Sahyadri ENews: LXVIII
CARRYING CAPACITY BASED CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF RIVERINE ECOSYSTEMS PAPER PRESENTED IN LAKE 2018, [THE 11TH BIENNIAL LAKE CONFERENCE], 22-25th November 2018

Issues: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

LANDSCAPE DYNAMICS IN WESTERN GHATS (PDF)

Sai Omkari, P1., Bharath, S2., Udayasimha.L1, Ramachandra, T. V2,*.,
1 BMS College of Engineering, Basavanagudi, Bengaluru 560019
2Energy and Wetlands Research Group, CES, IISc, Bengaluru 560012
*Correspondence author: tvr@iisc.ac.in


3.0 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS:

The dynamics in the Western Ghats from 1985-2018 are tabulated in Table 1. The statistics helps in identification on how the landscapes have undergone transformation. Analysis of Western Ghats for four decades elucidated that there’s a decrement in the forest area about 10% from 1985-2018, leading to the loss of diversified species. As a result, the climate change has become a key factor [13]. Built up has increased drastically to about one and half times the earlier, especially in the regions of Pune, Coimbatore etc., from 1985-2018. The vegetation cover decremented about 11% in Southern Western Ghats and 7% in Northern Western Ghats. On the same pace, the decrement of open spaces is more in Southern Western Ghats over Northern Western Ghats. Plantations have increased for commercial purposes (trading) etc. like coffee, tea, teak, acacia, rubber etc. by clearing the hotspot areas. The forest products such as pulpwood, hard and soft wood etc. have been used by industries for commercial purposes. The study revealed of deforestation process in the Western Ghats.

Land Use (in %) 1985 1995 2005 2018 1985-2018
Evergreen Forest 12.27 12.02 11.45 10.01 -2.26
Deciduous forest 19.75 18.37 17.97 16.58 -3.17
Scrub land 12.66 11.53 11.14 7.06 -5.60
Cropland 34.48 34.72 35.95 38.34 3.86
Plantations 16.60 18.17 18.32 18.14 1.54
Water Bodies 2.85 3.44 3.20 3.67 0.82
Open spaces 0.79 0.65 0.48 1.78 0.99
Built-up Land 0.60 1.10 1.49 4.41 3.81
Table 1: Landscape dynamics of Western Ghats (1985-2018)
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