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68% of Gujarat land is turning into desert; it’s 66% in Rajasthan’s case!

The coastal state tops India in terms of proportion of land undergoing degradation/ desertification.

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It’s shocking but true. As much as 68% of the total geographical area (TGA) of Gujarat is under the process of land desertification/ degradation (LDD).

Worse, this is the highest percentage area any state in the country has — with the exception of the tiny Mizoram — even higher than the desert state of Rajasthan which has 66% of its land area undergoing desertification.

These findings have been revealed in the country’s first scientific report - the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India —  prepared by the Space Applications Center, Ahmedabad.

The atlas reveals that water erosion is the main cause of land desertification and degradation in Gujarat, accounting for 34.64% of the total LDD. The whole of Saurashtra and south Kutch are affected. This is followed by salinisation, in the same region, accounting for 14% of LDD. Vegetal degradation (13.97%) is seen in the Gulf of Kutch, Khambat and Dangs; and wind erosion (2.77%) in central and north Gujarat.

National coordinator of the project, Dr Ajai of SAC, told DNA that Saurashtra suffers from water erosion because the terrain is “undulating” and the soil is loose. “With wrong agricultural practices on such terrain, rainwater loosens the soil, which gets washed away because of the sloppy terrain. On the other hand, even the vegetation cover is decreasing, so this is bound to happen,” he says.

The only way ahead for Gujarat to contain desertification, he believes, is increasing vegetation like grasslands on such marginalised land, and not farming activities such as ploughing which further loosen the soil.

Though desertification is a natural process, anthropogenic factors accelerate it. A part of the data compiled for Gujarat shows chunks of land in Ahmedabad and Junagadh also degrading due to man’s influence.

A scientist at one of Gujarat’s leading desert research institutes says the state has been taking several focused measures to contain the land degradation process for the last 10 years, and one should be able to see a difference in the coming years. “Desertification is a global problem, and not only of Gujarat. Moreover, it has also been attributed to climate change and global warming, so there is not much we can do to control it overnight,” he said.

One can heave a sigh of relief as Ahmedabad and most parts of north-central and central Gujarat have no apparent degradation (NAD).

They account for 32.62% of the state’s TGA. For perspective, it should also be noted that Gujarat is one of the bigger states in the country, supporting 18.6 million livestock population - 3.9% of the country’s livestock population.
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