Mumbai: Maharashtra has the fifth largest forest cover in the country, which increased by 20 square kilometers.
Among the cities, Mumbai has 111 sq km under forest cover, the second highest after Delhi.
Mumbai has seen a 9% increase in forest cover in the last decade: from 102 square km, has climbed up to 111 square kilometers.
State forest, spread over 50 798 square kilometers, has a total carbon number of 452 million tons, the fourth highest in the country.
This translates to 89 tons per hectare, according to the Forest Survey of India report, 2021.
In 2030, a total of 34 170 SQ KM of forest cover in Maharashtra will be a climate hotspot for climate change with increasing severity from high to critical.
And in 2050 the entire forest cover is projected to be a hotspot.
Maharashtra has shown a 4% increase in mangrove cover, second only to Odisha, where the increase is 8%.
Increased mangrove closing in Maharashtra mainly due to natural regeneration, the report states.
Significantly, mangrove cover in the suburbs of Mumbai down to 1 square km, also in Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg and Thane, but has risen 6 square kilometers in Raigad.
The state has 324 sq km of mangrove cover (but no dense mangrove cover), about 90 sq km of forest cover is quite dense and 234 sq km of mangrove forest opens.
The state has a cover 26 866 square kilometers of trees outside the forest area were booked, the highest in the country, followed by Odisha (24 474 sq km) and Karnataka (23 676 sq km).
In the trees outside forest (TOF) spreads measured in 2021 is 12 108 square km.
It has increased by 1,302 square kilometers compared with in 2019.
Maharashtra has the maximum growth stocks followed by Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh.
The maximum amount is Neem and mango in rural areas and coconut and mango in urban areas.
This is the most common species of trees outside the forest vegetation.
Bamboo cover in the state has been reduced to 1,882 square kilometers, the second highest reduction after Madhya Pradesh.
Clumps of bamboo hacked found in 1,475 square kilometers.
Total area under bamboo in the state was 1.35 million hectares.
Total forest cover in tiger habitat had declined.
But the good news is Kanha to Corridor Navegaon-Nagzira-Tadoba-Indravati Tiger, passing through Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Maharashtra, has a forest cover the largest (2,012 sq km), followed by Pench-Satpura-Melghat in MP and Maharashtra (1,196 sq km ).
Kanha Tiger Corridor to Navegaoon-Nagzira-Tadoba-Indravati have a very dense forest, spread over 858 square kilometers, which is 43% of the total forest cover.
It also has the highest area under fairly dense forest, the 883 square km, or 44% of the total forest cover.
On the other hand, Pench-Satpura-Melghat has the highest area under open forests, spread over 392 square kilometers, which is 33% of its forest cover.
This study shows that parts of Western Maharashtra fillings showed the fire zone were very or extremely vulnerable.
In Maharashtra, a large fire, continuously and repeatedly reported from Gadchiroli district between November 2020 and June 2021.
The number of fire incidents reported is 10 577.