Biological characterization of natural areas La Cumbre Nucleus, Valle del Cauca, Colombia

Study Extent

The area is located to the northeast of the municipal capital of La Cumbre and to the west of Vijes, department of Valle del Cauca. The natural forest fragments of the La Cumbre Nucleus studied are the remnants of the very diminished forests of the Yumbo-Vijes-La Cumbre region, an enclave with dry forest characteristics that allows in certain areas, thanks to the humidity provided by the fog, the development of a humid premontane forest.

Sampling

For the characterization of the flora, rapid assessment plots RAP (Gentry 1982) , widely used for several decades (Alonso et al. 2011) for the characterization of complex and diverse plant communities , were carried out. The vegetation was sampled in an area of 1000 m² represented by the sum of 10 subplots of 25×4 m. spaced 20 m apart. The vegetation of each subplot was sampled at 2 m on either side of a 25 m long main line, oriented in a predetermined direction (usually parallel or perpendicular to a trail or river) but in any case trying to move in the direction of the vertical slope, from a randomly selected starting point or making considerations about the characteristics and access to the site. The RAP was extended in three lots, which were surveyed in the first week of September 2015.

Method steps

1. Fragments of at least 30 ha were selected, with a forest cover in a good state of conservation, with large trees and no recent damage from forest fires.
2. Handheld computers equipped with GPS receivers were used to locate the plots. Measurements of normal diameter were made with a diametric tape (approximation ± 0.1 cm). The VERTEX IV digital hypsometer was used for height measurements.
3. All the information from the flora field inventories was recorded in the digital forms of the BIO-TALLY applet system, in the ESRI ArcPad mobile geographic information system platform. This applet was developed by FCG for biodiversity inventories, and runs on handheld computers. The system registers each tree as a point in a point geometry file (shapefile), with the attributes DBH, height, crown diameter, local name, botanical name, entered by the user, in addition to intrinsic attributes such as coordinates (MAGNA-SIRGAS), thus being georeferenced directly in the field and with a unique consecutive number (for each tree) assigned by the system.

This dataset contains 276 biological records from the Plantae kingdom. They are distributed in 1 phylo, 3 classes, 16 orders, 28 families, 37 genus and 29 species. 43% is classified at the species level and 30% at the genus level.

1. Liliopsida
   rank: class
2. Magnoliopsida
   rank: class
3. Polypodiopsida
   rank: class

The area is located to the northeast of the municipal capital of La Cumbre and to the west of Vijes, department of Valle del Cauca.