ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE ASSIGNMENT 2
SUBMITTED BY: ASHI BHARDWAJ (DTU/2K16/A1/067) ASHI GUPTA (DTU/2K16/A1/068)
INDIA AS A MEGA DIVERSITY NATION What is mega diversity? A large number and wide range of species; exceptional biological diversity.
What is a mega-diverse country? A mega-diverse country is one that harbors the majority of the Earth’s species and is therefore considered extremely bio-diverse. The 17 mega-diverse countries are:
Australia Brazil China Colombia Democratic Republic of the Congo Ecuador India Indonesia Madagascar Malaysia Mexico Papua New Guinea Peru Philippines South Africa United States
Venezuela
India as a mega diverse country: India is rich in biodiversity from north to south and from east to west. India contains many species that world’s none country have. It has 14 major basins through which drain numerous rivers. The annual rainfall varies from less than 37 cm in Rajasthan to 1500m in Cherrapunji. The country experiences three different seasons – winter, summer, and monsoons. It has two global terrestrial biodiversity hot spots – the North-eastern States and the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats have moist deciduous forests and rainforests. The region shows high species diversity as well as high levels of endemism. Around 62% of reptile and 77% of amphibians are found in here. The North-eastern States depicts high altitudinal variations. This area has at least 163 globally threatened species like one-horned rhinoceros and the wild Asian water buffalo. The Relict Dragonfly, an endangered species found here. This zone houses the Himalayan Newt the only salamander species found within Indian limits.
Species Diversity: India contains a great wealth of biological diversity in its terrestrial and aquatic areas. This richness is shown in absolute numbers of species and the proportion they represent of the world total. Table 1: Comparison between the Number of Species in India and the World
Group
Mammals
Number of Number of SI/SW species species (%) in India (SI) in the world (SW) 350
4629
7.6
Birds
1224
9702
12.6
Reptiles
408
6550
6.2
Amphibians
197
4522
4.4
Fishes
2546
21730
11.7
Flowering Plants
15000
250000
6.0
India has many scientific institutes and botanical garden (like NBRI), university departments interested in various aspects of biodiversity. A large number of scientists and environmentalist have been engaged in inventory, research, and monitoring. The general state of knowledge about the abundance and richness of the species is therefore fairly good.
Ecological conditions: The great variety of ecological conditions prevailing in India, tropical location, climate and physical features all aid in supporting an enormous diversity of wildlife, including, hot desert forms, like wild ass and the cold desert forms, like the Tibetan antelope: animals of open scrubland, like the black buck and of grassy swamps, like the rhinoceros; animals of the deciduous forests like the wild gaur and of the tropical rainforests, like the lion-tailed macaque.
Bio-geographical composition:
India’s bio-geographical composition is unique as it combines living forms from three major bio-geographical realms, namely – Eurasian, Agro-Tropical, and Indo-Malayan. India lies at the confluence of Ethiopian, Palaearctic, and Indo-Malayan faunas and possesses some interesting components. The chinkara, the hyena, and the rates represent the Ethiopian element; the lynx, wolf, hangul represent the Palaearctic; the Chinese by red panda and the musk-deer; the Indo-Malayan by the hoolock gibbon, the goat-antelope, and the mouse deer. The endemic varieties include sloth bear, antelope or black buck, four-horned antelope and Boselaphus or nilgai.
Flora and Fauna: 15,000 species of flowering plants, 53,430 species of insects; 5050 species of mollusks, 6,500 species of other invertebrates; 2,546 species of fishes; 1228 species of birds, 446 species of reptiles, 372 species of mammals and 204
species of amphibians have been identified. India’s biodiversity is estimated to be over 45,000 plant species representing about 7% of the world’s flora and India stands tenth in 25 most plant-rich countries of the world. Its variety of animal life represents 6.5 per cent of world’s fauna. Being one of the oldest and largest agriculture societies, India has at least 166 species of crop plants and 320 species of wild relatives of cultivated crops. The vegetation ranges from xerophytic in Rajasthan, evergreen in the North-East and the Ghat areas, mangroves of coastal regions, conifers of the hills and the dry deciduous forests of central India to alpine pastures in the high reaches of the Himalaya. The forests India have been classified into 16 types and 251 subtypes by climatic and edaphic conditions. The country has many alternative medicines, like Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathic systems that are mainly prepared from plantbased raw materials. Herbal preparations for pharmaceutical and cosmetic purposes form part of the traditional biodiversity uses in India. It has great marine diversity due to its 7500km long coastline. The near shore coastal waters of India are extremely rich fishing grounds. The marine environment of India supports coral reefs in the Gulf of Kutch, off the southern mainland coast, and around some islands opposite Sri Lanka. Indian coral reefs’ resources are of high commercial value. On the Gulf of Mannar and Gulf of Kutch reefs corals, coral debris and coral sands are widely exploited, and ornamental shells, sharks, and pearl oysters are the basis of an important reef industry in the south of India. Five species of marine turtle occur in Indian waters: Green turtle Chelonia mydas, Loggerhead Caretta caretta, Olive RidleyLepidochelys olive,
Hawksbill Eretmochelys imbricate, and Leatherback Dermochelys coriacea. Seagrass beds are important feeding areas for the Dugong dugon, plus several species of marine turtle.
