Spatial - Ecological Assessment of Land-use / Land-cover: Caparo River Valley, Republic of Trinidad & Tobago

Spatial - Ecological Assessment of
Land-use / Land-cover: Agriculturally-disturbed "Tropical Moist Forest
(Cool Dry Transition)" in the Caparo River Valley, Republic of Trinidad
& Tobago

Authors: Karl Ramjohn, Floyd B. Lucas, Carol L. Ramjohn & Winston Johnson, Tropical Environment Research & Management Center, Trinidad & Tobago. January 2006

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ECOSYSTEM
CLASSIFICATION & FUNCTIONAL DYNAMICS

Beard
(1946) classified the study area as being predominantly Seasonal Evergreen Forest (mixed Crappo-Guatecare). Beard’s study (which remains as the only
comprehensive ground-based island-wide assessment of flora) focussed on classifications
based on dominants within the community, mainly from an economic timber and
Forestry management perspective. Those classifications represent conditions ~60
years ago, and several of the species assemblages described by Beard (1946) are
no longer recognizable, having undergone significant alterations, fragmentation
and conversion into secondary forest and other land-uses (Ramjohn et al.
2001, Joseph 1999, Nelson 1999).

A more recent study by Nelson
(2004), which attempted classification of indigenous forests based on a
landscape-ecology and ecosystem-management perspective, delineated Trinidad into two major
terrestrial eco-regions – Dry Forest and Moist Forest. According to that
study, the project site (confluence of the Caparo and
Mamoral Rivers) is located
approximately on the boundary between the two eco-regions; thus it may be
regarded as being within a transition zone between two significant moisture
regimes. Based on maps prepared by Nelson (2004), the middle and upper reaches
of the Caparo Basin would be in the
wetter region supporting “Tropical Moist Forest”, with the lower catchment in the drier region classified as “Tropical Moist Forest, Cool Dry
Transition”.

The long history of agricultural
activity in the Caparo Valley has resulted in
significant alterations to the native vegetation and forests. In general,
higher-quality closed-canopy forest remains only as a few patches in this area
(Nelson 2004). These forested remnants largely persist on the higher slopes of
the occasional spurs and ridges, such as the area immediately north of the
project site. The higher-integrity forest remnants persist as patches embedded
in a wider (macro-habitat) matrix of cultivated areas, grassland/lastro and secondary forest. As a result of the traditional
land-use patterns, much of the vegetation resources in the immediate vicinity
of the confluence are of agricultural origin. Therefore, while natural and
semi-natural vegetation exists in the surrounding area, the agronomic aspects
of the biological environment will have a more dominant role in defining the
site’s ecological character.

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