STUDIES IN SILTARA INDUSTRIAL AREA, RAIPUR, CHHATTISGARH I – HERBACEOUS VEGETATION

Deepa Shrivastava; Kavita Sharma; Rizwan ulla

Volume : IV, Issue : V, May - 2015

STUDIES IN SILTARA INDUSTRIAL AREA, RAIPUR, CHHATTISGARH I – HERBACEOUS VEGETATION

Deepa Shrivastava, Kavita Sharma, Rizwan Ulla

Abstract :

Siltara is the industrial area located some about 15 km away from the Raipur city on Raipur–Bilaspur Road located at about 21022 N and 81039 E. There are two industrial sites in Siltata, one on the left and another on the right side of the road, named as: Siltara I and Siltara II. Almost all types of industries, from small to relatively large are located within the area. However, most of them are sponge iron factories. Most prominent of the area is the air pollution. Presently herbaceous vegetation of the area was studied, with the help of 1 x 1 m square quadrats, for their phytosociology. The area was surveyed three times in a year in the months of January, June and October, 2014 with 25 quadrats during each survey, totalling 75 quadrats during one year period. Dust, deposited over the plants were also collected for determining the proportion of combustible and non–combustible matter, by heating at about 2000C for about 2 hours. The industrial area has aquatic as well as land vegetation. Aquatic vegetation has developed in water pools formed due to accumulation of effluent water. Some of the herbs have clumped distribution while most of them have random distribution. In total 87 species of herbs, including some fern species, have been identified from the industrial area. On the basis of Importance Value Index (IVI) Parthenium hysterophorus, Alternanthera tenella, Malachra capitata and Hyptis suaveolens with IVI values of 30.17, 28.02, 13.33 and 12.29, respectively have been found to be the most dominant species. Thus the herbaceous flora of the industrial area is dominated by the alien, invasive species. All the plants have deposition of dust on their surface during the dry period of the year, but is washed away on the rainy days. The species recorded from the industrial area indicates that the variety of species is no where less than the variety of species recorded from outside the industrial area. Growth of the plants, apparently, does not show any significant difference from the growth of plants growing out side the industrial area. The observation, thus, suggests that the atmospheric dust from the industries in Siltara have no any significant effect of the growth of herbaceous vegetation in the industrial area. The dust was found to consist of about 20 percent combustible matter while about 80 percent of the dust was found to be non–combustible, mostly silica.