New Delhi | Feb 8, 2017: Two scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, have warned that an "alarming rise" in aridity is pushing pockets of Chhotanagpur and two other areas across the central Indian belt towards desertification.

Their analysis of rainfall and land cover changes over the past three decades has shown the greatest rise in aridity in the Chhotanagpur plateau straddling Jharkhand, Bihar, Bengal, the northern Aravalli ranges in Rajasthan and the western edge of the Thar.

Shafique Matin and Mukund Dev Behera at IIT Kharagpur's centre for oceans, rivers, atmosphere and land sciences identified these three epicentres of maximum aridity by quantifying the aridity changes across the Ganga river basin between 1975 and 2010. The changes that have already occurred in these areas could lead to "cascading impacts" in the future that would change the landscapes, making some patches unfit for human use, the scientists said in a report published in Current Science, a journal brought out by the Indian Academy of Sciences.

"Some of the changes are evident - the Aravalli region is losing some of its local flora, the Chhotanagpur region has lost huge areas of forestland," said Matin, now in Dublin with Ireland's agriculture and food agency where he uses satellite imagery to identify farmland with high ecosystem measures.

Forests of a tree called dhok, abundant around Jaipur in the mid-1970s, are now only sparsely found across the northern Aravalli region, he said. In its place, an invasive species Prosopsis juliflora, or vilayati babool, which has a greater tolerance to high aridity environments, is spreading.

The scientists said land resource extraction such as opencast mining of coal and other minerals in parts of Jharkhand, Bengal and Bihar, coupled with deforestation are likely to have contributed to the growing aridity in Chhotanagpur.

The Forest Survey of India has estimated that Jharkhand alone lost 300,000 hectares - about 17 times the area of Ranchi - of forest cover between 1977 and 2015. "Deforestation, land degradation and industrial emissions could have contributed to the alarming rise in aridity in the region," Matin and Behera wrote in their report.

The aridity changes, the scientists have pointed out, occurred while coal mining has steadily increased in parts of Chatra and Dhanbad districts. The steel and iron industries in Durgapur and Bokaro may also have contributed to the observed aridity changes.

Using satellite imagery, the scientists have also identified large-scale deforestation for agricultural expansion around Alwar in Rajasthan.

(Source: https://www.telegraphindia.com/)