INHERENT VULNERABILITY OF FORESTS: A CASE STUDY FROM JHARKHAND IN INDIA

Vulnerability assessment of forests is essential for identifying the degree of associated risk under present and future scenario to prioritize management interventions. The specific objective of the present study is to assess the vulnerability of natural forests in Jharkhand, India under the current situation. The natural forests face multiple stresses in the present state can be prone to additional stress of climate change. We assessed the vulnerability of forests under the prevailing current situation using indicators. The assessment involves the use of four indicators such as biological richness, canopy cover density, disturbance index and slope. A multi-criteria approach was adopted to assign weights to each of the indicators which were integrated in a GIS environment to map the spatial extent of the vulnerability. The entire study area was first divided into 787 grids of size 2.5 ' x 2.5 ' to represent spatial extent of each indicators in the grids. The assessment indicated that only 2.92% forest grids fell under very high vulnerability class, whereas 18.68% grids came under high vulnerability, 53.88% were under medium and 24.52% grids were under low vulnerability classes. Very high vulnerability category of forested grids was largely located in Dry Peninsular Sal forests that required immediate management intervention.