Forests
Forest cover or tree cover?
In India's official assessment, forest cover is all land over one hectare with tree canopy density above 10 per cent, whatever is growing there and whoever owns it — a plantation counts, an orchard can count. Tree cover is patches smaller than one hectare outside recorded forest, including scattered trees in towns. Neither definition requires a forest ecosystem, and that is why the numbers surprise people.
Two classes, one measuring instrument
The Forest Survey of India maps canopy from satellite imagery. What it can see is canopy; what it reports are these two classes.
Forest cover is a canopy measure applied to a minimum mapping unit of one hectare at a density threshold of 10 per cent. It is silent on ownership, on legal status and on species. A mango orchard, a eucalyptus plantation, a rubber estate and old-growth sal forest all satisfy it if the canopy is dense enough over a large enough patch.
Tree cover exists because a canopy measure with a one-hectare floor misses an enormous amount of India's actual tree stock — roadside avenues, field boundaries, homestead trees, urban gardens. It is estimated separately, using a different technique, for patches below that floor and outside the recorded forest area.
The two are reported separately and then added into a headline "forest and tree cover" figure. Adding them is legitimate arithmetic. Reading the sum as an ecosystem measure is not.
- Canopy density
- The share of ground shaded by tree crowns. 10 per cent is the floor for forest cover; the classes above it are open, moderately dense and very dense.
- Recorded forest area
- Land legally notified as forest. Different from forest cover, and the two are routinely confused.
- Minimum mapping unit
- One hectare. Anything smaller cannot be forest cover, however many trees are on it.
India's own numbers, and what each class means
From the India State of Forest Report 2023, Table 2.3.
Forest cover
7,15,342.61 km²
FSI, ISFR 2023, Table 2.3
Forest cover, share of India
21.76 %
FSI, ISFR 2023, Table 2.3
Tree cover
1,12,014.34 km²
FSI, ISFR 2023, Table 2.3
Total forest and tree cover
8,27,356.95 km²
FSI, ISFR 2023, Table 2.3
Total, share of India
25.17 %
FSI, ISFR 2023, Table 2.3
Canopy density floor for forest cover
10 %
FSI definition, ISFR 2023
There is no limit to break here. This is a definition, and the definition is the finding: a country can add forest cover while losing forest, if what replaces it holds a canopy.
How to read a forest figure
Three questions, and most published claims about India's forests fail at least one.
Which class? Forest cover, tree cover, recorded forest area and "forest and tree cover" are four different quantities, and headlines move between them freely.
At what density threshold? 10 per cent is the Indian floor. International datasets commonly use 30 per cent. The same landscape produces different totals under each.
Compared with what? ISFR revises its own previous figure when methods change, so a change is only meaningful against the revised base the report itself publishes. ISFR 2023 gives both.
What this number cannot tell you
- It cannot tell you what kind of forest it is. Plantation and primary forest are indistinguishable in a canopy measure.
- It cannot tell you about biodiversity, carbon or soil. Canopy is not ecosystem.
- It cannot be compared directly with satellite tree-cover-loss series, which measure a different thing at a different threshold — see tree-cover loss.
- A national total cannot be disaggregated back to a place. State tables exist for that reason.
Where this comes from
Every figure above is read out of one of these, at the address printed beside it.
- India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 1 Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change · Table 2.3 and the definitions above
- India State of Forest Report 2023 — landing page Forest Survey of India · State tables and volume 2
Reuse freely — CC BY 4.0. The grant covers this page. Each source above keeps its own terms, which is why every one of them is named.
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