New Delhi: In the midst of criticism from his methodology experts to map forest cover in this country, the Indian Forest Survey (FSI) said forest cover is estimated from field inventory data, which strengthens the numbers obtained from satellite-based interpretations.
He claims that criticism of his findings is based on perception and doing more to produce sensations.
Cling to his assessment, which shows how forest cover and tree increases in India in the past two years, taking a total green cover to almost a quarter of the country’s geographical region (GA) in 2021, the FSI on Wednesday described how it did a two-year survey, Based on the globally accepted standards, which are supported by complicated Truting Groundhing exercises.
Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav has last week released Indian Forestry Report (ISFR) FSI, 2021 ‘which shows that’ forest ‘and’ trees outside the recorded forest area ‘, put together, reported an increase of 2,261 square kilometers (0.3%) last year Compared to the previous assessment in 2019.
This increase took green cover as a whole to 8.09,537 square kilometers (24.6% of GA) which included 7.13,789 km square forest cover (21.7% of GA).
However, critics questioned FSI’s claims with one of them, MD Madhusudan, an ecologist, and one of the founders of the Nature Conservation Foundation, even highlighted that the recognized increase was mostly from the “redefinition ‘forest'” problematic ‘to enter tea gardens .
, coconut plantations, urban built-up areas, genuine meadows were destroyed by invasive trees, and even roll treeless desert “.
At the social media post, he said,” There is little evidence to show that Indian natural forest cover actually increases.
In fact, it is very likely to decline.
“Calling these comments” factually wrong “, FSI said it carried out forest inventory and trees outside the forest at an adequate sample point spread throughout the country.” Forest cover is also estimated from field inventory data, which strengthens the numbers of forest cover which is obtained from satellite-based interpretation.
Change the polygon is enforced by the FSI and the state government, then only the interpretation was received, “he said by the critics are their “perception”.
At the criticism of the calculation of tea garden and coconut plantations as forests, the FSI marks the definition of ‘forest cover’, which is used in ISFR, where it is defined as “all land, more than one hectare, with Tree density canopy more than 10% regardless of ownership and legal status.
Land like that may not necessarily a recorded forest area.
It also includes gardens, bamboo, palms etc.
“FSI said,” The tea garden area, which fulfills the conditions above and captured by satellite sensors is treated as forest cover, especially because the tree cover is there.
Depending on the density of the canopy, they are categorized as ‘open forests’, ‘solid forests’ and ‘very dense forests’.
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