Rhinos and tigers and boars, oh my! A forest conservationist and a meteorological scientist, both based in Pune, India, tell personal stories from their adventures in the field. You'll hear about mangroves, barren lands, and mountain ranges, but the fact that may shock you the most? Sometimes the biggest changes in restoration are in the heart and mind, rather than the landscape itself.
Transcript
Maoya: Neha, maybe start by telling us about one of the favorite forests that you go to?
Neha: Thank you, Maoya. It is a very diverse land. So, we work in both protected areas and non-protected areas. We work in very degraded forests which need restoration, or we work in the very biodiversity-rich Western Ghats also. It’s a mosaic we work in, and the landscapes are very large. What makes them special…when we say “degraded” forest, I see them as a potential for regeneration, potential for restoration. Each of these forests have their own story. They are shaped by the geography, they are shaped by the community, they are shaped by the policy. They are really diverse forests. If you ask me to select one special forest, in Western Ghats, there is a beautiful conservation area, Rai, that is a Western Ghat riverine forest – beautiful forest. We worked there in 2016. We measured what is happening in Western Ghats with climate change and what is happening with communities over there in ‘16, we documented that. Over the years, something changed, so again we are documenting the site in 2025. So, over a span of several years, what changed in Western Ghat, how it is changing with climate. We are working there for the last 8 years now. I love that forest.
Maoya: What does it feel like for you to go back to the same place after having had a project for so many years?
Neha: It's like we never left. In ‘16 and ‘17 it was a project we just funded. Over the years, when we see any project we start, we don’t actually leave it at that point. In between, we visit it, maybe not very regularly, but once a year or once every second year we visit it, not very seasonally. But after 8 years, again, we are visiting very, very frequently to document the same variables so it’s like we never left. To understand what is happening on the ground where we are working is very interesting. We document all these forest areas, all these wetlands or wherever we work over very long spans - 7 to 8 years or 10 years. We generate a huge amount of data for every area.
Maoya: Yeah, is there a quality in the forest that you can describe from your experience that you can sense has changed as the project and the work has developed?
Neha: That particular area, we are still documenting it. The data is still being generated. But, any area in India is now getting more and more disturbed. The climate is changing so fast, heat is increasing exponentially, so rain, which was already higher in those areas, has already increased now. With those effects, we see that it is all reflected on the species. A spider which was very visible, it used to appear in September-October, but now what’s happening in October - it is raining. So, that breeding cycle of that spider, I don’t know, will it shift? Or will it disappear? Will it decrease, maybe in a longer time, you know? It used to start breeding in September. When there are rainfalls, the water gets accumulated in small pools. These pools and rocks or boulders are the places where the frogs and amphibians mate. So, these pools are very important for breeding of amphibians. And when sometimes rain patterns are changing, these pools are changing on the rocks and boulders. Again, this is changing the amphibian breeding patterns in Western Ghat. So, we are documenting everything, but maybe over a longer period we can comment. But the effect of climate and the effect of heat is very visible effect in every area we are working. And, invasive species are increasing very fast. Wherever there is a space which was a green area or maybe grasses, now these are invasive species. This is also a very visible effect in areas.
Maoya: Pramit, tell us about where you are monitoring eddy covariance (EC) fluxes and why these sites were established?
Pramit: Yes. As part of the MetFlux India program of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the government of India, which funds our flux tower activities, we are presently monitoring EC fluxes at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam in Northeast India; Pichavaram mangrove on the Bay of Bengal pools in Tamil Nadu in South India; Darjeeling forest in West Bengal and East India; Barkachha cropland in Uttar Pradesh in North India; Sehore on barren land in Madhya Pradesh in Central India; and Almora forest in Uttarakhand in North India. So, all of these sites were established in 2015, except Sehore and Almora, which were established in the 2020s. These sites are primarily established to understand the greenhouse gases, water, energy, and wind direction change of dominant land use types in India, and a particular focus is laid on estimating their carbon sequestration potential and their meteorological and ecological drivers. So, understanding the coupling among the carbon and energy cycles at these present ecosystems is eventually aimed at developing a process-based ecosystem model which would be a part of our system model.
