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In addition to their use as food, mushrooms have been gaining importance in medicinal practices. Beta glucan, known as a modulator of the immune system, is one of the bioactive compounds of interest. This study explores the relationship between environmental variables and spatial distribution of mushroom communities containing betaglucan using Canonical Correspondence Analysis. Mushroom samples were collected for study from 125 sampling points within three sites in seven subtypes of subtropical dry forest along elevational gradients with a variety of ecosystems and climates from Thung Salaeng Luang National Park in the lower North of Thailand. Most mushrooms in the family Russulaceae, growing in deciduous dipterocarp forests and mixed deciduous forests with bamboo in the northern and the central-western parts of the park, and Polyporaceae, found in dry evergreen forests, were found to have relatively high beta glucan content. Mushroom communities could be categorized into five groups by cluster analysis using the Sorensen (BrayCurtis) distance technique with remaining information of 75%; the groups were named according to altitude and forest type. It was found that the high beta glucan content mushroom community consisting of Pycnoporus cinnabarinus, P. coccineus, and P. sanguineus mostly occurred in the highland dry evergreen forest habitat. It is also shown that the occurrence of high beta glucan content mushroom communities is correlated with the specific habitat characteristics of high altitude, high crown cover percentage and high rainfall.

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Almulqu AA, Arpornpong N, Boonyanuphap J. 2018. Tree species composition and structure of dry forest in Mutis Timau Protected Forest Management Unit of East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Biodiversitas 19: 496-503. Plots 10,000 m 2 were established in four sites of Mutis Timau Protected Forest Management Unit (Mutis Timau PFMU), in order to determine tree species density, basal area, importance value index, species richness and to identify the relationship betwen species richness and abundance of trees. A total of 94 species belonging to 72 genera and 45 families were recorded. Species richness and forest structure were different between sites. Moraceae was the dominant tree family at most sites, particulary for Eucalyptus urophylla. The results suggest controlling the number of species, level on species distribution pattern, silvicultural interventions to pioneer species through thinning liberation, seeding and planting (pioneer species) could accelerate the tree regeneration of Mutis Timau PFMU in Kupang District, East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia.

In this study for landslide susceptibility modeling, three quantitative techniques, i.e., frequency ratio (FR), information value (IFV), and weight of evidence (WOE), were evaluated and compared. For this purpose, landslide inventory map was prepared using visual interpretation on SPOT-5 image and field survey was carried out for ground truthing of landslide sites and total 677 landslides were identified. The inventory map was divided into training and validation datasets, and from total, 473 landslides (70%) were for training to run the model and 30% (204 landslides) for validation purpose. Total 11 landslide conditioning factors were used in this study that are: elevation, slope, aspect, curvature, plan curvature, profile curvature, land use/land cover (LULC), topographic wetness index (TWI), stream power index (SPI), proximity to road, and proximity to stream. Three different landslide susceptibility maps were produced based on analyzing the relationship of landslides with conditioning factors using FR, IFV, and WOE in GIS environment. The results of FR model indicated that almost 40% of the total study area fall in high to very high landslide susceptibility zones, while in WOE and IFV models, it was found almost 50% of the total area. The landslide susceptibility maps were validated using prediction and success rate curve techniques. The prediction rate curve gives us a glimpse of future landslides based on present landslide susceptibility maps. The results obtained from validation showed that the area under curve (AUC) based on prediction rate curve for FR, IFV, and WOE was 80.78%, 72.88%, and 72.33%, respectively. However, the AUC obtained through success rate curve for the models in this study was 74.60%, 75.04%, and 72.54% for FR, IFV, and WOE, respectively. Moreover, the evaluation of landslide density test and seed cell index area (SCAI) indicated that calculated and classified landslide susceptibility maps are in a good agreement with the field conditions. Thus, it was observed from this study that the frequency ratio has better accuracy as compared to information value and weight of evidence, but in success rate curve, almost all the models showed the same results. Consequently, it can be concluded that the susceptibility maps produced from FR, IFV, and WOE are in good agreement because more than two-third of landslides falls in high and very high susceptibility zones of each model. From this study, it was found that slope angle, elevation, land use/ land cover, and roads play a major influencing role in the occurrence of landslide in the study area. The maps produced based on these landslide susceptibility models provide a base for engineers and land use planner to develop landslide management strategies before any development on slopes.

We examined structure, diversity and importance value index (IVI) of tree species in dry forests of Binafun, Bonmuti, Letkole and Oelbanu, Mutis Timau Conservation Forest Management Unit, East Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia. To obtain data on the composition and diversity of vegetation carried out through the analysis of tree species using sampling plots in a rectangular shape, with a size of 100 m x 100 m at 100 m intervals. Results of tree species list showed that there were 94 species belong to 45 families and 72 genera. Tree species richness ranged from 1.81 to 10.06, tree density about 166 individual/ha-545 individuals/ha and basal area ranged from 5.78 m 2 /ha to 27.79 m 2 /ha. Eucalyptus urophylla was the most abundant tree in the research sites (except Letkole) and well distributed. Species richness, density, Shannon Wiener index and basal area are important factors in determining the tree species diversity in research sites. The results in this research should be useful to the dry forest management and conservation managers and researchers.

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