RIPARIAN VEGETATION CLASSIFICATION ALONG KORANG RIVER, ISLAMABAD BY USING ORDINATION TECHNIQUE

The present study was conducted at Korang river, Islamabad to identify plants communities grouping and quantification of floristic composition using ordination techniques. Data collection was done for herbaceous flora. Random sampling approach was applied using quadrat of 1×1 square meters. Visual cover estimation was noted down for each plant. A whole of 21 species according to 14 families were identified. TWINSPAN (Two Way Indicator Species Analysis) classified 4 sub-communities, named as Ajuga-Xanthium, Plantago-Malvastrum, Oxalis-Euphorbia and Coronopus-Parthenium. DCA (Detrended Correspondence Analysis) results demarcated four groups and the frequent species were Cannabis sativa, Cynodon dactylon and Coronopus didymus. Multidimensional scaling or non metric multidimensional scaling was used to extract nonlinear variables in composition of species. The whole dataset was evaluated by Monte Carlo test in order to evaluate stress/pressure as dimensionality function.