Abstract:

Rangeland areas within the forest ecosystem are of great importance both for the wildlife and for the local people who make their living from livestocks husbandry activities. Determining the participation rates of plants that play a role in the nutrition of both livestocks and wild animals in the botanical composition will be useful in terms of giving information about the quality of forage and changes in land use situations. For this purpose, the study was carried out in 2017 in order to determine the change of botanical composition in forest gap rangelands in Erzurum province Oltu district Köroğlu and Uzunoluk localities according to altitude. In this context, botanical compositions were determined on the basis of weight by taking grass samples with quadrats as with four replications from four different elevations ranges [1600-1750 m (Y1), 1750-1900 m (Y2), 1900-2050 m (Y3), 2050-2200 m (Y4)] in forest gap rangelands areas. According to the results of the study, on average, 26.68% of the botanical composition consisted of legumes, 56.67% of grasses and 16.65% of other family plants. Among the altitude ranges, the highest percentage of grasses (75.28%) and the lowest ratio of legumes (12.47%) were determined in the altitude range of Y4. Legumes rates (30.43 - 34.72 - 29.10) in the first three altitude ranges were higher than the Y4 altitude range (12.47%). In the study area, it was determined that soil organic matter was higher in the upper two elevation ranges. It is thought that it will be important for the research areas to be relatively small and homogeneous in the studies to be carried out and to increase the number of samples so that we can have more information about the study areas.

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