Floristic Diversity of Forests of the Northwest Republic of the Congo

Abstract

The study of structural and tree flora biodiversity of the forest of the Mbomo-Kellé UFA was done on an area of 88.5 ha (0.014% of the total UFA area). The inventory was carried out in plots of 200 m × 25 m (0.5 ha), arranged in a contiguous way along the opened trails in the forest with an equidistance interval of 2 km. 11.01 trees of DBH ≥20 cm were counted, divided into 107 genera, 31 families and 133 species including 121 completely identified and 12 defined only in terms of genus. Data analysis consisted of calculating relative and weighted frequencies, the Shannon and Weaver diversity indexes, Pielou’s evenness index, and the Jaccard and Sorensen similarity indices. Relative frequencies showed that the most representative family in terms of species is the Fabaceae-Caesal piniodeae with 18.05% of species and the most representative in terms of individuals is the Burseraceae with 19.17% of inventoried trees. The principal components analysis allowed to show inter- and intra-block heterogeneities.