India State of Forest Report 2013 (ISFR)

The biennial report on “India State of Forest Report (ISFR)” has been released. The report covers the ground realities pertaining to the Environment. The India State of Forest Report 2013 contains information on forest cover, tree cover, mangroves cover and growing stock inside and outside the forest areas. The report has also given special thematic information on forest cover such as hill districts, tribal districts, and north eastern region. The report has presented information of forest cover for all the States and districts for the current assessment and changes with respect to forest cover of previous assessment.            

According to the present assessment, the total forest and tree cover of the country is 78.92 million hectare which is 24.01% of the geographical area of the country. As compared to the assessment of 2011, an increase of 5871 sq km has been observed in the forest cover of the country. The majority of the increase in the forest cover has been observed in open forest category mainly outside forest areas. The maximum increase in forest cover has been observed in West Bengal (3810 sq. km.) followed by Odisha (1444 sq. km.) and Kerala (622sq km).

The report highlights that Madhya Pradesh has the largest forest cover of 77,522 sq. km. in terms of area in the country followed by Arunachal Pradesh with forest cover of 67,321 sq. km. Further, Mizoram has the highest percentage of forest cover with respect to total geographical area with 90.38% followed by Lakshadweep with 84.56%. The present assessment has also revealed that 15 states/UTs have above 33% of the geographical area under forest cover. Out of these states and UTs, eight states namely Mizoram, Lakshadweep, Andaman & Nicobar Island , Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura have more than 75% forest cover while 7 States namely Goa , Sikkim , Kerala, Uttarakhand, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Chhattisgarh and Assam have forest cover between 33% to 75%.

Further, the total growing stock of India’s forest and trees outside forests has been estimated at 5,658.046 million cum which comprises 4,173.362 million cum inside the forests and 1484.68 million cum outside the forests. In the present assessment, total carbon stock in country’s forest has been estimated at 6941 million tonnes. An increase