Characterization of Native Forest in North Central Entre Rios (Argentina)

Abstract

Native forests on the planet covered approximately 40 million km² in 2005, equivalent to 30 % of the earth’s surface. The aim of this work is to classify, locate and evaluate the area covered by the different types of native forests that characterize the North Central Province of Entre Rios (Argentina). Between June 2008 and February 2010 a survey covering seven departments of Entre Rios (La Paz, Federal, Feliciano, Villaguay, Tala, Nogoyá and Paraná) was performed for the Espinal. Nine hundred and eighty-nine sampling points located with GPS were performed, describing the native forest by successional stage, height of the tree layer, and shrub layer presence. Also a satellite Landsat 5-TM image of October 6, 2008, which was subsequently processed for supervised digital classification was used. Through the field survey 15 kinds of native forests were determined but satellite image with nine kinds of native forests resulting in order of importance were separated: 1. closed virgin native forest (25.95 %), 2. jungle forest (21.35 %), 3. open virgin native forest (15.21 %), 4. closed successional native forest (12.38 %), 5. open native forest renoval (9.81 %), 6. open successional native forest (9.35 %), 7. closed native forest renoval (2.48 %), 8. savanna (2.16 %), and 9. riverside forest (1.99 %). The tree and shrub species are associated with classes of native forests. The departments Federal, Feliciano, La Paz and Villaguay provide the largest area of provincial native forests.