Degraded andWastelands of India

Status and Spatial

Distribution

Indian Council ofAgricultural Research

New Delhi

National Academy ofAgricultural Sciences

New Delhi

Printed : June 2010

Project Director : Dr T P Trivedi

Incharge (English Editorial Unit) : Dr R P SharmaEditor : Shashi A Verma

Chief Production Officer : V K BhartiTechnical Officer (Production) : Ashok Sastri

All Rights Reserved 2010, Indian Council of Agricultural Research

New Delhi

Published by Dr T P Trivedi, Project Director, Directorate of Information and Publicationsof Agriculture, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Krishi Anusandhan Bhavan I,Pusa, New Delhi 110 012; Telephone: 011-25842787; Fax: 011-25843285; E-mail:tptrivedi@icar.org.in. Lasertypeset by M/s Xpedite Computer Systems, D-20, 2nd Floor,Ranjit Nagar Commercial Complex, New Delhi 110 008, and printed at M/s Royal OffsetPrinters, A-89/1, Naraina Industrial Area, Phase I, New Delhi 110 028.

The task of providing food security to our countrys burgeoning population is

becoming increasingly difficult. This challenge must and needs to be met in the

face of the changing consumption patterns, impacts of the climate change and

degradation of the finite land and water resources. Management of land

resources, in general, and potentially culturable lands in particular,

encompasses, crop production methods that will keep pace with countrys food

needs, sustaining environment, blunting impacts of climate change, preserving

and enhancing natural resources, and supporting livelihood of farmers and rural

population in the country. Thus, there is a pressing need for enlarging area

under arable lands, by the way of reclaiming degraded lands for sustainable

intensification of agriculture, in which crop yields can be increased without

compromising and yielding to adverse environmental impacts and without

reducing area under forests.

Per capita availability of inelastic land resource is rapidly declining in relation

to annual population growth of 1.4% in the country. Increasing GDP growth is

expanding urbanization and industrialization and, therefore, more and more

of agricultural lands are being utilized for non-agricultural purposes. The

complex interplay of natural and anthropogenic processes compounds problems

of land-use planning further. Maintaining and enhancing productive potential

of our land resources is vital for progressive introduction of sustainable

technologies, and thereby resilience in crop production.

The science of crop management and agricultural practices suited to lands

exposed to different abiotic stresses at present demands a specific orientation

for meeting challenges of the food insecurity. In this scheme of agricultural

development, effective utilization, rejuvenation and management of degraded

and wastelands by public and private investments becomes imperative. As a

first step, a reliable set of estimates of the degraded and wastelands is essential.

In addition to the type and the extent of degradation the lands have undergone

or are undergoing, appropriate management strategies need to be designed

and implemented in a defined time-frame to bring these lands to productive

health.

Foreword

In this context, the NAAS initiated efforts for integration and streamlining

of land-based and remotely sensed revised databases in the Geographical

Information System Environment so that a harmonized database is made

available for use by the planning departments. Dr S. M. Virmani (Natural

Resource Management Scientist), Dr P. S. Roy, Deputy Director, National Remote

Sensing Centre and Dr J. S. Samra, the then Deputy Director-General, Natural

Resource Management (ICAR), now Executive Director, the National Rainfed

Area Authority and all the Fellows of the Academy, were requested to undertake

harmonization of disparate databases on degraded and wastelands into most

practical classes that respond to amendments. These classes, in the due course,

could be considered for optimizing investment portfolios in greening degraded

lands and in blunting impacts of climate change; and also objectively allocating

resources in such initiatives of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment

Guarantee Act such as, afforestation, watershed development, recharging of

groundwater, increasing biodiversity and for other schemes aiming at

reclamation and conservation of land for enhancing human welfare and natural

resource productivity.

The NAAS and the ICAR understood from the inception that there will always

be trade-offs and local complexities. To be useful to the planners, administrators,

decision-makers and fund managers of the land-based agricultural development

programmes for varied purposes, district-level data in agro-ecological regional

framework would be required. The National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land-

Use Planning, a natural resource assessment institution of the ICAR, was assigned

this work, and the first approximation data produced by the institution is given

in this book. As we adopt new high-tech science tools and as natural resource

relevant additional data become available from the remote-sensing satellites,

further refinements will be made in the innovative database analytic systems.

We are confident that this would be of immense benefit to researchers, planners

and farmers in their endeavour towards enhancing agricultural production.

President (NAAS) Director-General (ICAR)

Sustainable agricultural development and food security will be one of the key

challenges for India in this century. Around 70% of the Indias population is

living in rural area with agriculture as their livelihood support system. The

vast majority of Indian farmers are small and marginal. Their farm size is

decreasing further due to population growth. And the quality of the land is

deteriorating due to heightened nutrient mining, soil erosion, increasing water

scarcity, adverse impacts of climate change and accumulation of toxic elements

in soil and water. Land degradation, like climate change, is an anthropogenic-

induced process and poses biggest threat to sustainable livelihood security of

the farming communities across the country. All of these factors combined with

increased rate of land degradation are contributing towards decline in

agricultural productivity leading to food insecurity. Since land resources are

finite, requisite measures are required to reclaim degraded and wastelands, so

that areas going out of cultivation due to social and economic reasons are

replenished by reclaiming these lands and by arresting further loss of production

potential. State level and Country level information has already been published

by the National Remote Sensing Agency (now NRSC). The first order need of

the day, therefore, is to prepare a national degraded and wastelands map

downscaled to districts. In addition, the nature and causes of the land

degradation, and the degree and extent of damaged lands need to be determined,

so that developmental agencies in participation with stakeholders proactively

adopt measures to reclaim degraded lands for distancing food insecurity, a real

challenge.

This book builds-on and integrates work done by different institutes of the

ICAR and the Department of Space in the area of degraded and wastelands. It

has 11 chapters and chapterwise contents are outlined herewith. Chapter 1

Introduction, narrates problems associated with loss of productivity and soil

quality. Centrality of land resources in relation to climate change, environmental

concerns and loss of biodiversity are also discussed both in the national and

global perspectives. Chapter 2 on Historical Background reviews efforts made

over the last half a century by the Ministry of Agriculture, Indian Council of

Preface

Agricultural Research, National Wasteland Development Board, and the National

Remote Sensing Agency (now National Remote Sensing Centre) to classify and

map degraded soils and wastelands. This chapter also traces steps taken over

the past decade to refine common categories of wastelands in the maps produced

by the NRSA and the soil degradation map of the NBSS&LUP. Chapter 3,

Geographical Scenario of India defines location, diversity of climates,

physiography of the country and their impacts on the development of varied

soils, landforms and land use. Chapter 4, Generation of Input Datasets describes

data sources for mapping land degradation by incorporating datasets on water

erosion, wind erosion, soil acidity and soil salinity generated through

collaborative efforts of the ICAR Institutes. Chapter 5, Methodology describes

harmonization process developed in the GIS core and followed for obtaining

realistic estimates of the degraded and wastelands. Chapter 6, Spatial

Distribution of Degraded and Wastelands contains resultant map of the

harmonization exercise showing degraded and wastelands of India by various

degradation processes. Chapter 7 describes detailed distribution of area of the

various categories of degraded and wastelands in 20 AERs. The AER-based data

can be used to simulate abiotic stressed land resources availability, use and

production potentials.

Extent and distribution of degraded and wasteland