Estimation of leaf biomass and leaf area index of two major species in Yasuj forests
2007
Hamid Reza Adl
Yasuj forests are regarded as the representative of south Zagros forests that are especially important due to density and species diversity. Two major species of these forests are Quercus brantii and Pistacia mutica. In this research leaf biomass and leaf area index (LAI) were assessed by the measurement of various parts of trees and finding correlation between different variables. In order to perform this research, a number of trees were selected by systematic randomized method and different variables such as diameter at breast, height, height of tree crown and small and large diameters of tree crown were measured. Also the leaves of a sector of the tree crown were picked off and after weighting, their dry weight were measured in laboratory. Gravimetric method was applied for calculating LAI in which the relationship between leaf area and its dry weight is used to estimate the total area of whole trees leaves. Mean Tree Method was used to generalize the result to the whole forest. The results showed that the amount of leaf biomass for Quercus brantii and Pistacia mutica were 1317.3 and 57.2 (kg/ha), respectively. For rapid estimation of this index allometric equations were suggested. Mean LAI in studied site was estimated to be about 1.2. Also analysis tests were done for more evaluation of the amount of elements in leaves.
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