Environmental and anthropogenic drivers of watercress (Nasturtium officinale) communities in char-lands and water channels across the Swat River Basin: implication for conservation planning.

ABSTRACT: Recent anthropogenic sources and excess usage have immensely threatened the communities and habitat ecology of this region's medicinally and economically significant crops. Therefore, our study aims to evaluate the community structure and related environmental characteristics sustaining Nasturtium officinale communities along the river basin (RB) in Northwest Pakistan, using the clustering procedure (Ward's method) and Redundancy analysis (RDA). From 340 phytosociological plots (34 × 10 = 340), we identified four ecologically distinct assemblages of N. officinale governed by different environmental and anthropogenic factors for the first time. The floristic structure shows the dominance of herbaceous (100%), native (77%), and annual (58.09%) species indicating relatively stab

SUBMITTER: Khan N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10569500 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature