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Exotic trees eating up Western Ghat’s grasslands
Why is it in news?
- Exotic species attack on western ghats.
What are impacts?
- Over four decades the country lost almost one-fourth of grasslands and exotic invasive trees are primarily to blame
- Though grassland afforestation using pine, acacia and eucalyptus ceased in 1996, the exotics still invade these ecosystems
- The satellite images they accessed reveal that 60% of the shola-grassland landscape has changed; almost 40% (516 km2) of native high-elevation grasslands have disappeared.
- Most of this loss occurred on the mountain tops of the Nilgiri, Palani and Anamalai hill ranges, which comprise more than half of the Ghat’s shola-grassland ecosystems, primarily due to the expansion of exotic trees (pine, acacia and eucalyptus).
What are shola forests?
- Shola forests are tropical Montane forests found in the valleys separated by rolling grasslands only in the higher elevations.
- They are found only in South India in the Southern Western Ghats.
- The shola forests are patches of forests that occur only in the valleys where there is least reach of the fog and mist.
- Other parts of the mountains are covered in grasslands
Source
The Hindu