Abstract: Forests in India account for the second largest land-use after agricultural land. Our appreciation of the role of forests has continued to change from a resource and livelihood perspective to environment protection to ecosystem services to climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration. The estimates of forest area, forest dynamics, deforestation and afforestation along with forest types, growing stock and carbon pool are important in current environmental and climate change debate. Historically, the main sources of data have shifted from government records and forest surveys to the use of earth observation data. Globally, and more so in India, widely different estimates are reported in literature leading to divergent conclusions. Our inability to adequately characterize forest use and management, its interaction with episodic events (fire, drought, disease, etc.) and resource extraction (timber, fuelwood, minor forest products, fodder, etc.) adds to overall uncertainty. Using the results from Forest Survey of India, FAO, submissions to UNFCCC and emerging EO technologies of sensors and data analysis, this talk would highlight the causes of different forest area and deforestation estimates reported in literature.
About the speaker: Prof Vinay Kumar Dadhwal completed his PhD in Plant Physiology (1983) from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He joined ISRO in June 1983 at Space Applications Centre and was with ISRO/DOS till his superannuation in July 2021. He has headed three ISRO/DOS units, namely Indian Institute of Remote Sensing(IIRS), Dehradun (2004-2010), National Remote Sensing Centre(NRSC), Hyderabad (2011-2016) and Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology(IIST), Thiruvananthapuram (2016-2021) and joined NIAS as Chair Professor in August 2021. He has extensive research experience in the use of earth observation data for agriculture, land transformation, land surface processes, disaster management information support, hydrology and terrestrial carbon cycle. At NIAS he continues his research on quantification and modeling of terrestrial carbon cycle of India.