A Framework to Assess the Hydrological and Socio-Economic Impacts of Forest Cover Change through Watershed Modelling

Forests are one of the major land use type in India covering more than 20 percent of the land area. Tenth Development Plan of India 2002–2007 recognises the serious underestimation of economic and social values of the forests. The Plan targets to bring at least 25% of the geographic area of the country under forest cover by the end of Tenth Plan (2007) and 33% of the geographic area by the end of Eleventh Plan (2012). In many parts of India, livelihoods of rural and tribal communities are largely dependent on forests or forest related activities. In recent years, various committees have been constituted by the Ministry of Environment & Forest and Planning Commission for examination of forestry issues. None of these committees has their agenda to look into the vital issues of forestry altering the hydrological processes. There is a need to study the impacts of forest policies on hydrological processes and livelihoods of the local community. In the present paper, an effort has been made to generate a conceptual framework, which integrates the water yield assessment under various policy options and their socio-economic impacts. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been used with Arc View GIS interface to simulate the sediment and water yields for various forestry policy scenarios.