Lecture 5
Lecture 5
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Learning outcomes
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Forest Resources
A forest, a biotic community with predominance of trees is an
important Renewable natural resource.
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Forest Resources
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Benefits of Forests
Protective Function
Forest Provide protection against Soil erosion, Droughts,
floods, noise, radiations
Productive Function
Forest Provide various products like, gum resins, medicines,
Katha, honey, pulp, bamboo, timber, and fruits
Regulative Function
The Forest regulates the level of Oxygen and carbon dioxide
in atmosphere. The forests also help in regulating temperature
conditions
Accessory Function
Forest provides aesthetics, habitat to various flora and fauna
besides that it also has an recreational value 8
Uses of Forests
• The uses of forest may broadly classified into following
categories
• Commercial uses
• Ecological uses
– Oxygen production
– Reduce global warming (the long-term heating of
Earth's climate system observed since the pre-industrial
period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities,
primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping
greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere.)
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Uses of Forests
– Wildlife habitat
– Hydrological regulation (maintenance if ground water
table )
– Soil conservation (prevent soil erosion and drought)
– Pollution moderators (absorb oxide of carbon and
radiation etc.)
– Driving energy flow and nutrient cycling (interactions of
animals through food chain and return of nutrients by the
action of Bactria and fungi; decomposing )
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Commercial Importance of Forest
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• Food: Fruits, roots, leaves of plants and trees along with the
meat of forest animals provide the food to the tribal people.
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Products from forest/trees
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Ecological Uses: Functions of trees/forest: The functions of forest
may broadly classified into following categories
• Soil Conservation
Droughts
• Forest Provide protection against
• Soil erosion
• Droughts (prolonged shortages in
the water supply, whether Floods
atmospheric (below-average
precipitation), surface water or
ground water)
• Floods (A flood is an overflow of
water that submerges land that is
usually dry. In the sense of
"flowing water", the word may also Soil erosion
be applied to the inflow of the tide) 14
Regulative Functions (Oxygen production)
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Accessory Function
• Forest provides aesthetics, habitat to various flora and fauna
besides that it also has an recreational value.
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Regulation of global climate and temperature
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Reduction of Global Warming
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Absorption of air pollutants
(Pollutant moderators)
• Forest absorbs many toxic gasses and air pollutants and can
help in keeping air pure.
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Driving energy flow and nutrient cycling
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Over-exploitation of Forests
Deforestation
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Causes of Deforestation
• Fuel requirement
• Raw material for industrial use
• Development projects
• Expansion of cities
• Construction of dams, canal &
highways
• Growing food needs
• Overgrazing
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Causes of Deforestation
• Shifting Cultivation (an agricultural
system in which a person uses a
piece of land, only to abandon or
alter the initial use a short time later.
This system often involves clearing
of a piece of land followed by
several years of wood harvesting or
farming until the soil loses fertility.)
• Forest fire
• Leaching is the loss or extraction of
certain materials from a carrier into
a liquid
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Other causes
•Mining (Mining is the extraction of valuable
minerals or other geological materials from
the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode,
vein, seam, reef or placer deposit)
• River valley projects (hydroelectricity etc.)
•Natural forces (natural calamities like
earthquake)
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Effects of Deforestation
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Other consequences
• Loss of habitat
• Inc. intensity and frequency of flood
• Land degradation (loss in the quality of
land usually less fit or not for agriculture)
• Loss of forest products
• Change in climatic condition
• Siltation (deposition of eroded soil in water bodies)
of rivers and lakes
• Loss of revenue
• Change in water cycle
• Reduced rainfall
• Expansion of deserts
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Afforestation
“conversion of bare or cultivated land into forest”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E52bdc8ltQg
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Afforestation
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Dams and their effects on Forest and Tribal People
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A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several
factors including war, inflation, crop failure, population
imbalance, or government policies.
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•It creates the loss of forest which are submerged under the back
waters of the dam.
•It creates danger to the habitat of the wild life. The wild life are
forced to migrate.
•It also affects the land under cultivation, in the catchment area as
the crops get submerged under water.
•The roads, already in existence are put under water after the
construction of dam. So the road network is damaged.
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Important Web Links
http://www.newagepublishers.com/samplechapter/00
0964.pdf
http://www.newagepublishers.com/samplechapter/00
1426.pdf
http://ecoursesonline.iasri.res.in/mod/page/view.php
?id=89582
https://www.livescience.com/27692-
deforestation.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHpnyRHRVg4
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Acknowledgment
Some images, animation, and material have been
taken from the following sources:
Textbooks: PERSPECTIVE IN
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES by ANUBHA
KAUSHIK, C P KAUSHIK, NEW AGE
INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS