The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Indian canopies are least explored, say experts Western Ghats flora at fingertips

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Tuesday, Oct 27, 2009
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Karnataka - Bangalore

Indian canopies are least explored, say experts Western Ghats flora at fingertips

Staff Reporter

— Photo: K. Gopinathan

A WORD OF CAUTION: Kamal Bawa (left), Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Founder and President of the ATREE; Thomas Lovejoy, renowned conservation biologist; Margaret Lowman, Director of Environmental Initiatives and Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies at New College of Florida; and Raman Sukumar, Chairman of the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc., Bangalore; at the fifth International Canopy Conference in Bangalore on Monday.

BANGALORE: The niche field of “canopy science” or the study of forest canopies – which sustain 75 per cent of the Earth’s biodiversity – may have come of age globally but forest canopies in India remain largely unexplored, according to Gladwin Joseph, director of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE).

Lack of technology such as crane installations and ropeways meant that the country’s biodiversity hotspots in the Western Ghats, Andaman and Nicobar islands and forests of the Northeast remained inaccessible to scientists, Dr. Joseph said at the inauguration of the Fifth International Canopy Conference on Monday. Several countries including Malaysia, China, Brazil and Madagascar are investing in technology to aid the science, he added.

The six-day conference organised by ATREE brings together scientists from across the world who would present their research on forest canopies in different countries, their relationship to conservation, sustainable development and climate change.

In his keynote address on climate change, American conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy said that the phenomenon was “no longer a matter of anecdote but statistically robust”.

Tropical glaciers in Mount Kilimanjaro, for instance, were melting at a rate that suggested that they would disappear by 2015, he said.

Changes had been recorded in flora and fauna too with plants changing their flowering pattern, migratory birds migrating earlier or ceasing to migrate altogether, added Dr. Lovejoy, who is credited with coining the word “biodiversity”.

Kamal Bawa, professor at University of Massachusetts, U.S. and founder of ATREE, said the Himalayas, where eight of the world’s largest rivers originated, was most vulnerable to climate change. In the Eastern Himalayas, 74 hydropower projects were currently running, a number proposed to increase to 429, he said.

Public lectures

On Tuesday, Meg Lowman, professor at New College of Florida, United States, is scheduled to deliver a public lecture on “Life in the treetops – exploration and discovery in forest canopies around the world”.

Mark Moffett of Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic will speak on “adventure among ants – a global safari with a cast of trillions” at another public lecture on Friday.

BANGALORE: Students and researchers can access all the information they ever wanted about the plants of Western Ghats – starting from their distribution, status to identification features and images. A new page on the Indian Bioresources Information Network website provides comprehensive data on Western Ghats flora collected during one of the largest field-based studies. The webpage was inaugurated on Monday at the Fifth International Canopy Conference organised by Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment.

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