Avaliação da área foliar de cinco espécies florestais ocorrentes no Semiárido Paraibano.

Abstract

Evaluation of the leaf area of five forest species occurring in the semiarid region of Paraíba. This work aimed to develop a comparative study of different procedures for calculating the leaf area of five tree species in semi arid region of Paraíba, considering as reference values of leaf area obtained by means of digital imaging. After measuring the length along the main vein (C) and width (L), perpendicular to the main vein, were calculated the leaf area by the equation of the ellipse and the linear and potential models. Were collected 100 leaves of each species studied, taken from the middle third of the tree canopy. The results showed that all the models evaluated (elliptical, linear and potential) can be used to estimate leaf area of the five species. The use of potential model to estimate leaf area of species Craibeira with higher precision. The use of the proposed models has the great advantage of allowing the estimation of leaf area with high precision, speed and non-destructive way, using only the parameters length and width.