Species Diversity and Identification of Plant Functional Types of Woodland in Shimbar Protected Area, Khuzestan Provience

Measuring the diversity of plant functional types, identifying their characteristics, and their classification will help to identification of woodland germination capacity and implementing appropriate range management programs. The study was designed to measure the species diversity and to identify plant functional types in three adjacent ecological sites in Shimbar or Shirin Bahar region. During winter, spring and summer since 2013 to 2014, the data regarding the percentage of species coverage were taken from 106 plots using stratified random sampling method in the south facing slopes, north facing slopes and the wetland. Species diversity (Alpha diversity) and habitat diversity (Beta diversity) were measured using PAST and SDR softwares. According to the Shannon-Wiener and Simpson indices the greatest species diversity were found in the wetland, south slopes and north slopes respectively. Species richness was higher in northern slope than northern slopes and the lowest in wetland. For classifying and determining response of vegetation to environmental factors and identifying plant functional types, about 66 resistance to disturbance characters were measured and subjected to clustering by Ward method in R software. The annual and perennial species were classified into 21 and trees and shrubs to 8 classes.