According to nature lover Molly, 33% of the land should be covered under forests to maintain ecological balance. 29.5% of the world's land area is covered under forests. Do you know how much % of India's land is covered under forests?
Answers
India's land is about 30%covered under forests.....
Explanation:
The India State of Forest Report 2019 released recently shows an increase of 5,188 square kilometres of forest and tree cover across the country compared to the ISFR 2017.
However, the report highlights that northeast India continues to lose forests when compared to ISFR 2017 and previous reports.
The forest report also reveals that the forest area under the category “recorded forest area” (land notified as forest by the government) in tribal districts, which are home to about 60 percent of India’s forests, is decreasing as well.
The report for the first time did an assessment of biodiversity for all states and union territories and found that Arunachal Pradesh has the maximum richness of species in terms of trees, shrubs and herbs followed by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
Nearly 25 percent (one fourth) of India’s total land area is now under forest and tree cover. However, there is still a long way to go – more than a decade, admits the government – before India reaches its target of having 33 percent of its total area under forest and tree cover. The latest ‘India State of Forest Report (ISFR 2019) released by the country’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar on December 30, 2019, revealed that the total forest and tree cover of the country is 807,276 square kilometres (which is 24.56 percent of the geographical area of the country) compared to 802,088 sq km (24.39 percent) in ISFR 2017. The report marked an increase of 5,188 sq. km. of forest and tree cover combined, at the national level, as compared to the previous assessment. When the last assessment, ISFR 2017, was released, an increase of 8,021 sq. km. was recorded compared to the data in ISFR 2015.
While the overall forest and tree cover marked an increase on a national level, the report highlighted a decrease in the forest area in the country’s northeast region. This decline in forest area in the northeast has been an ongoing trend with the region witnessing a loss of about 3,199 sq. km. of forest area sine 2009.
ISFR 2019 is a biennial report published by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) and is the 16th such report published. The calculations are largely based on satellite data. It includes information on forest cover, tree cover, mangrove cover, growing stock inside and outside the forest areas, carbon stock in India’s forests, forest types and biodiversity, forest fire monitoring and forest cover in different slopes and altitudes.
What does ‘forest cover’ include?
According to the 2019 report, the total forest cover of the country is 712,249 square kilometres (21.67 percent of India’s total geographical area) slightly up from 708,273 sq. km (21.54 percent) in 2017. The tree cover of the country is 95,027 sq. km (2.89 percent of the total area) again slightly up from 93,815 sq. km. (2.85 percent) in 2017.
As per the report, “forest cover” includes all tree patches which have canopy density more than 10 percent and area of one hectare or more in size, irrespective of their legal status and species composition. The term “Recorded Forest Area” (RFA) is used for lands which have been notified as “forest” under any government Act or rules or recorded as “forest” in the government records.
The report spotlights that forest cover within the RFA category has shown a slight decrease of 330 sq. km., whereas forest cover outside the RFA has shown an increase of 4,306 sq. km., as compared to the previous assessment of 2017.
Kanchi Kohli, who is a senior researcher with the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), said that the “logic of counting recorded forest area is misleading.”
“Most approvals for forest land diversion state that the legal status of the land will remain unchanged. This means that a dam reservoir that has submerged a forest or a steel plant will also be calculated as a recorded forest, even though no forest exists. It is important for the ISFR to look at a good forest with aspects like water security, biodiversity and livelihoods at the centre of understanding the state of forests rather than merely the canopy cover,” Kohli told Mongabay-India.