Maoya: These forests and these ecosystems were selected based on how well they represent different types of forests across the country?
Pramit: Yes. So, let us start with Kaziranga National Park in Assam in Northeast India. So, you were asking Neha about a special forest – for me it would be Kaziranga National Park in Northeast India because I have been associated with this flux measurement station since 2015, since the beginning of my career. This is actually a really unique ecosystem in India from multiple aspects. First of all, it is located in Northeast India, and Northeast India has got above average forest cover for India. Over India it is 24% almost, according to the latest record, but in Northeast India it is more than 50%. So, you see the maximum part of India’s forest cover is actually in Northeast India. This region is one of the globally wettest. Most environments in the globally wettest places are in India.
So, in these ecosystems the population densities vary less over years, so these ecosystems are not that much vulnerable to the anthropogenic changes, as of now. And the Kaziranga National Park actually is a part of the Indo-Bangla biodiversity region, of the major biodiversity regions across the world, and it houses multiple flora and fauna. Like, it is very famous for the unicorn rhinoceros, which is only available here. It is different from the African rhinoceros, which has got two horns. This one has one – it is the unicorn rhinoceros, which is unique to here. And it just got 5 big - they call it “the big 5”” – the big 5 mammals in the same forest. It has the Royal Bengal tiger, unicorn rhinoceros, it has got elephants – tuskless, basically- it has got wild boars, pythons, and other big animals, of course, other big animals. So, I have actually seen all of these while working on the forest flux tower, except the Royal Bengal tiger. I don’t know whether I got fortunate or unfortunate, but other animals I have seen.
So, this is actually a broadleaf deciduous forest located in the floodplain of the Brahmaputra river, which is a transboundary river. It actually originates in China, flows into India, then Bangladesh, I think all the way to Bengal. So, this is located on the floodplain. It's like a savannah. Where we are measuring the fluxes, it is mostly forested, but it is 70% grassland-swampland where the rhinos prefer to stay. It is a broadleaf forest, and the Pichavaram is actually a mangrove which is, area-wise, only second to the Sundarbans mangrove which is the globally largest continuous patch of mangrove shared between India and Bangladesh, which is located almost 6 degrees north, almost close to the tropics. Their ecosystem type is the dominant mangrove type - their variabilities are much different.
Darjeeling forest is a subalpine forest very close to the Nepal border in West Bengal. It has broadleaf evergreen forest. Barkachha is actually cropland but it is seasonal cropland that uses different crops seasonally – rapeseed, oilseed. Other parts of the year it is naturally grown grass or barren land. Then, Sehore is barren land in Central India, and this flux tower was installed for a specific purpose. If you look into the wind pattern over India or the meteorology of India, monsoon period is a planetary-scale process in which the wind is reversed. You get the maximum amount of moisture coming over India from the Arabian Sea Basin. There is a wind reversal where you get the westerly wind that brings the rainfall. Now, when you look at the wind in Central India, this is representative of the background CO2 concentration and others. But during the monsoon, it captures this in all of the westerly wind. So, this is the kind of atmospheric statistic where in addition to eddy covariance, you can get all of the measurements also, ranging from cloud microphysics to lidar to air pollution, all different stuffs. Then, Almora is another subalpine forest but it is evergreen forest – Darjeeling was in broadleaf, this one is coniferous evergreen forest. But you see all the different plant functional types we have tried to cover. Over course, there are a few more, and we are coming up with new flux towers to cover those as well. I must say that this is the effort by my own institute, my own ministry - but along with that, the Indian Space Organization or ISRO, they have also got several flux towers. They cover the Sundarbans mangrove and Betul forest, which is a dry deciduous forest in Central India. If you combine the efforts of my institute and ISRO, you have covered most of the dominant land use types in India.
Neha: Dr. Pramit, this data is available anywhere?
