The Unnoticed Benefits of City Dumpsites in Cross River State, Nigeria.

Oka; Peter Onen; Majuk; Stanley Monkayuk; Eni; Devalsam Imoke

Volume : VI, Issue : VI, June - 2016

The Unnoticed Benefits of City Dumpsites in Cross River State, Nigeria.

Oka, Peter Onen, Majuk, Stanley Monkayuk, Eni, Devalsam Imoke

Abstract :

 The aim of this paper is to ascertain the unnoticed benefits of city dumpsites with the central focus on its contribution to biodiversity conservation. This work sampled nine (9) dumpsites across the study area; highlighting the geographical coordinates, size and ascertain the species richness of each dumpsite. This was obtained using Geographic Position System (GPS) device, simple perimeter measurement and observations respectively. Furthermore, the strength of association was determined using correlation analysis while regression analysis served in ascertaining the percentage variation and standard coefficient. Result obtained show that dumpsites used in this study cover approximately 244,200m2. 136 bird observations were documented with 97 bird species representing 71.32%. Further, 65–land snail’s observations recorded 17 species diversity (26.15%); 74 bird species (73.27%) came from 101 observations of birds; and 75 observations of mushrooms produced 20 species diversity (26.67%) of mushrooms. The coefficient of variation, explain that plants have the highest influence in explaining the variability of other taxa used in this study. The highest strength of association (0.0571) recorded is among plant and mushroom diversities. The results of the regression analysis show that dumpsite size, plants, land snails and mushrooms accounted for 50.20% of bird richness. The standard coefficient reveals that plant richness accounts for 98.8% of explanation of bird richness at city dumpsites. The result is obvious because birds depend on plants for nesting, eeding and roosting. Since city dumpsites can serve as interior biodiversity reservoirs, conservation planning should aim at providing better management for sustainability of life form capacity at city dumpsites. From this micro–survey, it is worth concluding that dumpsites accommodate a number of resources that research is to be ventured into, as bird are good asserts to test the viability of any ecosystem.