Environment › Protected areas and habitats
Wetlands and Ramsar sites
Wetlands and lakes as places and as a category of law: Ramsar sites and the wise use a listing commits India to, the rules that protect a wetland at home, and the encroachment and floodplains that decide its fate. Prelims has matched wetlands to their States and asked what the Montreux Record implies.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2022: matching named wetlands with their States
- Prelims 2022: the wetland function that makes wetlands the kidneys of the Earth
- Prelims 2014: what the Montreux Record implies
Showing 1 of 3 subjects, those that changed from 16 to 31 August 2026.Show all
Urban lakes
Copy link to Urban lakesPrelims and Mains
A city lake takes the stormwater a drain cannot, cools the air above it and recharges the water under it, so losing one costs a city more than a view.
- Urban lakes were argued to be climate infrastructure, sponge systems against heat islands and flooding, rather than sites for beautification.
- Unplanned growth, land prices, sewage and solid waste drive the loss, and eutrophication follows.
- The Comptroller and Auditor General has flagged over 500 lakes lost in Jammu and Kashmir since 1967.
- Hyderabad has lost roughly 61 per cent of its lake area since 1979.
What changed
Also filed elsewhere
- The 4.2 ka event · on Climate science: records, attribution and tipping points
The 4.2 ka event was an abrupt drought and cooling about 4,200 years ago recorded across continents, and marks the start of the Meghalayan Age, the youngest stage of the Holocene.