Pristine Mangrove Community in Wondama Gulf, West Papua, Indonesia

Papua shoreline has been considered as the most extensive mangrove area in Indonesia and great size of their trees. It implies that the forest could be a perfect habitat for biota food web due to its high productivity. Wondama mangrove, part of Cendrawasih National Park – West Papua, had a promising mangrove forest to be discovered. Nevertheless, the forest was rarely studied due to limited access and costly, so that the scientific data was difficult to be found scientifically. A preliminary study was carried out to identify the condition of mangrove in this area. The objectives of this study was to analyze mangrove community health and structure. Canopy coverage and vegetation structure data were collected from 107 circular plots included three plot areas (radian: 5 m, 2.5 m and 1 m) which were distributed to determine three plant classes i.e. tree, sapling and seedling, respectively. Present study showed that Wondama mangrove is a pristine mangrove community. It had large size of tree trunk diameter by 19.77± 6.55 cm averagely. Its diameter size affected on low tree density which was less than 1000 tree/ha. Those two parameters were strongly negative-correlated each other. On the other hand, community canopy was highly covered mangrove area by 82.46±6.43%. Rhizophora has mostly dominated in the forest. Mangrove regeneration in Wondama was excellent referring to density and species composition of sapling-seedling levels. Mar. Res. Indonesia, Vol. 42, No. 2. Hal. 67-76