Firoz Ahmad and Laxmi Goparaju from Vindhyan Ecology and Natural History Foundation (VENHF), along with Nazimur Rahman Talukdar and Parthankar Choudhury from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Assam University, Raj Kumar Singh from ICAR–Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Shiv Kumar Dhyani from ICAR–Central Agroforestry Research Institute, Chandrashekhar M. Biradar and Javed Rizvi from Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) – World Agroforestry (ICRAF), have authored a research paper titled “Afforestation potential mapping of tree outside forest in India for achieving SDG goals and landscape stewardship” in the international journal Environmental Sustainability. The article can be accessed on the Springer platform. We congratulate the authors. The abstract is reproduced below:
The study evaluated India’s bioclimatic, topographical, and ecological parameters for identifying the landscape potentiality for the restoration of afforestation strategies in Tree Outside Forest (TOF). Potentially suitable spatial factors such as decadal annual soil moisture, annual climate (precipitation, temperature, and aridity index), topography (slope), ecology (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), soil fertility (nutrient availability, nutrient retention capacity, rooting conditions, oxygen availability to roots, excess salts, and toxicity) and Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) types were identified and brought into Geographical Information System (GIS) for integration based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) statistical methods. The analysis revealed that approximately 133 million hectares of the TOF landscape have a greater than 60% potential for restoration of afforestation goals for landscape conservation.