Pramit: Yes, the processed, quality-controlled dataset is available because the raw data, raw eddy covariance data is voluminous and it requires specific skillsets to analyze those data properly with all the corrections and all and if not done properly it can give erroneous results.
Maoya: Tell us more about what it's like to develop these restoration conservation efforts with limited data and limited resources or time.
Neha: So, we prioritize what needs to be done on the projects which have very high impact values or which change something on the ground. If a project comes which has very good funding, but it doesn’t change anything in implementation, we do not take up those. We prioritize for impact the project will make, that’s how we manage time. And the funding – surprisingly, Maoya and Laurent, ‘til now, the funding has not limited us. If there is a restoration project which needs to be taken up, generally we do find funders. There is more awareness of the work which needs to be done with climate change with what is happening globally. We do get funding when it is needed. Luckily, we do have those funders with us who support us.
And limited data – data limitation is an issue in any restoration design when we need to design a project. We generate data. Sometimes we have basic data with us, some research which is available online, some research which PhDs have done in those areas. Otherwise, we talk to community, we talk to the people who live there to generate the baseline data. Any project, any ecological restoration, habitat restoration projects take a 3–5-year span, it is very large. So, the whole 5-6 years, we collect the seasonal data. As Dr. Pramit was saying, the soil data, the carbon data, the biodiversity data, whatever data they collect on a larger scale, we collect these data on a very ground level. We go and visit these sites and collect it over a very large period of time, so we do generate data. In India actually, the documentation was not very strong initially, but now, we do document everything we have, at the other organizations also. And so now the documented data is being generated.
Maoya: The type of measurements that Pramit was talking about, what would be your interest in that?
Neha: What we generate is very ground-level data – we collect soil, we collect water samples, we talk to the community, we document biodiversity. We do not have spatial or temporal scale data. If you are documenting those kind of data, if you have some flux monitor in the area where we are working, we might compare our data with your data. So, how can we access that data?
Pramit: All the data that I have mentioned, those are available on our portal, or if you want you can also contact me or contact the responsible scientist at ISRO and they will provide the data or the flux measurements. We are in the process now of putting all the data into the government of India data portals, everyone can download them, so that is one thing. They are working on that. We are planning to provide different levels of data, like L1 data, L2 data. We obviously have visibility, but otherwise all the data which anyone can directly use with a fairly good amount of curiosity and basic skill is already available. Secondly, if you want to have the gridded data, some gridded data, I mean most of the gridded data are available, but the flux data are not available in gridded format. It is available as time series data because it is not available at all the grid points, right? So, it is at specific locations representative of the ecosystems within their flux footprint. That is why it is available as a time series for a particular station, for a particular flux tower.
Neha: If we can access the data, can our organization use the data?
Pramit: Actually, it is happening.
Maoya: Pramit, tell us what the data really represents and how it could be relevant to her work?
Pramit: We measure different variables at multiple heights both above and within the canopy, and within the soil. The heart of this eddy covariance flux tower is the eddy covariance system in which we measure the fluxes of carbon dioxide, methane, water, energy- and energy means sensible heat flux, latent heat flux, and the momentum fluxes. These basically represent what is the exchange of CO2 between the ecosystem and the atmosphere, and how is it varying with time.
We can also find out what is the photosynthesis by the ecosystem and what is the respiration by that ecosystem. We are measuring the water vapor exchange also, from which we can find out what is the cross or total water vapor exchange which, of course, has two components – one which is the transpiration of the biomass and the evaporation of the physical water, and it is possible to separate these two. Then for the energy fluxes, it is very important to know whether it is dry sensible heat or the moist, latent heat flux in the form of the evaporation of the water. This is important also for the weather forecasting and other purposes because we need to know what will be the stability of the atmosphere, what is the heating, and mixing, and everything. For those purposes, data is used. It is about the fluxes that we measure.
