Abstract
The study was undertaken in coffee agroforests of Kodagu, Karnataka, India from 2016 to 2018. The coffee plantation farmers were categorised into large, medium and small based on the land holding and assessed for their role in conservation of indigenous tree species. Circa situm conservation is the preservation of planted and/or remnant trees and wildings in farmland where natural forest or woodland containing the same trees was once found, but where natural vegetation has been lost or modified significantly through agricultural expansion. Making questionnaire survey and interaction with the coffee planters, the knowledge in tree planting was assessed. There were some indigenous trees that really played well in protection, conserving the soil and moisture, helped in pollination of coffee, supply of timbers and small scale timbers and fire wood. By known use value of tree species and respondents attitude towards planting indigenous trees, Dalbergia latifolia, Ficus racemosa and Acrocarpus fraxinifolius were planted in coffee farms which aided in creation of C. situm forest gene bank.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the coffee planters for their kind cooperation, without which it would not have been possible to conduct this research. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and our Professor Dr. Vasudeva and Dr. Ramakrishna Hegde for helpful comments and editing of a draft of the paper.
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Maheswarappa, V., Vasudeva, R. & Hegde, R. Circa situm conservation of coffee agroforests: farmer’s perception in Kodagu landscape of Karnataka, India. Trop Ecol 63, 104–112 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42965-021-00141-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42965-021-00141-w