| Forest soil health cards for J&K: DG, ICFRE | | |  Early Times Report
JAMMU, Aug 22: Director General, Indian Council for Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), Kanchan Devi, today inaugurated one-day capacity building programme for the Forest Range Officers (FROs) and other frontline functionaries for Jammu and Kashmir Forest Department at Forest Information Centre, Bikram Chowk, here.
The training programme was mainly focused on increasing the capacity of forest officials on Soil Test Based Nutrient Management Practices and enrich knowledge about the forest ecosystems amongst the field functionaries.
DG, ICFRE during her presidential address, highlighted the importance of Forest Soil Health Cards with special reference to Jammu & Kashmir. She said that under the programme launched by Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Government of India, Forest Soil Health Cards for all Territorial Forest Divisions have been prepared. She called upon the field officers to plan their afforestation and plantation programmes keeping in view the parameters of soil health of the area for success of plantation programmes.
She told that there is a seamless connection between vegetation and soils. Forest soils develop over a long period of time under the influence of forest cover, bedrock and micro-organisms. Tree species/ vegetation growing in forested landscapes affect the soils as well as the microclimate, she added.
Similarly, growth and survival of trees and associated vegetation largely depends on the health of underlying soil layers. Therefore, understanding the nutrient status and health of forest soils is very essential so as to increase the forest productivity, enhance microbial populations and achieve success in plantation activities and maintain the forest ecosystem stability.
Further, DG, ICFRE said that few years back there was a general perception that forest soils are similar to the agriculture soils and there is no need to study the forest soils separately. But practically forest soils are influenced by the nutrient cycling and rhizosphere biology in the natural environment and it necessitates the need for assessment of forest soils separately.
Therefore, in this backdrop, ICFRE envisioned to take up a broad based study on the forest soils under the All India coordinated research project on Preparation of Forest Soil Health Cards (FSHCs) under different vegetation types in all the forest divisions of the India, with the financial assistance under the CAMPA Scheme from Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), New Delhi. It is the first initiative of its kind in the forestry sector, aiming at broad assessment of nutrient status in forest soils and subsequently formulate suitable management practices for degraded areas. She said that ICFRE has a pan India presence with nine regional research institutes present in different bio-geo-graphic zones of India. |
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