A quarter of India has degraded into a desert

1 Almost 25% of India’s total geographical area (TGA) is desert, and 32% land is affected by degradation.
2 As much as 69% of the country’s area is classified as ‘dry land’, in a country where the main source of income is agriculture.
3 Jammu and Kashmir has the second largest desert area after Rajasthan, Gujarat stands third.

Disturbing. But facts. The only good news here is now abundant data has been made available to us on this in the form of the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas. The atlas, that records plenty of such intriguing facts, has been developed by Ahmedabad’s Space Applications Centre (SAC) jointly with 17 other national agencies.

India has been a signatory to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) since June 1994. But it had no spatial inventory of land degradation/ desertification, required to identify the area undergoing the process of desertification.

The Desertification Status Mapping carried out by the SAC is a first time has created this facility for India.

The atlas presents state-wise mapping of the land degradation status and the reasons for it. Water erosion, vegetal degradation, wind erosion, salinisation/ alkanisation, water-logging, frost heaving, frost shattering, and mass movement, are the main reasons it lists.

“The global average of land degradation is 33% of the TGA… But for developing economies like India, land degradation is a severe problem as it puts tremendous pressure on land-based resources, mainly for agriculture,” SAC national coordinator Dr Ajai, said.

To arrest the increasing land degradation, mitigation agencies require authentic data on the areas and spatial distribution of land degradation, along with the reasons. “For instance, if the land in a certain area suffers vegetal degradation, treating it for soil erosion won’t help.
Though there are several scattered reports on land degradation status, this is the first exhaustive baseline data which can be used to monitor of desertification,” he explained.

Maharashtra has the highest proportions of land undergoing degradation, soil erosion as the main reason.

“Land degradation and desertification pose an ever increasing global environmental threat.
Human activities such as over cultivation, overgrazing, deforestation, and poor irrigation practices, along with climate change, are turning once fertile land into unproductive degraded land,” SAC director, Dr RR Navalgund, has said in the preamble of the atlas.