Distribution and Abundance of Ground Vegetation in Traditional Gold Mining Area of Sekotong, West Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara
Gold mining activity often destroys tropical rain forest ecosystem, especially gold mining area that has not been managed professionally. Sekotong is one of gold mining areas that some illegal traditional gold mining, so called PETI, had appeared agrressively lately. The miners used mercury for thei...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Conference or Workshop Item |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
2011
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://repository.ugm.ac.id/101260/1/ICBS-2011-extended%20abstract-edit.docx https://repository.ugm.ac.id/101260/2/ICBS-2011-extended%20abstract-edit.docx |
| Summary: | Gold mining activity often destroys tropical rain forest ecosystem, especially gold mining area that has not been managed professionally. Sekotong is one of gold mining areas that some illegal traditional gold mining, so called PETI, had appeared agrressively lately. The miners used mercury for their mining processes. The aims of the study were to examine the effect of mercury to the distribution and abundance of ground vegetation and the response of the community to mercury pollution in this area. The study was conducted in three locations of Sekotong area: Simba reserved forest, Selodong, and Pelangan sub-watersheds. Vegetation communities were taken randomly by using the 1 x 1 m2 quadrat method. Sixty nine of quadrat plots were taken from several study sites with randomly stratified strucuture. In addition, mercury concentration in plants leaves and soils, and also some physicochemistry of soils were also taken. Morphometric measurements of leaves taken from the most widely distributed plants, Eupatorium inulifolium, were also performed from each study sites. The results of the study showed that two grasses genera of Cynodon dactylon dominated the quarry mining area of Selodong by 36.4 m-2, and Ischaemum sp. dominated quarry in Pelangan by 25.1 m-2. Likewise, Eupatorium inulifolium dominated in the forest reserved area by 32.1 m-2. Mercury content in the quarry at Pelangan (184,3 ppb) was higher than in Selodong (39,7 ppb) followed the number of PETI which was 628 in Pelangan comparred to 274 in Selodong respectively. Eupatorium inulifolium is a mercury hyper accumulator plant, with the ability to absorb 100 times mercury higher than in soils. Ordination analysis showed that eventhough there were 3 groups of vegetations, the biggest group was vegetation that responsed to Pelangan mercury polluted condition, which was in a physiological stress condition. This conclussion was also supported by the reality that leaves and stems of the most distributed species was smaller size than that grown in Selodong or in forest reserved area.
Key-words: tradisional gold mining, Eupatorium inulifolium, mercury, Sekotong |
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