Deforestation weakening India’s monsoon: Study

MUMBAI: Conversion of forests into agricultural land is weakening India’s monsoon, especially in August and September, reveals a study published in Scientific Reports

Published on: Aug 25, 2016, 09:13:22 IST

By Snehal Fernandes

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MUMBAI: Conversion of forests into agricultural land is weakening India’s monsoon, especially in August and September, reveals a study published in Scientific Reports by Nature Publishing Group on Wednesday.

Forests are a source of evapotranspiration (ET), or recycled precipitation, which adds to rainfall. Trees channel moisture from the soil into the air through a process called transpiration. This contributes to around 25% of total precipitation in the later stages of the monsoon. Deforestation, however, replaces deep-rooted plants with shallow-rooted vegetation that cannot do the same job, the study says.

“Due to the large scale deforestation, there is a significant reduction in the recycled precipitation and hence in total precipitation,” said professor Subimal Ghosh, Interdisciplinary Program in Climate Studies, IIT-B.

“Impacts of deforestation are quite prominent in those areas due to reduction in ET and recycled precipitation,” said Supantha Paul, IIT-B.

Using satellite data, the present study found a significant decrease in leaf area index - a measure of green cover - when the team compared two-time periods to anaylse the impact of land use land cover change in rainfall across India.

The study is significant as the Indian summer-monsoon rainfall between June and September contributes to 80% of the annual rainfall in the country, vital for agriculture and economy. Ghosh said the findings have significant implication in terms of generating rainfall projections for future to be used for climate change adaptation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Snehal Fernandes
Snehal Fernandes is senior associate editor, who joined HT in 2006. She heads the Mumbai edition’s city reporting team that writes on civic and urban governance, transport and infrastructure, health, and education. She is also the National Science Editor. With a career spanning more than two decades, her expertise lies in writing on science and technology, space, environment, sustainable development, climate change, and nuclear energy. Her work consistently breaks down, and without oversimplyfying, science and research developments into an easy read for a broad audience. In 2009, she was among the very first journalist to report on the opposition to the Jaitapur nuclear power plant in Ratnagiri (Konkan) following the Indo- US civil nuclear agreement and consistently followed it with multiple stories from ground zero; wrote about the introduction and subsequent halt to the cultivation of genetically modified (BT) brinjal, and has interviewed Nobel laureates and award winning scientists. In 2012, she was awarded ‘The Press Club Award for Excellence in Journalism’ (Political category) for reports on the mining scam in Goa. Prior to HT, she wrote on education and transport at the Indian Express. She graduated in sociology from St Xavier's College, and firmly believes in the phrase by Karl Marx that ‘Religion is the opium of the people’. When she is not keeping a tab on the going-ons in Mumbai and the scientific world, you'll find her reading world news, or watching crime/espionage series or political dramas. She can repeatedly watch Kill Bill with the same interest as Planet of the Apes and Spiderman. For someone who was not remotely interested in dogs or cats, she loves every bit of her time with her two-year-old Indie cat Bunny.Read More