The Consequences of Banqueting and Fire on Plant Functional Groups (Case Study: Atbatan Rangelands, Bostanabad County)

Aims: Awareness about the effects of banqueting and fire on the vegetation in rangeland ecosystems is necessary for appropriate management. Regarding the importance of sustainable rangelands management and the lack of studies about fire and banqueting, the aim of the current study is to investigate the effect of rangeland restoration practices (banqueting with seeding) and also fire on plant functional groups in semiarid region of Atbatan Rangelands, Bostanabad. Materials Methods: For this purpose, after choosing the treatments and control sites, via randomsystematic method in each site, thirty 1m2 plots were established along three 30meter transects (there were 30 plots for each area and 240 plots in total). The canopy cover of plant species was recorded within the plots and categorized based on plant functional groups. Findings: The results of statistical data analysis showed that the percentage of total cover in the north and south aspects of banqueting with 69.17% and 62.03% was significantly higher than the control sites with 52.53% and 48.03%, respectively. Fire in west aspect has reduced the percentage of vegetation (53.6%) compared to the control site (72.93%) whereas it did not have a significant effect in east aspect. Conclusion: Generally, it can be stated that banqueting in the north aspect has more and increasing effect on plant functional groups but fire has a more complicated behavior in different topographic conditions (aspect) in relation to the banqueting and in west control site in term of the most studied parameters it has significantly more values than the other sites.