Forests

Centre for Environment Education (CEE), was established in August 1984 as a centre of excellence supported by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. CEE, a national institution with its headquarters in Ahmedabad, has a mandate to promote environmental awareness nationwide.

The rise in groundwater table followed by waterlogging and secondary soil salinization is a serious problem in canal-irrigated areas of arid and semi-arid regions. To combat the problem, an agroforestry model for biodrainage was tested in waterlogged fields of Haryana (northwest India), where 10 per cent area (0.44 m ha) is waterlogged resulting in reduced crop yields and abandonment of agricultural lands.

Some policy measures implied by various options have also been indicated. The main sectors examined in the report are power, transport, industry, buildings and forestry.

Increased concentrations of Green House Gases (GHGs) and the overall warming of the atmosphere has resulted in changing rainfall patterns, disruption in hydrological cycles, melting of ice caps and glaciers, rise in sea levels, and increase in frequency and intensity of extreme events such as heavy precipitation and cyclonic activities.

These have in turn had serious impact on sustainability of water resources, agriculture, forests and ecosystems, affecting the well being of billions of people on earth. Widespread melting of glaciers and snow cover will reduce melt water from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu Kush, Himalaya, Andes) where more than one billion people currently live.

The study area was located in Halol Range,Panchmahal District, Gujarat, stretching between long. 22°25′41″N and 22°29′06″N, and lat. 73°31′23″E and 73°35′35″E. Preservation plots present in the study area were selected for the current study.

The paper informs that the conventional wisdom that ‘more forest is always better’ has dominated policy making in the management of forested watersheds. In the context of the supposed hydrological regulation service provided by forest ecosystems, however, hydrologists have debated this assumption for more than two decades.

The Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) is a sectoral management institute, which constantly endeavours to evolve knowledge useful for the managers in the area of Forest, Environment and Natural Resources Management and allied sectors.

Article courtesy: Environment Support Group

On 2nd May 2011, Indian Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh finally approved the diversion of over 3,000 acres of forest land, of the 4,000 acres demanded, for a steel-power-port complex of the POSCO India project.

Earlier, on 31 January 2011, Ramesh had approved the environmental and coastal regulation zone clearances that the project had secured in 2007, even though all these clearances were obtained by fraud, and thus illegal, as proved by two independent investigative committees that he appointed last year.

European Beech
Photo: Forestryimages.org/University of West Hungary/Norbert Frank

 Although there are other local-and regional-scale forest canopy maps, the new map is the first that spans the entire globe based on one uniform method.

The work - based on data collected by NASA's ICESat, Terra, and Aqua satellites - should help scientists build an inventory of how much carbon the world’s forests store and how fast that carbon cycles through ecosystems and back into the atmosphere. Michael Lefsky of the Colorado State University described his results in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Organizer: The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Venue: The Leela Palace, New Delhi

Topics:

• Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature– case studies from India and the world
• The Value and Sustainability of Forests Ecosystems: The role of forests in combating climate change , conserving biodiversity and catalysing transformation to Green Economy
• Climate Change Adaptation in High Mountain Areas