Course Overview

Forest is one of the most valuable terrestrial ecosystems that play a crucial role in maintaining environmental balance. It provides numerous goods and services, and maintains life support system essential for life on earth. Forests soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere offsetting anthropogenic emissions. Protecting forests, therefore, has a double-cooling effect, by reducing carbon emissions and by maintaining high levels of evaporation from the canopy. However, forests are in great anthropogenic pressure due to the ever-increasing demand for forest products and dependency of about 60 million forest dependents. The higher dependency of a larger section of rural population has an inhibitory effect on the productivity of forest. It has been estimated that more than 40% poor of the country are living in these forest fringe villages. Thus, forest is a source of livelihood and providing opportunities for poverty reduction to a larger section of rural population.

Reference Books

1.  XII Standard NCERT Book on Biology (Chapters pertaining to Ecology)

2.  India Year Book (Chapters on Environment)

3.  Environment  by Shankar IAS

4.  Down to Earth

5.  Environment and Ecology – Arihant

6.  Environmental Studies: From Crisis to Cure- R. Rajagopalan

7.    Environmental Studies – Benny Joseph

8.    Ecology and environment by P. D. Sharma

9.  Environment for Civil Services Prelims and Mains – by Khuller and Rao (McGraw Hill)

10.  The Hindu