Forest Cover and Tree Cover

India’s forest assessment distinguishes forest cover from tree cover mainly by the size, location and mappability of tree patches. Forest cover comprises qualifying canopy patches of at least one hectare, while tree cover captures smaller or scattered tree resources outside recorded forest areas that are not included in forest cover.

Forest cover

Forest cover includes all land of one hectare or more having tree-canopy density of at least 10 per cent, irrespective of ownership or legal status. It may occur within or outside recorded forest areas and includes plantations, orchards, bamboo and palms that meet the criteria.

• Very dense forest has canopy density of 70 per cent or more.
• Moderately dense forest has canopy density of 40 per cent or more but less than 70 per cent.
• Open forest has canopy density of 10 per cent or more but less than 40 per cent; scrub below 10 per cent is not counted as forest cover.

Tree cover

Tree cover comprises tree patches outside recorded forest areas that are not included in forest cover and are smaller than the minimum mappable area of one hectare. It includes small blocks, linear formations and scattered trees on rural and urban lands.

• Tree cover supplements satellite-mapped forest cover by accounting for trees that cannot be mapped as qualifying forest-cover polygons.
• It is estimated through the Forest Survey of India’s field-based inventory of trees outside forests.

Why the distinction matters

Forest cover is a biophysical canopy category, whereas recorded forest area is a legal or administrative category. Therefore, forest-cover statistics do not by themselves distinguish natural forests from plantations or indicate biodiversity, species composition, forest health or ecological integrity.

• Forest cover and tree cover are reported separately and may be added to show their combined geographical extent without double counting.
• An increase in tree cover cannot automatically compensate for the ecological loss caused by degradation or diversion of natural forests.