Diversity of over Storey Plant Communities of Tropical Forest Covers of Balasore District, Odisha, India

Vegetation diversity assessment in tropical forests have mostly been concentrated on tree species than other plant life forms, because tree species diversity is an important aspect of forest ecosystem structure and fundamental to tropical forest biodiversity. Tropical forests, the major repository of biodiversity, are undergoing rapid fragmentation and degradation all over the world [1]. These covers 7 % of the earth’s land surface, but harbours more than half of the world’s species [2] and are currently disappearing at an overall rate of 0.8 to 2 % per year [3]. The declining of tropical forests in different parts of the world is most probably due to the activities of human kind [4]. Phytosociology is the study of the characteristics, classification, relationship and distribution of plant communities. It is useful to collect data on the quantitative change of each species studied and how their relationship with other species in the same community. Further, such studies serve as a pre-requisite for investigating the details of primary productivity of tropical ecosystems and can be used for environmental impact assessment studies in future with reference to understand the changes experienced in the past and continuing on into the future.