Supplementary to this, we also measure weather components – the biometeorological variables: temperature, relative humidity, then incoming and outgoing shortwave and longwave radiation, photosynthetically active radiation at multiple heights both above the canopy and within the canopy. It is also possible to draw the profile, the vertical profile. We also measure soil heat flux, soil temperature, and soil moisture at multiple depths. We also measure phenological growth of the canopy by measuring the leaf area index, which is of course a handheld instrument-based measurement where one of us goes inside the canopy at regularly spaced intervals, mostly at a biweekly scale, and then measures the growth of the canopy – what is the leaf area index or what is the growth?
This is regarding the present set of instruments, but they are very soon augmenting these with the sap flow measurements which will directly tell us what is the amount of sap flowing through the xylem in the plants, which can actually help us in concentrating the transpiration in the winter. The phenological camera will give us the canopy growth. Most of the instruments, I think we have covered all of these. And also, we measure the soil respiration flux with the chambers which can directly tell us what is the respiration from the forest soil, what is the CO2 emission from the forest soil. So, all these measurements, if you use them with each other, can tell you about the ecosystem carbon cycle, how much is the respiration, how much is the photosynthesis, what is the net carbon uptake. Then you can study what is the water loss by the ecosystem, and in the process you can study what is the water use efficiency - how much carbon the forest is gaining at the cost of how much water. All these things you can study. You have got all of the biological and environmental variables. You can study their drivers or scale their impact on which variables are most important in driving their availability. These things you can do.
Neha: Wonderful, because as an organization, we do not have access to such measurements or such instruments or such machines and we are measuring data. We measure very…ground data. So, if we can have such data, it would be wonderful. We can understand a different perspective of the same area.
Maoya: Tell us a little bit more about how that information goes into the model, and how maybe the model values could be useful outside of the areas that are monitored?
Pramit: We have already used these measurements to develop a vegetation-photosynthesis-respiration model with eddy covariance meteorological variables as input. We can actually provide the fluxes like respiration and photosynthesis. This was done using our own measurements of multi-year-spanning measurements and across ecosystems. Presently we are also developing a process-based model. Traditionally, there are two approaches. One is the bottom-up approach. As the name suggests, it is bottom-up, from the plants to the atmosphere using the C3 model or C4 photosynthesis model, ForClim model or so. Those type of models, at present, we are developing. The other approach is the light-use efficiency equation which most of the modeling community uses. They use the light-use efficiency factor and then multiply with the stress factors, then come up with the synthesis or respiration. That approach is called the top-down because it is coming from the top. That actually, we have already done.
Our data has been already used to develop those models and all the related publications are in process. I wish to use those models to develop a gridded product of GPP - gross primary productivity - and photosynthesis, respiration, and evapotranspiration over India. I hope I will get enough time to work on that sometime, but the model is already basically available for anyone to use. We have now generated a lot of data. So basically, the way this ecosystem model works, there are a lot of specific plant functional types like broadleaf deciduous forest or coniferous evergreen forest, and we have got the measurements of all these fluxes and their drivers in these locations.
We have used these to parameterize those specific ecosystem models, but for KNP, the broadleaf deciduous forest, we have already done it. We have already developed a process-based ecosystem model, or a water model, which is already published as part of my Ph.D. work. For other forests, we are extending this work. We are extending this process-based model into the other forests and ecosystems. Since we have got a lot of data now, we can also run them with data viz techniques or DLs - deep learning models, which just record the input variables, and they can give you the output variables. We are also venturing and exploring those options as well.
Regarding some applications which are more into the socioeconomic aspects, these data are used by some of the other agencies and other universities. Let's say one of my students is working on the mangroves in Maharashtra in the Raigad District. He has gone to that place, he has geotagged each of these giant mangroves and other mangrove trees. In the western part of India – most of the mangroves in India are on the eastern coast, which is a sinking coast that can house the mangroves better, but the western part of India, the western coast, is actually rocky, so there is not much mangrove coverage in those places. He is actually collecting these DBH and other things to know about the biomass and all. And with our flux measurements at Pichavaram and other places we are trying to see if we can use those. So, we are also trying to use this data in multiple other applications.
