DISTRIBUTION AND PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF BAMBOOS IN THE COMMUNITY FOREST OF AIK BUAL VILLAGE

Abstract

One area producing bamboos in West Nusa Tenggara Province is a community forest of Aik Bual village. The bamboos have not been investigated for their species and physical characteristics. Spatial distribution of the bamboos is important to determine the potency of the bamboos and physical characteristics are required for craft manufacturing processing industries and simple construction materials. The objectives of this research were to identify the distribution and physical characteristics of the bamboos in the community forest of Aik Bual village. The method of this study was experiment method. The data were collected within two stages: the first stage was collecting data of bamboo species, number of the bamboo clump, and number of bamboos. The second stage was testing of the bamboo’s physical characteristics. the results were described and compared with bamboo’s quality standards. The distribution of bamboo in the area was predominantly along riverbanks and was less in people’s gardens. Four species of bamboo were identified in the area: Tali bamboo (Gigantochloa apus), petung bamboo (Dendrocalamus asper Backer), ampel bamboo (Bambusa vulgaris Scharder ex Wendland) and galah bamboo (Gigantochloa atter (Hassk) Kurz ex Munro). The highest number of clump was tali bamboo, 1,298 clumps consisting of 41,357 bamboos, while the least was ampel bamboo, 70 clumps consisting of 1,667 bamboos. The total number of all bamboos was 2,444 clumps with 49,873 bamboos in them. Physical characteristics of these four bamboos in Aik Bual Village were: fresh moisture content 67.33% - 176.81%, air-dried moisture content was 11.78% - 18.67%, fresh specific weight was 0.44 – 0.69, air-dried specific weight was 0.56 – 0.78, and oven specific weight was 0.53 – 0.76