3. Results
3.1. Land use history, vegetation properties and soil characteristics
The remote sensing analysis indicated that the P. massoniana,
A. mangium, and E. exserta forests around VFU had been present for
more than 20 years (Table 1). The duration of other land uses ranged
from 3 to 15 years (Table 1). Canopy openness ranged from 84% to 7%,
with bare land having the highest openness followed by lemon grass
and shrubland at nearly 60%, and then cassava and Acacia spp. at
about 30%, and all the other forest types had less than 20% canopy openness
(Table 1). Mean plot slopes were less than 5° for the agricultural
and bare lands as well as the terraced R. regia plots, while the shrub
and other forest land uses had mean slopes of 11 to 28° (Table 1).
Understory biomass ranged from 2 g m−2 for bare land to 375 g m−2
for shrubland (Table 1, Fig. 3). Forest and shrub lands generally had high
understory biomass compared with agricultural land, except for