NEW DELHI :
MORE than 50 lakh large farmland trees vanished between
2018 and 2022 in India, partly
due to altered cultivation practices, revealing a “concerning
trajectory,” new research published in the journal Nature
Sustainability has found.
Researchers said that “an
observable trend was emerging” wherein agroforestry systems are being replaced with
paddy rice fields, even as a certain loss rate could be found
to be natural.
Large and mature trees within these agroforestry fields are
removed, and trees are now
being cultivated within separate block plantations typically with lower ecological value,
they said.
Block plantations, usually
involving fewer species of trees,
were found to have increased
in numbers which some villagers from Telangana,
Haryana, Maharashtra and
other States confirmed via
interviews.
The team, including
researchers from the University
of Copenhagen, Denmark,
explained that the decision to
remove trees is often driven by perceivedlow benefitsofthe
trees,coupledwithconcerns
that their shading effect,
includingthatofNeemtrees,
may adversely affect crop
yields. Boosting crop yields
also contributed to the
expansion of paddy rice
fields, further facilitated by
water supplywhichwasaugmentedbytheestablishment
ofnewboreholes,theauthors
said.
“This finding is particularlyunsettlinggiventhecurrent emphasis on agroforestry as an essential naturalclimatesolution,playing
a crucialrole inbothclimate
change adaptation and mitigation strategies, as well as
forlivelihoods andbiodiversity,” the authors wrote.
Agroforestry trees are a
vitalpartofIndia’slandscapes
as they generate socio-ecological benefits, along with
beinga natural climate solution owing to their ability to
absorb carbon dioxide from
theair.
However,despitetheir
importance, the lack of
robust monitoring mechanisms has contributed to an
insufficientgraspoftheirdistribution in relation to managementpractices, as well as
theirvulnerabilitytoclimate
change and diseases, the
researchers said.
For the study, the team
usedAI-baseddeeplearning
models for detecting individual non-forest trees for
eachyear.Bytrackingthetree
crown over the years, they
then analysed the changes.
Crowns of multiple trees
together formacanopy.
The researchers mapped
about 60 crore farmland
trees, excluding block plantations, and tracked them
over the past decade.
Theyfoundthataround11
per cent of the large trees,
each having a crown size of
96 square metres and
mapped in 2010/2011,