ENVIS Technical Report: 75,  February 2014

TREES OF BENGALURU

T.V. Ramachandra*    Bharath H. Aithal  Vinay S. Rao G.R.. Gouri Kulkarni Tara N.M. Nupur Nagar
Energy & Wetlands Research Group, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc
Karnataka State Pollution Control Board, Bangalore Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012
*Corresponding author: cestvr@ces.iisc.ernet.in, energy@ces.iisc.ernet.in
Citation: Ramachandra T.V., Bharath H. Aithal, Vinay S., Rao G.R., Gouri Kulkarni, Tara N M and Nupur Nagar, 2014. Trees of Bengaluru, ENVIS Technical Report 75, ENVIS, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, Bangalore 560012, Pp75
CONCLUSION

Land use analysis based on the fusion of resourcesat 2 MSS data with cartosat 2  show that the spatial extent of  tree vegetation in Bangalore is  100.02 sq.km (14.08%).  Spatial extent of vegetation is minimum (less than 1 hectare) in wards such as Chickpete, Shivajinagara, Kempapura agrahara, Padarayanapura, while wards such as  Varthur, Bellandur, Agaram have higher vegetation cover (> 300 hectares). The wards such as Hudi, Aramane nagara and Vasantha pura have higher vegetation density (spatial extent of area under vegetation to the geographical are of a ward) of more than 0.4, while Chickpete, Laggere, Hegganahalli, Hongasandra, Padarayanapura have lower density with less than 0.015. Bangalore has an average vegetation density of 0.14. Mapping of trees based on canopy delineation coupled with field data show that wards such as Vathuru, Bellanduru, Agaram, Aramane nagara have the trees  greater than 40000 trees, while  Chickpete, Padarayanapura, Shivaji nagara, Kempapura Agrahara, Kushal nagara wards have trees less than 100 trees. Based on these, total number of trees in Bangalore is about 14,78,412 trees. Computation of trees per person show that Shivaji nagara, Dayananda nagara, Chickpete, Padarayanapura, Kempapura Agrahara wards  have very less number of trees per person (< 0.002). This highlights that these wards have less than 1 tree for every 500 people. Compared to this, wards such as Bellanduru, Jakkuru, Varthuru, Agaram, Aramane nagara have  trees more than one per person indicating the presence of one tree for every person. Intra city analysis show that major cities such as Gandhinagar, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Brhihan Mumbai are with spatial extent greater than 400 sq.km.  Gandhinagar has 416 trees for every 100 people followed by Bangalore with 17 trees, Brihan Mumbai with 15 trees and Ahmedabad with 11 trees.