RICHNESS, STRUCTURE AND VEGETATION RELATIONSHIPS OF THE WOODY LAYER IN AN UPPER MONTANE FOREST IN CAPARAÓ NATIONAL PARK, MINAS GERAIS STATE, BRAZIL

The Upper Montane Forests are located in environments with in high structural, soil and climatic variations and considered as indicative of susceptibility to potential weather changes. However, the floristic and biogeographical knowledge of this vegetation type are still scarce. Therefore, as the beginning of understanding the functioning of forest autoecology in this environment, we conducted a floristic and structural survey of woody component of a Dense Rain Forest in the Upper Montane from Caparao National Park, establishing the floristic links between this community and others that have occurrence of similar phytophysionomies. For sampling of vegetation, we allocated 10 transects with 50x2m each, in three different portions in the Park, in the locality called Macieira. All individuals of woody layer were measured (DBH ? 2,5cm). We founded 356 individuals of 40 species. The most important in terms of dominance among the population studied were Myrsine coriacea and Symplocos pubescens with 14.68 and 14.02%, respectively. The Shannon Diversity (H') was 2.79 nat.ind-1 and Pielou Evenness (J) 0.76. Given our results, this Upper Montane Forest has floristic constitution and structural organization inconsistent with its other Upper Montane Rain Forest in the country. The geographical distance and isolation by grassland environment makes this an "island" determined by floristic differentiation and structural organization.