Mumbai, Apr 21 (PTI) The carbon stored in India’s living forest vegetation is projected to increase across all major forest regions of the country, but not evenly, a study has said.
The largest gains are projected in the desert and semi-arid zones, followed by the Trans-Himalaya, Indo-Gangetic Plain, and Deccan Peninsula. The carbon stored in the Western Ghats, Northeast, and Himalayan forests will also increase, but more modestly, it said.
The study, conducted by Fitha Fathima, Mareena Mathew, and Roxy Mathew Koll – researchers of the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) – focuses on how climate change is reshaping this phenomenon across the country’s forests.
The study also sheds light on how climate change is reshaping carbon storage across India’s forests. Published in ‘Environmental Research: Climate’, the study explores how forest carbon may change across the recent past, near future, mid-century, and late century under low, medium and high fossil fuel emissions pathways.
The study finds that the carbon stored in India’s living forest vegetation is projected to increase across all major forest regions of the country, but not evenly. India’s forests are an important carbon sink, helping remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in living vegetation, such as trunks, branches, leaves, and roots. But how this carbon storage will change in a warming world has remained unclear, the study said.
Across India’s forested regions, the study projects that average carbon stock rises from 7.74 kilograms of carbon per square metre in the historical period to 10.24 under low emissions, 11.76 under medium emissions, and 13.67 under high emissions by the late 21st century. That corresponds to increases of about 35 per cent, 62 per cent, and 97 per cent by 2100. The three futures remain broadly similar until around 2030, then begin to diverge under different emission pathways by 2050, it said.
The study also shows that rainfall variability plays a stronger national-scale role than temperature in shaping changes in forest carbon, with precipitation effects often unfolding over several years rather than instantly. This highlights the importance of understanding regional climate patterns, especially rainfall, for future forest planning, carbon sink strategies, and climate adaptation.
The research focuses on the carbon stored in living forest vegetation, the carbon held in trunks, branches, leaves and roots (vegetation carbon biomass or VCB). This is the living biomass part of forest carbon, not the carbon in dead wood, litter or soils. Using the LPJ-GUESS vegetation model and climate projections from CMIP6, the researchers examined how this living carbon changes from the recent past to the near, mid, and late 21st century under low, medium, and high emissions pathways.
The rise is not evenly spread across the country. The largest percentage increases are projected in the desert and semi-arid zones, broadly covering western and central parts of India, especially parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat, western Madhya Pradesh, and adjoining dry interiors.
These are followed by the Trans-Himalaya in Ladakh and adjoining cold-arid highlands, the Indo-Gangetic forest belt across parts of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal, and the Deccan Peninsula, which broadly spans forested interiors of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and parts of Odisha.
The Western Ghats in Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, besides Tamil Nadu, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, and parts of Sikkim, and the Himalayan belt in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, northern West Bengal, and parts of Sikkim also show increases, but smaller ones. At this broad regional scale, the study does not project an overall decline in living forest carbon in any of the eight ecological regions it analyses, the study said.
Higher-emissions futures may produce larger modelled gains in living biomass in some regions, but they also bring more warming, stronger extremes, and greater risks from drought, wildfire, pests, and other disturbances. Forest responses to climate and carbon dioxide are complex, and gains in one part of the system do not cancel the wider risks of a hotter world, it added.
Koll, one of the authors of the paper, said India’s forests are not responding to climate change in a uniform way. Some regions may store more carbon in living biomass, but that does not mean climate change is helping forests. A warmer world is also bringing greater risks from drought, fire, and other disturbances. What this study shows most clearly is that rainfall matters deeply, and that future forest planning must be regional, climate-aware, and rooted in risk prevention. PTI PR NP
 The carbon stored in India's living forest vegetation is projected to increase across all major forest regions of the country, but not){kind=link}