Study of floral diversity in Belbaid Patch deranged by opencast mining in Raniganj coalfield area, West Bengal
Rimi Roy and Ambarish Mukherjee
CAS, Department of Botany, Burdwan University, Burdwan, West Bengal, 713104 (India) E-mail: rimiroybot@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The biological spectrum of the Belbaid Patch overburden when compared with the Raunkiaer’s normal spectrum, revealed much lower value of phanerophytes (14.29) and much higher values of hemicryptophytes (39.29) and therophytes (28.57), thus indicating aridity. The values of chamaephytes (10.71) and cryptophytes (7.14) were rather near normal, indicating a microenvironment having the possibilities to optimize existing phytoclimate.The site could assemble within four years as many as 28 species of which 21 belong to 13 dicot families and the remaining 7 species to Cyperaceae and Poaceae. The Generic Coefficient of the existing floristic organization was found to be 89.28 which being close to 1 is indicative of a possibility for restoration. Most of the species exhibited clumped distribution over the area, with those of Poaceae (5 species) and Fabaceae (4 species) dominating the scenario. The trend of floral succession should escalate the proportion of phanerophytes to the normal as well as diminish hemicryptophytes and therophytes to normal, i.e. 26 and 13 respectively for restoration.