NEWS

A recent Study has said Climate change to impact vegetation in 7 Karnataka districts

DETAILS

• Conducted by – The Karnataka state action plan on climate change
• 38 per cent of forest area in the state would be hit by climate change by the 2030s.
• Forests in the central and northern parts of the Western Ghats would be impacted by climate change.
• Predicted change in vegetation largely in the scrub and open forest areas of seven districts — Bijapur, Raichur, Koppal, Bellary, Chitradurga, Kodagu and Hassan — in both short term (2030) and long term (2080s).
• Forested grids in these seven districts will be impacted by climate change.
• Future climate at such locations would not be suitable for the existing vegetation or forest type and biodiversity.
• Forest type change may be accompanied by forest dieback (a condition in which a tree or a shrub begins to die from the tip of its leaves or roots due to unfavourable environment) and mortality
• Change in the very dense and moderately dense forest is projected only for the Western Ghats district of Udupi in the short as well as long term periods.
• The experts have used the dynamic global vegetation model which takes into account large scale terrestrial vegetation dynamics and land-atmosphere carbon and water exchanges to study the impact of climate change on forests.
• NOTE : According to the State of Forest Report (2019) of the Forest Survey of India, the recorded forest area in Karnataka is 38,57,548 sq km, which is 20.11 per cent of the geographical area of the state. According to forest canopy density classes, the state has 4,501 sq km under very dense forest, 21,048 sq km under moderately dense forest and 13,026 sq km under open forest.