Endemic Species in India: India has many endemic plant and animal species. Among plants, species endemism is estimated at 33%. More than 140 endemic genera but no endemic families (Botanical Survey of India, 1983). Areas rich in endemism are north-east India, the Western Ghats and the north-western and eastern Himalayas are hot spot. A small pocket of local endemism also occurs in the Eastern Ghats. The Gangetic plains are generally poor in endemics, while the Andaman and Nicobar Islands contribute at least 220 species to the endemic flora of India (Botanical Survey of India, 1983). WCMC's Threatened Plants Unit (TPU) is in the preliminary stages of cataloguing the world's centres of plant diversity; approximately 150 botanical sites worldwide are so far recognised as important for conservation action, but others are constantly being identified (IUCN, 1987). Five locations have so far been issued for India: the
Agastyamalai Hills, Silent Valley and New Amarambalam Reserve and Periyar National Park (all in the Western Ghats), and the Eastern and Western Himalaya. Endemism among mammals and birds is relatively low. Only 44 species of Indian mammal have a range that is confined entirely to within Indian territorial limits. Four endemic species of conservation significance occur in the Western Ghats. They are the Liontailed macaque Macaca silenus, Nilgiri leaf monkey Trachypithecus johni, Brown palm civet Paradoxurus jerdoni and Nilgiri tahr Hemitragus hylocrius. Only 55 bird species are endemic to India, with distributions concentrated in areas of high rainfall. They are located mainly in eastern India along the mountain chains where the monsoon shadow occurs, south-west India and the Nicobar and Andaman Islands. In contrast, endemism in the Indian reptilian and amphibian fauna is high. There are around 187 endemic reptiles, and 110 endemic amphibian species. Eight amphibian genera are not found outside India.
India’s Biodiversity as a beauty: The eastern Himalayas from a humid region having high monsoon rain fall, milder temperature and less snowfall. The mighty mountains with their snow-pick and extremely rich forest exert a tremendous influence on the flora and fauna of the region. Arunachal Pradesh is a land of mighty rocks and luxuriant forests, gentle streams and raging torrents. It presents a breath taking spectacle of nature in her glory, beauty of gorges and galaxy of ethnics people make the area as one of the best in the world. The mountain range in Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram and the Darjeeling hills are symbol of celestial splendor where a good number of peaks rise well over 7000m., the highest being the Kanchenjungha 8335m which is very close to Mt. Everest, the world highest peak.
Bio-cultural diversity: There is a vital, but often neglected factor when we focus on biodiversity. It may be a matter of surprise to understand that the tribal people who officially constitute 7.5 percent of India’s population have preserved around 90 percent of the country’s bio-cultural diversity. To a large extent, the survival of our biodiversity depends on how best the tribal are looked after.
Preservation of bio-diversity: To preserve the rich biodiversity, nine biosphere reserves have been set up in specific biogeographic” zones: the biggest being in the Deccan Peninsula in the Nilgiris covering Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. Others include the Nanda Devi in Uttarakhand in the Western Himalayas, the Nokrek in Meghalaya, Manas, and Dibru Saikhowa in Assam, the Sunderbans in the Gangetic plain in West Bengal, Similar in Orissa, the Great Nicobar and the Gulf of Mannar in Tamil Nadu. As per satellite imaging, about 19 percent of the land area of the country comprise of forests. It has 80 national parks at present, which houses the largest number of tigers and one-horned rhinos found in the world, Asiatic lions and a large percent of elephants. Six significant wetland areas of India have been declared as “Ramsar Sites” under the Ramsar Convention. Under the World Heritage Convention, five natural sites have been declared as “World Heritage Sites.”
India accredited the International Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) on 18 February 1994 and became Party to the Convention in May 1994. The CBD is an international legal instrument for fostering conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from commercial and other utilization of genetic resources. It is the responsibility of The Ministry of Environment and Forest in India to oversee environmental policy and procedures and the administration of the national parks of the country as well. India has worked on creating ‘landscape conversion’ that includes wildlife reserves, communal forest, and some private lands. All these factors and many more is the reason behind why India is called a mega biodiversity centre and makes it one of the seventeen mega biodiversity countries of the world.
Conclusion With bird eye view of this paper, in our opinion the biodiversity is not only genes, species, population, community and ecosystem only but also it refers to productivity, nutritional status, biocontrol, biofertilizers, bioenergy, breeding strategies, livelihood, lifestyle, endogenous knowledge with ex-situ and in-situ conservation. We have a lot of endogenous species of flora and fauna in all ecosystems which are important for developing countries particularly India where economic depend heavily on these resources. India’s megadiversity is well placed, cultural diversity, different religions, languages, traditions and festivals, Ayurveda, Unani, Homeopaths and Herbal preparations (cosmetics and Pharmaceuticals purposes). They are part of traditional biodiversity. Many crops like rice sugarcane, mango, jute, citrus, banana, bazra, jwar etc, arose in India and spread throughout the world and a large proportion of the Indian biodiversity is still unexplored.
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