Maoya: I would love Neha to tell us, from her perspective, how the conservation work on the ground is feeding into the work of the science institutions? So, as I've been…as I've been hearing Pramit speak, I hear that they have selected all these significant forests to make these measurements so that they could have high quality data and represent Earth system processes. To me, it almost feels like, if there wasn't the work of the conservation protecting these areas and restoring them, we wouldn’t be able to take these measurements and understand how the world works.
Neha: We are not selecting any type of forest. If you are traveling, maybe in Northeast India, Southeast India, or any part of India, when we see a wetland or mangrove or forest which needs restoration or a community which approaches us because they need restoration, we take up that. We do not select any ecosystem like, “Should we work on this, or this?” In this case, we generate data across India. We generate data in very degraded ecosystems, we generate data in very rich ecosystems. We use our data to measure impact.
Most of it is measurement of impact - what we are doing as an intervention, and what is the impact of that intervention, and how it changes that area, that community, that forest or that wetland. Most of the time, we are running around, we do not have time to publish data, sit on those data being generated. We have started a different site just for knowledge sharing of this data. We have a lot of insect data, a lot of biodiversity data, and a lot of forest data. And we publish that whole data on a different website just for knowledge sharing. That is being documented.
Maoya: That's a very important point, Neha. You are tracking ecosystems and change over time. Those are signals and aspects that models are really bad at reproducing. The ground truth of that change, the change from degraded to restored, is extremely valuable. Maybe you can tell us, Pramit, about how the institute might be able to incorporate data from organizations like Forrest into their models or their workflows?
Pramit: We do a lot of work in collaboration with the NGOS and other organizations, mostly with the citizens and other communities. In our institute, we have got a program [where] they come over here. We organize the workshop for them. They tell us of their requirements, and if we have the dataset, we provide them [with it]. We also conduct the training for them to learn the data processing of how we use this data. We take their help in facilitating measurements at a new location, maybe a new kind of measurement. Let’s say we need socioeconomic data, some survey-based data - we do it in collaboration with them. It is a two-way process where we can actually leverage each other’s strong points. That mechanism is already in place in our institute.
Then, also, we work quite closely with other institutes. We are mostly focused on in-situ measurements and our flux tower network, but our colleagues at ISRO, they also have got the satellites. When they want to validate their results, their findings basically, their space-based signals, or to develop a new product, then we work in collaboration. We exchange our data. In the process, we learn how to use the satellite data, how to get something more meaningful out of it. At the same time, we are getting so many types of instruments with different and unprecedented capabilities; like, we are getting the soil and the photosynthesis measurements, we are getting the lidar measurements, the synthetic aperture radar. So, all of these datasets are in combination with what we have already got - almost a decade-long or even, some are longer than that, data. So, in combination with that, our experience and our expertise, we can bring more information. That is how I see it.
Neha: We are documenting the carbon restoration potential of restored forests. These are very degraded areas – we select 100, 200 species and we restore these species. Large, medium, mixed canopies. Over 5 years’ period, we document [diameter at] breast height and canopy of these and we measure the carbon potential of these restored forests. Do you measure similarly, or do you just measure in a different way, and can we compare such data?
Pramit: All the measurements that you are doing are very precious for us and some of the measurements which you are doing that, we already have been contributing but at different locations. Like, let's say, you talked about this Ghat and all these measurements that we are doing, like we are doing in Western Maharashta actually, Pudur, and all these places. And also the soil, water…soil quality and water quality measurements also we are doing on Andaman Islands and Lakshadweep Islands quite frequently. The record that you have got of these individual trees, these are all geotagged, right?
Neha: Yes.
Pramit: That's very useful information. So, with the ECOSTRESS data or even these international space stations, with canopy height data, we can actually think about mapping the biomass and mapping individual trees and see how much is the aboveground biomass or belowground biomass. This can help in better stock-taking of the standing carbon biomass. Flux gives us the exchange. But in order to know what is the standing carbon quantity, we need this measurement. This would help us validate those space-based measurements in a better way.
