Speed Post News Network
New Delhi : Union Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Prakash Javadekar on December 30, 2019, released the biennial “India State of Forest Report (ISFR)” in New Delhi.
The report is published by the Forest Survey of India (FSI), which has been mandated to assess the forest and tree resources of the country including wall-to-wall forest cover mapping in a biennial cycle. Starting 1987, 16 assessment have been completed so far. ISFR 2019 is the 16th report in the series.
Announcing the results, Javadekar said that India is among few countries in the world where forest cover is consistently increasing. He said that in the present assessment, the total forest and tree cover of the country is 80.73 million hectare, which is 24.56 percent of the geographical area of the country, according to a PIB release.
Javadekar said that as compared to the assessment of 2017, there is an increase of 5,188 sq. km in the total forest and tree cover of the country. “Out of this, the increase in the forest cover has been observed as 3,976 sq km and the tree cover is 1,212 sq. km; Range increase in forest cover has been observed in open forest followed by very dense forest and moderately dense forest and the top three states showing increase in forest cover are Karnataka (1,025 sq. km) followed by Andhra Pradesh (990 sq km) and Kerala (823 sq km)” said the Minister.
Area-wise, Madhya Pradesh has the largest forest cover in the country followed by Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Maharashtra. In terms of forest cover as percentage of total geographical area, the top five States are Mizoram (85.41%), Arunachal Pradesh (79.63%), Meghalaya (76.33%), Manipur (75.46%), and Nagaland (75.31%).
The extent of bamboo bearing area of the country has been estimated 16.00 million hectare. There is an increase of 0.32 million hectare in bamboo bearing area as compared to the last assessment of ISFR 2017. The total estimated green weight of bamboo culms is 278 million tonnes, an increase of 88 million tonnes as compared to ISFR 2017.
Under the current assessment, the total carbon stock in country’s forest is estimated 7,124.6 million tonnes and there is an increase of 42.6 million tonnes in the carbon stock of country as compared to the last assessment of 2017. The annual increase in the carbon stock is 21.3 million tonnes, which is 78.2 million tonnes CO2 eq.
Howdy! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if that would be okay.
I’m definitely enjoying your blog and look forward to new updates.
I was curious if you ever thought of changing the layout of your website?
Its very well written; I love what youve got to say.
But maybe you could a little more in the way of
content so people could connect with it better.
Youve got an awful lot of text for only having one or two
images. Maybe you could space it out better?