The Forest Regeneration after Gregarious Flowering of Bamboo (Cephalostachyum pergracile) at Mae Klong Watershed Research Station, Kanchanaburi

Abstract

               The forest regeneration after gregarious flowering bamboo (Cephalostachyum pergracile) in the Mixed deciduous forest was carried out at Mae Klong Watershed Research Station, Kanchanaburi Province in 2002. A permanent plot of 50 m × 50 m was established and the 24 litter traps with mouth size of 0.5 m², each adjacent to a seedling quadrat (1.5 m × 1.5 m) were set in a regular matrix with 10 m distance between each one. Seedling census was done every two weeks. At each census all new tree and bamboo seedlings were tagged, identified and seedling mortality were also recorded. 

                The results showed that the forest structure was dominated by undergrowth bamboo in the middle layer. Cephalostachyum pergracile had gregarious flowered in November 2001 which had the clump and culm density as 0.06 m^-2 and 11.10 clump^-1, while, the average seed production was 2,442 ± 1,243 seed/m². Forest fire occurred after bamboo died and burnt all above ground parts of them in which they provided large vacant spaces to forest regeneration. Both forest tree regeneration and bamboo dynamics showed high corresponded to soil moisture content. The annual survival rate of bamboo seedlings was quite high, 58 %, with the annual average of growth height rate about 22.8±1.45 cm. The seedling emergence of dominance species was very high rate, especially in the first year after bamboo died and followed by forest fire. Thus, both the bamboo undergrowth and frequent forest fires could be the dominant factors that prevent the continuous of forest regeneration.