Ecological Analysis Of Invasive Alien Vascular Plants And Their Impact On Forest Crops Along Altitudinal Gradients In Manipur

Abstract

newline With current global economic growth and human interventions that facilitate plant newlinedispersal, the phenomenon of plant invasion has increased over the past decades and newlinehas gained momentum. The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR), protected areas (PAs), newlineand north-east (NE) India are rich repositories of biodiversity that offer a vast array of newlinedirect values linked with human livelihood and other indirect values in providing newlineecosystem services. Limited research with insufficient information about invasive alien newlineplants resulted to lack of preventive measures, effective management, and planning for newlinecontrolling biological invasions across the Indian Himalayan Regions and its north east newlineregion, in particular. As Manipur has been facing extreme ecological disturbance for newlinethe past few decades due to many developmental activities and species invasion, it was newlinenecessitated to conduct detail studies on the invasive alien plants which has intruded to newlinedifferent forest types in the state. Thus, the present study was aimed to document IAVPS newlineoccurring at different forest habitats and identify threats across different elevation in newlineManipur. This study assessed invasive alien vascular plant species (IAVPS) in forest newlinehabitats along the range of elevation gradients i.e., tropical (lt900m asl), sub-tropical newline(900 1800m asl), and temperate elevation sites (gt1800m asl) to document their status, newlinediversity, and distribution in the hilly state of Manipur, Northeast India. Accordingly, newlinestudies on detailed vegetation and soil parameters were conducted at randomly selected newlinerepresentative locations within the respective elevation ranges. The present study also newlineattempted to identify the most dominant IAVPS in the area, understand their biology, newlineand determine their impact on the native flora and microhabitats. The phenological newlinestages of the selected invasive plants were recorded over different seasonal periods newlinebased on the following growth stages: seedling establishment, sapling, vegetative newlinegrowth, flowering, fruiting, s