​~By Satvik Parashar​

Restoration of degraded forests and lands worldwide is given much-needed impetus within the United Nation’s decade of restoration, global agreements, and sustainable development commitments. Therefore, it is crucial to quantify the effects of such restoration efforts on biodiversity to guide restoration efforts. In Central India, many restoration initiatives involve the removal of an invasive shrub, Lantana camara (L. camara). Higher densities of lantana camara are associated with lower densities of native vegetation, often of the species necessary for wildlife and local livelihoods. In a recent study (with many NCCI members as authors), researchers used acoustic technology to examine the bird community composition and the acoustic space used (ASU) across restored, unrestored and naturally low lantana density sites.

The study was conducted in tropical dry forests of the Bicchhiya subdistrict in Madhya Pradesh. There were 55 study sites divided into three broad categories: a) Restored sites - Sites where restoration by way of Lantana camara removal has taken place in the last five years; b) Unrestored Sites - Sites with a high density of L. camara where no restoration has taken place in the last five years; and c) Low Lantana Density (LLD) Sites - Sites which naturally have very few L. camara plants or no L. camara plants in the last five years.
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~ By Satvik Parashar

​India is a hotspot for residue burning, which is driven by the limited time the farmers have to plant the next crop and a lack of feasible alternatives to handle the crop residue. Not only is this responsible for increased carbon emissions, but the crop residue once burnt also produces radiatively active gases and particulate matter, causing additional contributions to climate change and a public health hazard forhumans.

It is essential to map the agriculture burned areas (ABAs) to analyze and mitigate emissions in the agricultural systems. While global fire emission inventories provide valuable information on the time and location of fires, they underestimate the small and fragmented fires. The smallholder systems have smaller field sizes (< 1.5 ha) and a short duration of fire (~30 minutes). The use of sentinel-2 data, which provide improved spatial (10 m) and temporal resolution could help capture these small and short-lived fires, and the study we summarize here attempts to test its efficacy in doing so. The study was conducted in the state of Madhya Pradesh, which has the majority of its land cover under crop area (Fig. 1) and is one of the most significant wheat-producing regions in Central India.

~ Pakhi Das

As part of the Coalition for Wildlife Corridors (CWC), some of my work at the NCCI is to create rich profiles of a few corridors for the tiger movement in central India. That said – I had never been to one until June this year when colleagues from WWF India and I travelled through the beautiful Sal forests in the Kanha - Achanakmar Corridor (KAC) in the Central Indian Landscape. The purpose of this field trip was to have those collating information and writing corridor profiles get a chance to co-write with the field teams and learn about ground realities from the varied stakeholders. While secondary research had been extremely useful in laying the foundation of the corridor profile, this trip would allow me to interact with experts who had been working on the ground in the corridor area for years and learn new information first-hand, making the profile robust, relevant, and up to date.
 

​The Boundaries That Wildlife Doesn’t Recognize
 
The KAC spans two forest divisions of Madhya Pradesh (East Mandla and Dindori) and three forest divisions of Chhattisgarh (Kawardha, Bilaspur and Mungeli). The corridor provides extensive habitats for various wild-animal species, including tigers, leopards, hyenas, jackals, and multiple species of deer. However, during the first nationwide lockdown due to the pandemic, herds of elephants also walked from Orrisa and Eastern Chattisgarh and found their home in the forests of this corridor. Tigers and elephants have always fascinated me, and though very slim, the possibility of sighting one or both during the trip was extremely exciting.

​~ By Satvik Parashar

~ By Satvik Parashar

Species occurrence and their distributions are not random phenomenon but governed by a number of factors. Identifying these factors would help in predicting possible species ranges. A recent study (Yadav et al., 2021) discusses how such factors and climate change affects few of the floral species in the Central Indian Landscape that are important for Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs). The six tree species considered were - Mahua (M. longifolia), Achar (B. lanzan), Aonla (E. officinalis), Behera (T. bellirica), Harad (T. chebula) and Bhutya/ Kullu (S. urens). 

​The study site lies in the Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where the species occurrence records were collected through field surveys from the districts of Hoshangabad and Mandla, between 2013 and 2017.