Abstract

The study on lowland tropical forest plants is complicated by the extreme species diversity, very complex plant
mosaic and time constraints. These impediments however do not occur in mountain forest, where habitat
diversity is clearly distinguished by small homogenous plants types. Plant association and composition study
were presented in this work from two locations of Mount Tahan, Malaysia the relatively untrampled and the
trampled site. In each site, plant species number, vegetation cover, plant height, and species cover and frequency
in untrampled and trampled areas were counted or measured. The analysis included a field survey following the
relevance method of Braun-Blanquet and mapping using a GIS. The study focused on altitudinal distribution of
specific plants communities located between 1900 m and 2140 m altitude. The data from field survey were
mapped and analyzed in GIS. The phytosociological classification revealed that untrampled areas in Botak and
Puncak sites were high in species more diversified communities compared to the trampled areas. The results
showed that Leptospermum flavescens was the dominant species most in both sites (Botak and Puncak), with
48%, specifically at the untrampled site. The abundance class and sociability value are also high for this species
with score 4.5 out of 5, respectively. A total number of trees in the area probably play an important role in
quantifying the species richness and diversity parameters. From the study it can be concluded that GIS technique
useful in developing a tree mapping system and creating a geo-database for spatial analysis. Further studies are
recommended to integrate more data into the system for better evaluation.

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