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Forest Cover in Bangaru Telangana
Highlights
Telangana State of Forest health of the notified Forests in the new state gives precise locations of the forest cover changes assessed using LISS III data of 2011 & 2012 seasons up to Compartment level.
Telangana State of Forest health of the notified Forests in the new state gives precise locations of the forest cover changes assessed using LISS III data of 2011 & 2012 seasons up to Compartment level.
It shows that forest cover has depleted to some extent inside the notified forests during the period. The changes have been communicated to field officers and almost all plots were visited, which gives high authenticity to the results. The following are the key results of this assessment:
Key Results:
1. The state has 502.35 Sq.Km of Very Dense forest, 9052.41 Sq.Km Moderately Dense Forest & 9209.91 Sq.Km Open forest in 2012 and corresponding figures in 2011 are 502.35 Sq. Km of VDF, 9063.02 Sq.Km MDF, 9235.86 Sq.Km Open forest.
2. There is a reduction of 10.61 Sq.Km in MDF and 25.94 Sq.Km in open forest. There is net loss of 36.55 Sq.Km during this period.
3. There is degeneration of forests from higher canopy density class to lower canopy density class in an extent of 36.55 Sq.Km.
4. 7.71 Sq.Km MDF, 25.66 Sq.Km OF and 16.51 Sq.Km scrub has been converted into Non-forests. Also 5.80 Sq. Km into scrub forest. Of this, 26.02 Sq.Km of forest is lost due to fresh encroachments, 24.78 Sq.Km due to clearance of jungle growth for raising of plantations, 4.35 Sq. Km harvesting of matured.
As negative change in forest cover due to clearance of jungle growth for raising of plantations and harvesting of plantations is only a management intervention, the same is not considered as permanent loss of forest cover. Hence, the net loss of forest cover by encroachment during this period is 26.02 Sq.Km.
6. VSS areas account for 8.27 Sq. Km of encroachments.
7. Protected Areas account for 3.37 Sq. Km of encroachments.
8. Most negative change due to encroachments of 14.45 Sq.Km was found in Khammam Circle followed by Warangal Circle with 6.15 Sq.Km and FDPT Amarabad Circle showed the least negative change due to encroachments of 0.11 Sq.Km.
9. Encroachments were noticed in 23 Divisions of the state. The Divisions contributing most negative changes due to encroachments are: Warangal(South) (4.93 Sq.Km), Kothagudem (4.25 Sq.Km),
Paloncha (3.64 Sq.Km), Khammam (3.14 Sq.Km), Paloncha WLM (2.69 Sq.Km), Nizamabad (2.41 Sq.Km), KamaReddy (0.82 Sq. Km).
10. No changes were found in Medak WLM and Mahabubnagar Divisions.
11. Though there are lot of plantations for improving vegetation cover and growing stock, they are not discernible as to their growth in most cases. This is resulting in loss for forest cover.
The technical committee formed by G.O Ms.No.57, EFS&T (For III) Department, dated 07-05-2011 on Geomatic activities has noted this with concern in its meeting held on 10-06-2013 advised to take up result oriented afforestation.
Telangana is the twelth largest state in India, geographical area wise; with an area of 112101 Km2. It is bounded by Maharastra, Chhattisgarh and Orissa in the north, Andhra Pradesh in the east and south and Karnataka & Maharastra in the west. The state was formed on 2nd June, 2014 by Government of India as 29th State. It has 26903.70 Km2 of notified forest land, which is 24.00% of the Geographical area.
The population of the state is 33.61million (2011 census) which is 2.77 % of country’s population.Nearly 61.33% of the population of the state is rural, which primarily depends on agriculture for livelihoods.Scheduled castes constitute about 15.43% and Scheduled tribes about 9.33% of the population.Hyderabad, Karim Nagar, Nizamabad, Khammam and Warangal are the principal towns in the state with over a million population. Traditionally, the state is divided into two regions called South Telangana Region, consisting of the 4 districts and North Telengana region consisting of 5 districts.
Prior to 1996, there was no mechanism to monitor the Forest cover changes in composite state of Andhra Pradesh. It used to rely on the data given by the Forest Survey of India, Dehradun throughits biennial ‘State of Forest Reports’. However, these reports, which were brought out since 1987, did not provide the statistical information on the forest cover inside the notified forest under the control of forest Department and outside, separately.
It presented a nation wide & state wise picture of the green cover, inclusive of the areas outside the notified forests. These provide data only upto the district level and no statistics of forest/tree cover were available below the district units. Therefore a necessity was felt for generating this data for the notified forest areas, which are under the control of Forest Department, upto the smallest unit of administration, i.e, Beat level and the management i.e, compartment level.
This could have been possible only with the setting up of Geomatics unit at the state level. This required procurement of satellite imagery, Hardware, Software, and technical trained manpower for which huge investment was essential. The opportunity came with the launch of WorldBank funded Andhra Pradesh Forestry Project in 1994.
A consultancy for setting up and operationlization of a Geomatics center at Hyderabad was provided in the project and given to FAO, Rome. Dr K.D. Singh was the principal consultant for this consultancy. A small Geomatics Center was set up in a small room in the old Aranya Bhavan building with a PC (386 Processor) with 80MB harddisk and 1MB RAM.
The first software installed was the IDRISI package gifted by the FAO. In due course of time, other required hardware and software were added to the Geomatics Centre.
Initially, few Officers of the Department were sent for training in the Remote Sensing, GPS, Inventory and GIS at ITC, Netherlands, Finnish Forest Research Institute, Finland, IIRS, Dehradun and NRSC, Hyderabad. On successful completion of the training, these Officers started working in the Geomatics centre and started sensitizing the other Officers in the use of Remote Sensing, GIS and GPS. Gradually, the trainings were extended to the officers & staff of Department and also to the other members like VSSs.
The first thing required for the monitoring of forest cover changes upto Beat level was to create geo-spatial database both from Administrative as well as Management point of view. It was decided to create these Geo-spatial database (Vector layers) on 1:250 K Scale. This work was outsourced by tender process in 1994 to “Remote Sensing Instruments” Hyderabad, for digitization of forest blocks, administrative boundaries, rivers, water bodies, villages, roads and forest cover density layers with attribute data.
These layers were generated by the end of 1995. Subsequently ERDAS software and PC Arc Info version 3.4.2 were procured. Subsequently about 250 basic and derived themes were generated on 1:50 K Scale. This data is being used in the monitoring of forest cover changes and several other applications in the department. The IT wing has been procuring all the latest hardware, software, data as and when required.
Now it is equipped with latest hardware like Blade Servers, High-end workstations, Firewall, PDAs, Multi frequency DGPS receivers and the sophisticated software like ArcGIS Server, Leica Photogrammetric Suite, ERDAS 2012, ArcGIS 2012, Skyline Globe and the Center has become State of the Art facility in IT & Geomatics. It has also developed webenabled modular based GIS-MIS integrated Telangana State Forest Management Information’s System (TGFMIS).
G.Rajendra Kumar
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