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Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

19/03/24 09:44 AM IST

Forest fires

In News
  • For almost a week, forest fires have been raging in the Coonoor forest range in the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu.
Forest fires
  • November to June is considered to be forest fire season in India, with hundreds of thousands of small and large fires burning every year, especially from February onward as summer approaches.
  • April-May are usually the worst fire months across the country.
  • The biennial India State of Forest Report (ISFR) published by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change recorded in its 2019 report that more than 36% of India’s forest cover was prone to frequent fires.
  • About 4% of the forest cover was ‘extremely prone’ to fire, and another 6% was ‘very highly’ fire prone (ISFR 2019).
  • Globally, about 3% of the total forest area, or about 98 million hectares of forest, were affected by fires in the year 2015, mostly in the tropical regions.
Forest firs in India
  • According to the FSI, severe fires break out in dry deciduous forests, while evergreen, semi-evergreen, and montane temperate forests are comparatively less prone to fires.
  • The forests of Northeast India, Odisha, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Uttarakhand are the most vulnerable to fires during the November to June period
  • In March 2023, large bushfires raged in Goa, triggering an investigation into whether they were “man-made”.
  • In 2021, a series of forest fires broke out in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland-Manipur border, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat, including in wildlife sanctuaries.
  • Over the past one week, the highest number of forest fires have been reported from Mizoram (3,738), Manipur (1,702), Assam (1,652), Meghalaya (1,252), and Maharashtra (1,215), as per FSI data
  • In South India, most forest covered areas of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have seen fire incidents over the past week.
Reason for fires
  • Forest fires have man-made as well as natural causes.
  • A majority of forest fires are a result of human carelessness like discarded cigarettes, camp fires, burning of debris, and similar other processes.
  • Amongst natural causes, lightning is the most common originator.
  • Forest fires need a conducive atmosphere to spread. Hot and dry temperatures and high tree density are some of the factors that help the spread of forest fires.
  • This year, high aridity, above-normal day temperatures, clear sky conditions, and calm winds during the early phase of the summer season are some of the contributory factors for the spike in forest fire incidents in southern India.
  • This February was South India’s hottest since 1901, and January was the fifth warmest in more than a century.
  • Over the past two months, the recorded maximum, minimum, and mean temperatures have remained above-normal over the southern states, which has helped build the heat load over the region well before the onset of the summer season.
  • As a result, there has been an early availability of dry biomass in these forests since the winter season itself.
  • Maximum temperatures touched 40 degrees Celsius here last week, unusual for mid March.
  • In the absence of rain and prevailing high temperatures, the IMD has classified almost all districts of southern India under ‘mild’ aridity.
Source- Indian Express

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