Neha: And you work on species-level?
Pramit: Unfortunately not. We are a climate change institute, so our focus is on studying that impact on ecosystems as a whole. Ecosystem models or the climate models can’t have that much computational capacity to represent each tree or species.
Maoya: What's the role in these efforts in inspiring people to reconnect with nature and to go off and study things more deeply or to contribute?
Neha: We work very closely with communities. There's a village restoration program. Any village anywhere can approach us and they can ask us if we would like to reserve our forest, our wetlands, or our mangroves – any areas. We do work day to day. Then, we stay with those communities and work with them for the restoration design. They see that we have come with, for them, and we stayed there and we work with them. So the community acceptance is very high with our work.
We also train farmers working for biodiversity conservation in non-protected areas. There are forest areas which are just outside the wildlife sanctuaries or protected areas which have very high biodiversity, but these are not protected. These are owned by a community or farmers, so we all work with these farmers to protect these non-protected areas. We train these people. We call it conservation consciousness. So, there's a program - Conservation Consciousness, and every project we work on, we work with conservation consciousness with the community. Year after year when we work with communities in different areas and different ecosystems, they actually become, like, part of this, a larger family, a larger part of our organization.
How it happens: You start there. They say, “Why you have come to work here?” And after four years or five years’ period, they start calling us. “Oh, we have found a new owl here.” Or, “We have found a snake, which is very friendly, can we ID this snake?” The change is not maybe sometimes in soil, sometimes change is here. They start protecting what they have, they start documenting what they have, and they start contributing to us. Then, we leave that area because the work is done. They will take care of the land or the restoration which we have initiated, but the people have changed. Then it becomes sustainable work. Those are the indicators. Sometimes it's a quality indicator, we cannot put it in numbers, but it shows how the how the restoration works.
Pramit: In the initial days of my training, I remember I climbed up to install a flux instrument. One small unit, it fell down into the forest. It was very difficult to find. Without that, our entire day would go in vain. And I was always escorted by the armed forest guards to protect us from the wildlife, and also, from the poachers. They don’t understand what we are doing but they are always trying to support us to the best of their capability. And they came to us asking what we’re looking for, and we told them. They were able to find it! Our job was done. That always inspired me – how people actually value the work. Even if they don’t understand or contribute directly, they value the work.
It just reminds me of the success story of the Amur falcons in northeast India. The villagers were eventually convinced not to eat, not to kill the Amur falcons. They travel all the way from Siberia in the wintertime. Eventually the entire village was convinced not to destroy them.
Neha: So, NBA (National Biodiversity Authority) sometimes called us. “There is too many killing of snakes. Can you do something?” Then we called all the villagers and we said…Just, like, about snakes. “What do you think about snakes? What are your superstitions? Why do you kill [them]? What do you see when you see a snake coming?” Over that discussion, over some wonderful stories, very funny stories over the sessions, and after, they understand. There is nothing – we are just on two legs and they are crawling. We can respect those species, we can coexist. Maybe sometimes change takes a year or 2 years or 5 years. Sometimes it happens in a 5-hour session or 2-hour session. But after 2 years, they tell us, “Okay, now we have stopped killing snakes and we are protecting these snakes now.” And at least when they see the snake, they walk back and stop and wait, and let the snake pass. From conflict to coexistence, from degradation to restoration. The changes - it inspires people so, it inspires us also.
Maoya: I wanted to end on something inspiring about this conversation for you, for your work in the future or something inspiring about your work from the past that you feel is underappreciated and you want to underline.
Pramit: These flux measurements not only bring the skills together, it also brings the communities together to coexist from conflict.
Neha: Each of us can do something which can lead towards the healing of earth for restoration in whatever way you can. It's a very small thing and sometimes you think it doesn’t make a difference, but it does. Maybe you stop using plastic. Maybe you start supporting an organization which is working towards that. You start talking about this, you raise voice when something is being done which is wrong. One organization or some people are not enough to do this restoration or healing of earth. Each of us should start doing something.