Contribution of Agroforestry to Woody Species Diversity and Conservation in Ginir District, Southeast Ethiopia

Abstract

As part of agriculture, agroforestry has great contribution as in-situ conservation for global biodiversity, because it contains different components. Besides, it improves the livelihoods of smallholder farmers by providing various products and services. However, there are limited scientific evidence and studies so far available on the roles of agroforestry to biodiversity conservation. Objective of the current study was to assess contribution of agroforestry on woody species diversity, conservation to sustain rural livelihoods at Ginir district, Southeast Ethiopia. Totally, six villages were selected based on their respective distance from the accessible roads and their agroforestry potential. A total of 70 sample HHs were randomly selected from the farmers full practiced agroforestry categories based on proportions of their representation. For the inventory of woody species, the lengths of farm boundary plantations were divided into 10 m sections. One section was selected for every 50 m of boundary length. A quadrant size of 10 m × 5 m and 50 m × 50 m were used for homegarden and parklands were conducted by taken one quadrant sample for each agroforestry practice from a house head farm. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed. Measurement of diversity needed to quantify and characterize agroforestry practices according to the degree of diversity and to examined the relationship of different agroforestry practices and woody species diversity at the village level and Kebeles. The result showed that 67 woody species belonging to 36 families and 58 genera were identified. Miomosoidceae was the most dominant family with 10 (15%) species, followed by Myrtaceae family with 6 (9%) species, Anacardiaceae and Rutaceae family accounted for 8 (12%). In terms of species diversity, home gardens (2.47) were more diversified than parklands (2.33) and boundary plantation (1.98) in the overall study sites. Finally, it is concluded that Agroforestry were used to maintaining or as an option for maintaining native woody species to improve the rural community livelihoods of the rural farmers.