ACKNOWLEDGMENT First and foremost, in order to complete the training program and to assess student’s the results of learning as well as making the condition for student in investigation and scientific research, I have conducted the thesis under the permission of the Vietnam Forestry University, the Faculty of Forest and Environment Management with thesis’ name: The impact of selected ecological factors on plant diversity in Ben En National Park in Thanh Hoa Province. In particular, I would like extend my grateful thanks to both my supervisor, including: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Sam and Dr. Tobias. They have supported me throughout the research process as well as during the period of completing the thesis. Besides, I would also like to thank Dr. Lee Macdonald who comes from professor Colorado State University in judging and fixing the controversial issue in my thesis. Last but not least, I sincerely thank for the board of directors and staff in Ben En National Park helped me to deal with this topic. Eventually, this is initially familiar with scientific research and as the results of poor experiments which lead to get the unavoidable errors. I look forward to receiving suggestion from teachers and friends. 1 ABSTRACT The thesis have provide the fundamental information in the plant species diversity and vegetation types as well as some factors influencing on the plant diversity in Ben En National Park. The thesis recorded about 363 vascular plant species belonging to 70 different families. Besides, there are two main types of vegetation which witnessed in National Park, including moist tropical evergreen and secondary lowland limestone forests, moist tropical evergreen lowland forests and secondary forest after mining on other soils with heavily and slightly disturbed subtypes illustrating the impact of human activities on. In terms of the first vegetation type, it consist of some subtypes which are slightly disturbed, heavily disturbed and shrub-land on lime stone, while the second main one is tropical evergreen lowland forest on other soils with slightly disturbed forest on ferralitic or alluvial soil, heavily disturbed forest on ferralitic soil and shrub-land on ferralitic soil. Moreover, there are plenty of high conservation species living in Ben En National Park, among which I have found and recognized a number of 7 species are listed in the Red list of IUCN (2015) and 9 species belong to the Red data Book of Vietnam (Ban 2007) as well as many plant species are in the face of extinction. Last by not least, the overview of the impact of ecological factors on the plant diversity in the distribution and the development showed up in this thesis with some such dominant ecological factors as: the canopy cover, shrub and herb cover and the elevation. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLE INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I. LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................................... 3 CHAPTER II. OBJECTIVES, SCOPES OF THE STUDY AND METHODOLOGY ............. 7 2.1. Objective .............................................................................................................................. 7 2.2. Subjects and scope of research ............................................................................................ 7 2.3. Content ................................................................................................................................ 7 2.4. Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 7 2.4.1. Material inherited and preparation method. ..................................................................... 7 2.4.2. Field investigation method. .............................................................................................. 8 2.4.3. Non-field investigation method. ..................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER III. RESERCH AREAS ......................................................................................... 14 3.1. Geographical Location ...................................................................................................... 14 3.2. Topography ........................................................................................................................ 14 3.3. Climate and Hydrology ..................................................................................................... 16 3.4.Forest resource .................................................................................................................... 16 3.5.Characteristics of social economy. ..................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ..................................................................... 18 4.1. Vegetation types in Ben En National Park and its characteristics ..................................... 18 4.1.1. Moist Tropical evergreen in lowland limestone forests ................................................. 18 3 4.1.2. Moist tropical evergreen lowland forests ....................................................................... 20 4.1.3 Plantation forest ............................................................................................................... 23 4.1.4 Agricultural land .............................................................................................................. 24 4.2. Conservation of plant species status in Ben En National Park .......................................... 24 4.3. The impact of some ecological factors on plant diversity in Ben En National Park ......... 24 4.3.1. Impact of elevation factor on plant diversity in Ben En National Park .......................... 24 4.3.2. Effect of the canopy cover to plant diversity .................................................................. 29 4.3.3. Effect of shrub and herb cover to plant diversity ........................................................... 30 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................ 32 REFERENCE 4 LIST OF TABLE Table 4.1. Fluctuation number of plant species and families by evelation in Ben En National Park ........................................................................................................................................... 25 Table 4.2. The relationship between elevation and the index .................................................. 28 Table 4.3. Familiar level in species composition in vegetation structure among different altitude ...................................................................................................................................... 28 Table 4.4. The impact of canopy cover on regeneration density. ............................................. 29 Table 4.5. the result of surveying shrub and herb layer. .......................................................... 30 Table 4.6. the impact of shrub and herbs cover on regeneration species ................................. 31 5 INTRODUCTION It is universally acknowledged that tropical rainforests are terrestrial ecosystem on Earth illustrating the abundance of species diversity, but nowadays, we are witnessing about the disappearance of species at a dizzying pace because lands are renovated by timber, agriculture, and other uses (Fimbel et al. 2001; Meijaard et al. 2005). Vietnam’s forests are extremely biodiverse (Thin 1997) and Vietnam is one of the nations ranked the 16th in global bio-diverse (WCMC 1992). The abundance of plant diversity is one of the most characteristics in tropical rainforests, which cover less than 10% of the total land areas; there are more than 50 percent of earth’s plant species found in tropical rainforests (Wilson 1988; Mayaux et al. 2005). Unfortunately, the majority of Vietnam’s forests have significantly decreased during the last 60 years (Chien 2006). Around 6 million ha of tropical forests have been lost (Achard et al. 2002). As a result, the forest cover witnessed a downward trend in 1985 and 1995 at 30 percent and 28 percent, respectively (Lung 2001; Hoang et al. 2008 a). In 1998, the Vietnamese government deployed the 5 million ha Reforestation Program with the aim of planning 5 million ha of forests in 2010 as well as restoring the cover of forest to reach of 43 percent (Lung 2001). Plants are the world’s biodiversity as well as demonstrating its essential resource on the earth (GSPC 2012). There are many thousands of wild plants used with the aim of economic and providing food, medicine, fuel shelter for humans around the world in over period of time. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity noted that: “Biological resources probably contribute into world’s economy and the poor’s demands at about 40 percent and 80 percent, respectively (Convention 2011). Also, the more life’s diversity, the more popular opportunity for medical discoveries, economic development and facing to such new challenges as: climate change. Unfortunately, many plant species are threatened by habitat transformation, over-exploitation, pollution and climate change. 1 Ben En National Park is known as the ecological complex of mountain, river, lake with more than 16.000ha of area and the plentiful plants and animals system. It is homeland of