A STUDY ON FOREST COMMUNITY STRUCTURE AND SOIL QUALITY IN RELATION TO FOREST DENSITY IN ASSAM

Forests play a crucial role in maintaining healthy environment by regulating the hydrological cycle, acting as natural filters by capturing and absorbing pollutants from the air, recharging groundwater reserves, reducing soil erosion, and preventing sedimentation in rivers and streams. Forests are natural carbon sinks and mitigate climate change by reducing concentration of greenhouse gas (GHGs). However, since the last few decades, forests all over the world are under tremendous pressure owing to deforestation, changing land use pattern, infrastructure development, over exploitation of forest resources etc. These problems are also prevalent in the Eastern Himalayan Region including Northeast India. In order to understand the dynamics of loss of forest cover and changing land use due to anthropogenic pressure and its impact on forest community structure, forest fragmentation and habitat loss, forest biomass and forest soil a study has been carried out in the twin reserve forest – Barduar Reserve Forest and Mayang Hill Reserve Forest (RF) of Kamrup West Forest Division, Kamrup District, Assam, India. The study area is located 64 km (approx.) away from Guwahati city in the Assam Meghalaya border enclosing the historic tectonic lake Chandubi beel. Forest cover mapping has been carried out using Landsat time series data (TM/EMT+/OLI) for the year 1990-91, 2000-01, 2010-11 and 2015-17 in GIS environment which found that there has been gradual decline of very dense forest (forest cover > 70%) by 413.04 ha, dense forest (forest cover 40 70%) by 203.44 ha. On the contrary, open forest (forest cover 10 – 40%) has increased by 254.05 ha and scrub (forest cover 70%), 0.0099% per year in dense forest (cover 40- 70%). Deforestation is prominent in the low elevation, low slope regions of the two RFs and on 1km buffer area of the roadsides passing by the RFs. These have led to fragmentation of forests in the study area. There has been continuous forest fragmentation from 1990