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Plant Diversity and Ethnobotanical Study of Medicinal Plants in Ankober District, North Shewa Zone of Amhara Region, Ethiopia
No full textThis research aimed at providing documentation and analysis of plant diversity in Dense Forest
along with the ethnobotanical knowledge associated with the medicinal plants used by the people
in Ankober District, Ethiopia. Vegetation data were collected from 51, 30 m x 30 m quadrats laid
for trees at every 50 m altitudinal drop along transects and 5 m x 5 m and 2 m x 2 m subplots for
shrubs and herbs, respectively. Woody species with a diameter at breast height (DBH) > 2 cm
were counted and cover abundance values estimated. A hierarchical cluster analysis, with PCORD for Windows version 5.0 software, was used to identify plant communities and synoptic
values for identification of the dominant species for naming plant communities. Frequency,
density, DBH, basal area and importance value indices (IVI) of woody species were also
computed. Shannon-Wiener diversity index was used to assess species richness and evenness.
Sorensen's similarity coefficient was used to measure similarities among communities in Dense
Forest, and between Dense and other montane forests. Ethnobotanical data were collected by
interviewing 352 informants (235 males and 117 females). Quantitative approaches were used to
determine informant consensus factor (ICF), fidelity level (FL), use value (UV), use diversity (UD)
and use equitability (UE) values. Ethnomedicinal knowledge held by different informant
categories was compared using One-way ANOVA and t-tests. A total of 23 ethanol extracts of
various parts of 19 most-preferred medicinal plants were also studied for potential antimicrobial
activity against 12 microbial strains using broth microdilution method. The Dense Forest yielded
158 vascular plant species belonging to 143 genera and 75 families. The vegetation of the Forest
was classified into five, namely Erica arborea, Maesa lanceolata-Discopodium penninervium,
Podocarpus falcatus-Allophylus abyssinicus, Olea europaea-Galiniera saxifraga and Maytenus
arbutifolia-Bersama abyssinica community types, based on the PC-ORD hierarchical cluster
analysis. The percentage distribution of individual tree species across different DBH classes
indicated relatively high proportion (27.26%) of individuals in DBH class 10-20 cm. The highest
IVI values were recorded for Olea europaea subsp. cuspidata (57.63) and the next for Podocarpus
falcatus (45.61). The overall Shannon-Wiener diversity and evenness values of Dense Forest were
4.07 and 0.80, respectively. Five representative woody plant population structures were identified.
Results of the ethnobotanical study revealed a total of 151 medicinal plant species belonging to
141 genera and 75 families in the whole of Ankober District. The Asteraceae with 13 (9%) species
and the Fabaceae with 11 (7.3%) species were families represented by more species in the
District. Plants in which roots are used as medicine were more frequent than other parts in the
District’s ethnomedicinal lore. Significant difference (P < 0.05) was observed in the mean number
of medicinal plants reported by respondents in different age classes, literacy levels and
experiences. About 123 (81%) species of medicinal plants were cited for one or more nonmedicinal uses. The highest ICF value (0.71) was recorded for livestock gastro-intestinal disease
category. The highest fidelity level values were recorded for Zehneria scabra (95%) and Hagenia
abyssinica (93.75%). About 17 (74%) of the ethanol extracts showed antimicrobial activity
against one or more of the microbial strains tested. Extracts from Embelia schimperi showed the
strongest antibacterial activity with minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) value of 64 µg/ml
against Bacillus cereus, Listeria monocytogenes and Streptococcus pyogenes. The Dense Forest
and the medicinal plants in Ankober District are under pressure due mainly to ever-increasing
anthropogenic influences. Thus, the declining vegetation and wild medicinal plants of the area are
in need of application of complementary in-situ and ex-situ conservation. Joint management of the
Dense Forest with the local people and increased participation of the local people in overall
medicinal plant conservation are actions that would save and rehabilitate the fast-declining plant
resources with the rich ethnomedicinal wealth in the District
An ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants in Mana Angetu District, southeastern Ethiopia
No full textThis study documents indigenous medicinal plant utilization, management and the threats affecting them. The study was carried out in Mana Angetu district between January 2003 and December 2004. Ethnobotanical data were collected using semi structured interviews, field observations, preference and direct matrix ranking with traditional medicine practitioners. The ethnomedicinal use of 230 plant species was documented in the study area. Most of the plants (78.7%) were reportedly used to treat human diseases. The most frequently used plant part were roots (33.9%), followed by leaves (25.6%). Most of the medicinal species (90.4%) were collected from the wild. Direct matrix analysis showed that Olea europaea L. Subsp. cuspidata (Wall. ex G. Don) was the most important species followed by Acacia tortilis (Forssk.) Hayne (120) indicating high utility value of these species for the local community. The principal threatening factors reported were deforestation (90%), agricultural expansion (85%) and fire (53%). Documenting the eroding plants and associated indigenous knowledge can be used as a basis for developing management plans for conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants in the area
LAND USE AND LAND COVER CHANGE AS SUB-INDICATOR FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL-15: IMPLICATION FOR LAND RESTORATION IN ETHIOPIA
No full textLand degradation because of land use and land cover change is severe phenomena in Ethiopia which is mainly caused by lack of appropriate land use policy and feasible land use plan. The understanding of land use and land cover change is vital to determine the rate of land improvement and /or degradation for achievements made for the implementation of sustainable development goal -15 which refer to making land suitable for life. Forest landscape restoration interventions have been underway for the last two decades through community and government initiatives which has supported implementation of sustainable development goal-15. A study was conducted using secondary information from trend Earth Global Observation of national data to analyse the land use and land cover change from 2000-2015. The result showed that the total land mass of Ethiopia is 1,151,167.7km2 and through implementation of forest land scape restoration interventions 18,051.8 km2 area accounting 1.61% has been improved or restored, while 1,096,220.4 km2 area accounting 97.90% of remained stable and 5,443.4 km2 area accounting 0.49% of was degraded. Result also showed tree covered and built up area have increased at the expense of cropland, wet lands, grass land, other land which have decreased proportionally. Result of our study draws policy implication of designing and implementing appropriate land use planning to resolve the fast trend of increasing urbanization as driver land use and land cover change which was observed within fifteen years. The increase in urbanization induces land degradation ultimately reduce on the national effort of forest landscape restoration interventions in reversing land degradation for combating desertification
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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