Preface

The State of Forest Report 1999, is the 7^th in the biennial series. The special feature of the report, is presentation of the information on forest resources of the country State by State. The forest cover has been estimated using remote sensing technology. In addition, the number of villages in the vicinity of forests, and their population area affected by the shifting cultivation in North East and area of the metal minerals located in forested lands of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa have been also estimated by the Forest Survey of India. The information on forest plantations, recorded forest area, land use pattern in the States, Protected Area net work and area under Joint Forest Management has been generated and analysed through collateral sources.

The forest cover of 13 states has been interpreted digitally and the rest visually. The visual interpretation has been done on 1:250,000 scale, whereas the digital interpretation on 1:50,000 scale. Since interpretation in the past was done for most of the areas visually on 1:250,000 scale, to maintain consistency in comparison, the output of digital interpretation was also transformed to 1:250,000 scale. The data period of most of the states interpreted digitally relate to October to December, 1998 and for rest of the states, October to December, 1996. The change in the forest cover has been obtained by comparing it with preceding report (SFR 1997). Because the satellite data used in the interpretation are of different dates, the period of change is not uniform in all the States, but varies between 2 to 5 years. The average difference at the national level is about 3 years.

The report has been organized in three Chapters. The Chapter One presents in brief the methodology, limitations of the interpretation, forest cover in different countries and regions. Chapter Two provides an overview of the forest resources in India, with special emphasis on forest cover. In Chapter Three, detailed presentation of the forest resources has been made State by State, after describing the physiography and demography.

For the preparation of this report constant guidance and support received from Shri Vishwanath Anand, Secretary (Environment & Forests), Shri C.P. Oberai, Inspector General of Forests & Special Secretary, Shri M.K. Sharma, Additional Inspector General of Forests and Shri A.R. Chadha, Deputy Inspector General of Forests in the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, is gratefully acknowledged.

The completion of the report has been possible because of the team work of the officers and technical staff of the organization. I would like to place on record the sincere efforts made by the Joint Directors Dr. V.N. Pandey, IFS, Shri Madhawa Trivedi, IFS, Shri Sandeep Tripathi, IFS; Dy. Directors S/Shri Subhash Ashutosh, IFS, C.D. Singh, IFS, Ashish Rawat, IFS, Rajesh Kumar, ISS, Anoop Kumar, ISS, Anoop Singh, IFS, Praveen Jha, IFS, M.S. Bist and A.K. Pathak. The Hindi translation of the report done by Smt. Neeraj Gandhi and word processing by S/Shri I.H. Rijvi, J.K. Jain and Miss Pratima Saini is thankfully acknowledged.

Dr. Devendra Pandey
Director
Forest Survey of India