Plant Diversity in Natural and Cultivated Hedgerows in the Laminga Area of Jos East, North Central Nigeria

Abstract

Hedgerows are important semi-natural environments in agricultural landscapes. A study was carried in the Laminga Area of Jos East in North Central Nigeria to investigate the vegetation composition of farmland hedgerows and to compare plant species composition and diversity between natural and cultivated hedgerows. Twenty (20) farmland hedgerows (13 cultivated and 7 natural hedgerows) were sampled. At each farmland, sampling was conducted within a 50 x 1m area of the hedgerow. Plant species diversity was calculated using Shannon – Weiner’s diversity index and plant species evenness was calculated using Pileou’s evenness index. One-way-ANOVA was used to compare plant species richness, evenness and diversity between natural and cultivated hedgerows. The Plant community structure of the hedgerow types was characterized using Non- Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) ordination method. A total of 12,555 individual plants were recorded during the survey. These were divided into 100 species and 40 families. Plant species richness and evenness was not significantly different between the Natural and Cultivated hedgerows while the plant diversity was significantly higher in the Natural hedgerows than the Cultivated hedgerows. The hedgerows studied were prosperous in biodiversity. Hedgerows play several ecosystem functions and are highly important in conserving biodiversity.