diversity index, Simpson diversity index and Jaccard similarity index. The findings showed a clear gradient in vegetation features among the land-uses. The mean species richness and diversity were highest in the reference sites representing stable and complex plant communities in terms of structure. In the agricultural regions, the species richness and diversity were moderate indicating partial preservation of the native vegetation with the management land use. Conversely, mining-impacted habitats were the ones that had the lowest species richness and diversity values, and this indicates a high level of disturbances and ecological degradation. Analysis of life forms revealed that in mining sites herbaceous species dominate whereas in reference sites tree species dominated thus showing a difference in the vegetation structure depending on the level of disturbance. Community similarity analysis also showed that there was a great turnover of species between mining and reference sites indicating that the mining activities significantly altered the plant assemblages. In general, the results indicate that the negative effect of small-scale mining on the composition of plant communities is stronger than agricultural expansion.
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