In a mere three years, from 2019 to 2022, India may have lost close to 5.8 million full-grown trees in agricultural lands, says a satellite-imagery based analysis by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Sustainability.
Additionally, 11% of such trees detected via satellite during 2010-2011 were no longer visible when reviewed from 2018 to 2022, leading the researchers to conclude that these trees had “disappeared.”
However, this doesn’t necessarily imply that India’s overall tree cover, or trees outside forest, is declining as the analysis was specific to only large trees above a certain size.
