India suffered a considerable internet loss in forest cowl between 2015 and 2019, revealed a brand new study performed by researchers from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and SASTRA Deemed University.
The study stated that for each 1 sq. kilometre of forest gained through the four-year interval, the nation lost practically 18 sq. kilometres—an alarming ratio that underscores a major fragmentation disaster in India’s forest ecosystems.
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“While the Forest Survey of India (FSI) and other independent studies regularly report on India’s gross forest cover, there has so far been no systematic framework to understand structural connectivity and monitor forest fragmentation across the country,” the study stated.
Led by Professor RAAJ Ramsankaran of IIT Bombay, and Dr. Vasu Sathyakumar and Sridharan Gowtham of SASTRA Deemed University, the study utilized Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA) to forest cowl knowledge derived from the Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS) Land Cover Map. It gives one of many first country-scale assessments of forest fragmentation in India utilizing publicly accessible satellite tv for pc knowledge and open-source instruments.
A central function of the study is its classification of forests into seven structural varieties, every with distinct ecological capabilities. Cores are giant, intact habitats essential for biodiversity and long-term stability. Bridges and loops improve connectivity by linking cores or elements of the identical core. Branches prolong from cores, whereas edges mark their boundaries. Perforations are clearings inside cores, and islets are small, remoted patches. The study finds that cores are essentially the most resilient to degradation, whereas islets are extremely weak and vulnerable to fast fragmentation. Afforestation dominated by islets might have minimal ecological worth.
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Mr. Ramsankaran stated, “Our resilience-based ranking offers a practical tool for policymakers. Rather than treating all forest areas the same, it helps identify which morphologies are most vulnerable (like islets) and which offer long-term ecological value (like cores).”
He added that afforestation programmes such because the National Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) or the National Mission for a Green India can profit by specializing in strengthening present cores and constructing bridges between them, which might doubtlessly yield better-connected, more resilient, and ecologically sustainable forests.
The framework additionally has the potential to tell infrastructure planning by serving to determine areas the place connectivity is most in danger, thus supporting more scientifically knowledgeable choices and lowering ecological disruption.
Mr. Ramsankaran defined, “The framework relies on an image processing technique called MSPA to detect and classify the structure of forest landscapes.”
As a part of the study, the researchers utilized the evaluation to digital forest cowl maps of India for the years 2015 to 2019, obtained from the Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS) Land Cover Map. Unlike most earlier research on forest cowl, which report solely internet beneficial properties or losses, this study mapped forest loss and acquire individually.
Indian forest cowl map as of 2015.
“The results show that from 2015 to 2019, all states in India experienced a net loss in forest cover. Overall, India lost 18 square kilometres of forest for every 1 square kilometre gained. Nearly half of the 56.3 sq. km. of gross forest gain occurred in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Rajasthan, while Tamil Nadu and West Bengal together accounted for almost half of the 1,032.89 sq. km. of gross forest loss,” the study stated.
More considerably, over half of the newly added forest covers are islets, which don’t considerably enhance structural connectivity. This means that even the place forest cowl is growing on paper, the ecological worth and resilience of these forests could also be restricted.
Explaining the implications of the study, Mr. Sathyakumar stated, “Our results clearly show that most of the newly added forests during 2015–2019 were islets, highly fragmented and ecologically vulnerable patches. There is a need to move beyond the current quantity-based afforestation approach and explicitly incorporate structural connectivity into forest planning.”
While the findings seem to vary to these of FSI, which regularly point out an total improve in forest cowl, the outcomes from FSI and this study usually are not immediately comparable. FSI makes use of totally different standards from the CGLS to determine forests and doesn’t distinguish between fragmented and steady forests. FSI defines forested areas as these with a minimal of 10% tree cover cowl and depends on satellite tv for pc imagery with a 23.5 m decision. In distinction, the CGLS dataset used on this study applies a 15% cover threshold and a 100 m decision. The researchers additionally needed to depend on the internationally accepted CGLS dataset, as FSI knowledge usually are not publicly accessible for comparable analyses.
Mr. Sathyakumar stated, “Since FSI reports do not include forest connectivity assessments, direct comparisons aren’t possible. However, our data source has a globally validated accuracy of over 85%, making our connectivity results reliable. If FSI’s data were made available in GIS-compatible format, our methodology could be readily applied to it.”
One limitation of the present study is that at 100 m decision, slender linear options corresponding to roads and railways is probably not totally detected, and forest fragments smaller than 100 m could also be missed. However, the energy of the framework lies in its scalability, cost-effectiveness, and use of open-source instruments. It may be anticipated to provide constant outcomes with comparable datasets at finer resolutions and may be utilized at totally different spatial and temporal scales.
Mr. Ramsankaran stated, “Our framework is fully extensible to finer scales, such as districts or protected areas, and can be used to analyse the impacts of linear infrastructure like roads and rail lines on forest connectivity in a more focused manner. This makes it a valuable tool for long-term forest monitoring, planning and informed infrastructure development in and around forested areas, both in India and in similar contexts globally.”
The researchers plan to additional develop their framework to study native drivers of forest fragmentation and assess the effectiveness of present conservation and afforestation efforts.
Published – August 07, 2025 02:30 pm IST
