The India State of Forest Report: what the numbers mean

Prelims and MainsCurrent affairs on this: Forests, grasslands and mountain ecosystems

The Forest Survey of India at Dehradun publishes the India State of Forest Report every two years, and most forest questions turn on its definitions. Forest cover is any land of one hectare or more with canopy density above 10 per cent, whatever its use or ownership, so a plantation counts and a bare recorded forest does not. It is split into very dense (canopy above 70 per cent), moderately dense (40 to 70) and open forest (10 to 40); below 10 per cent is scrub. Tree cover is trees in patches under one hectare, outside forest cover. Recorded forest area is the legal category, land notified as forest. The National Forest Policy of 1988 set a goal of one third of the country under forest or tree cover; the reports put the two at about a quarter, with gains mostly in open forest and plantations.

What counts as forest cover

The report measures canopy, not forest; the three classes on the right are what forest cover adds up.Source: Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report definitions

Measured from satellite imagery at 1:50,000 scale, with ground checks; the method cannot tell a natural forest from a plantation, which is the standard criticism of the numbers.
Largest forest cover by area: Madhya Pradesh, then Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Maharashtra; by share of area, the Northeast States and the islands lead, and Mizoram is the highest among States.
The report also carries mangrove cover, bamboo, growing stock, carbon stock (which feeds the Nationally Determined Contribution sink target), fire prone areas and, since 2019, trees outside forests.
Losses cluster in the Northeast, where shifting cultivation and diversion show up as a fall in dense forest; gains cluster in plantations and agroforestry in the plains.
Forest cover is not protection: a national park with grassland is recorded forest with low cover, and a rubber estate is forest cover with no wildlife value, so the number answers a canopy question, not an ecological one.

Mains: India's forest numbers rise because plantations count and natural forest loss hides inside "open forest", so the report is a canopy inventory that says little about the forests that hold biodiversity.

Further reading: India State of Forest Report (Forest Survey of India)