Assessment of soil seed bank from six different vegetation types in Kakamega forest, Western Kenya
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Date
2011-10Author
Mukhongo, Jennifer N.
Kinyamario, J. I.
Chira, R. M.
Musila, W
Type
ArticleLanguage
enMetadata
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Kakamega forest, the only rainforest in Kenya, has faced extensive fragmentation and degradation over
the last decades. Slow recovery of degraded areas is due to slow or no natural regeneration. An
assessment was conducted to ascertain the contribution of soil seed bank in forest regeneration within
six sites in Kakamega Forest. Sites investigated were the natural forest, plantation, shrubland,
secondary grassland, natural glade, and burnt glade. Soil sampling was done from three stratified
depths of 0 to 5, 5 to10 and 10 to 15 cm in each site. Soil seed bank was determined by seedling
emergence technique and total seed counts. Laboratory experiments on seed viability were done in a
germination chamber at 20°C. Soil seed banks in all the six vegetation types were mainly dominated by
herbaceous species. There was a high seed density in the upper layers for all the sites except for
natural forest and burnt glade. Seed viability tests revealed low seed viability for the seeds from all the
sites. It was concluded that natural regeneration is slowed by low woody species which ranged from 5.7
for natural glade to 48.4% for natural forest soil seed bank, and a low seed viability that ranged between
1.3 for plantation to 33.8% for grassland. It is therefore important to consider other ways of forest
restoration other than the soil seed bank
URI
http://www.academicjournals.org/AJBhttp://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/14903
Citation
African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 10(65), pp. 14384-14391, 24 October, 2011Publisher
© 2011 Academic Journals School of biological sciences