- Forests are the dominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are distributed across the globe.
- Forests account for 75% of the gross primary productivity of the biosphere, and contains 80% of the Earth’s plant biomass.
- A forest constitutes many components that can be broadly divided into two categories that are biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) components.
- Forest is made up of many layers such as forest floor, understory, canopy, and emergent layer.
- Forests can be classified in various ways such as Grasslands, Temperate, Tropical types with their numerous subtypes.
- Due to increasing population and consequential expansion of civilization, there has been continuous depletion of natural forests over the centuries.
USE OF FOREST RESOURCES
- Forest is an important natural resource. Forests are vital for the ecological balance and play an important role in temperature regulation in the atmosphere.
- Forests are natural and vast reservoir of food and shelter for animals. They provide natural habitats for numerous species of plants, animals and micro-organisms.
- Forests provide timber, bamboo, canes, leaves, grass, oil, resins, gums, shellac, tanning materials, dyes, hides, fur, fruits, nuts, roots, tubers and other useful things for human beings
- Forests provide raw materials for forest-based industries.
- Forests are the natural home to medicinal herbs and plants.
- directly or indirectly affects the climate (temperature, precipitation, moisture, underground water-table).
- Forests prevent floods and soil erosion, land degradation and improve the quality of air and water.