Soil Seed Bank and above-ground vegetation at Chitgar Forest Park of Tehran

After over five decades of establishing plantations in Chitgar Forest Park in Tehran, no study has yet been carried out on the soil seed bank in this region. This study aimed to investigate the composition of above-ground vegetation and soil seed bank. Therefore, 30 releves were established with 450m2 area each. For sampling soil seed bank within each releve, two samples were randomly collected by hammering a 400 cm2 into the soil to a depth of 5-10. Following this, the soil seed bank was estimated using the seedling emergence method. All in all there were 22 families and 62 species in above-ground vegetation and 29 species from 13 families were identified in the seed bank. All species in the soil seed bank were present in the above-ground vegetation. The results also showed that the above-ground vegetation included a higher species richness than the soil seed bank. High similarity of the soil seed bank and above-ground vegetation showed that the soil seed bank has the potential for reclamation of above-ground vegetation, but the lack of tree species in the soil seed bank hampers the practicability of the reforestation with an emphasis on seed germination of the soil seed bank. Furthermore, because of the structure and the type of the previous above-ground vegetation across the test site, the natural tendency of the area is towards the non-forest species.