Plants of Sungai Paduan peat swamp forest, Kalimantan Barat

12 Apr 2022. - In the early 2022, a survey on the biodiversity was done in Sungai Paduan Village, Kayong Utara Regency, Kalimantan Barat. It is a protected peat swamp forest west of Gunung Palung National Park. Andro Ronaldo, a botanist from DFI was involved in plant exploration.

The forest itself is probably has been burnt, and illegal timber extractions also happened in the past. Andre found that Lithocarpus bancanus, a species from the oak family, is the most dominant tree species. Meanwhile, some rare and threatened species were also recorded, i.e. the Gonystylus bancanus, popular there as 'rain,' and a tree from the dipterocarps family, Shorea platycarpa.

Andre is preparing a field guide to the plants collected from this area. At present, around 130 species have been recorded and documented. He still needs to collect more fieldwork to collect data in the form of photographs and herbarium specimens. The field guide will be helpful in many further studies.