Assessment of plant biodiversity in tropical dry forests of Sialkot, Pakistan; insight into environmental, anthropogenic influence and conservation strategies

The tropical dry forests (TDF) have an enormously rich flora and fauna that offer various ecological services to the surrounding human societies. Biodiversity assessment is mandatory for implementing any sustainable forest management policy, which is why it is one of the important criteria and indicators currently used. Threats to TDF biodiversity are the primary challenges arising from environmental concerns caused by anthropogenic activity leading to global warming issues. The study aimed to investigate the vegetation assessment and several environmental and anthropogenic variables influencing forest biodiversity from 5 threatened forest sites of District Sialkot (Ghalotian, Kishan Garh, Daburgi Chanda Singh, Pir Kot, and Ghulab Garh), Pakistan. We collected 170 distinct plant species, including 135 dicots, 27 monocots, seven pteridophytes, and one bryophyte, categorized into 138 genera and 62 families, divided into 114 herbs, 32 trees, and 24 shrubs. The phytosociological analysis described the quantitative characteristics, including % frequency, % density, % cover, and importance Value Index (IVI) of all forest areas. Gulab Garh forest has the richest biodiversity forest area, and herbs are the dominant species that have been documented. Environmental factors such as temperature, precipitation, organic matter, soil pH, Ca+2, Mg+2, Na+, Cl−, and electric conductivity (EC) strongly affect forest vegetation investigated by principal coordinate analysis. Shannon and Simpson’s diversity indexes reveal that all sites contain loamy and sandy soil and display a significant relationship between alpha diversity and richness. Increasing trends in temperature and decreasing trends in rainfall suggested that climate significantly affects the Sialkot region’s plant biodiversity. SWOT analysis highlighted that population growth leads to increasing anthropogenic activities such as constructing housing societies and roads, inadequate farming, and excessive grazing, impacting the forest vegetation and altering TDF ecosystem properties/services and functioning. Our findings reinforce the vegetational assessment and importance of local forest biodiversity and significant environmental drivers that influence the plant species diversity in TDF areas. Future conservation strategies are suggested to reduce unlawful resource consumption, restore plant biodiversity in designated protected areas, and conserve rare species locally.