Forest Types of India Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The western side of the Western Ghats carries tropical evergreen forests.

The windward western slopes of the Western Ghats face the south-west monsoon and receive more than 200 cm of rain a year, with only a short dry season. That supports dense, tall, multi-layered tropical evergreen forest, with trees such as rosewood, mahogany and ebony.

On the leeward eastern side, in the rain shadow, the rainfall falls away, and the forests change to semi-evergreen, then moist deciduous and finally dry deciduous types further east. Those are the vegetation of the drier slopes and the plateau, not of the wet western face.

Answer: B

The notified (recorded) forest area is 30.72% of the State's geographical area.

The India State of Forest Report gives Madhya Pradesh a recorded forest area of about 94,689 km², which is 30.72% of its 308,252 km² geographical area, the largest recorded forest area of any state.

The other percentages correspond to different measures or to no measure at all; the State's actual forest cover, assessed from satellite data, is a little over a quarter of its area, which is a different figure from the notified area.

Answer: C

The key gives dry teak forest.

Madhya Pradesh's forests are mostly tropical dry deciduous, with teak the dominant tree of the dry teak type over much of the plateau and Satpura region. Moist sal savanna is a small eastern type, which makes it the weakest option.

The two dry mixed deciduous types are the rivals, since the mixed type is large too. A state forest department deck I found gives teak as 19 per cent of forest and the misc category as the largest, which splits the sources; I could not find a type-by-type area table, so the choice rests on the key.

Answer: B

The Chambal valley carries ravine thorn forest.

In Champion and Seth's classification of Indian forest types, ravine thorn forest is a recognised edaphic type of the tropical thorn forests, found on the deeply gullied badlands of the Chambal, Yamuna and their tributaries. It is an open scrub of species such as Acacia leucophloea, Prosopis and Capparis on eroded ravine slopes.

Desert thorn forest belongs to the sandy plains of western Rajasthan. Butea forest and babul forest are local stands dominated by a single species, not the characteristic type of the Chambal ravines.

Answer: C

The keyed answer is Moderately dense forest.

The question is restricted to the recorded forest area, the land legally recorded as forest (reserved, protected and similar forests), where the better-stocked forest is concentrated. The key says moderately dense forest, canopy 40 to 70 per cent, covers the most of it. Across the whole state, including forest outside the recorded area, the position is different: the forest survey of 2021 reports about 34,200 sq km moderately dense against about 36,600 sq km open forest, with only about 6,700 sq km very dense, which is why open forest looks like the answer if the restriction is missed.

What could not be confirmed is the breakdown inside the recorded forest area itself, so that part rests on the official key. Very dense forest is the smallest class, and 'light forest' is not a class used in the survey.

Answer: C

The deciduous tree is Acacia catechu.

Acacia catechu, khair, is a tree of the dry deciduous forests of India that sheds its leaves in the dry season. Its heartwood yields katha (cutch), used with betel leaf and in tanning, and it is a common tree of the forests of Madhya Pradesh.

Abies pindrow (silver fir), Pinus wallichiana (blue pine) and Cedrus deodara (deodar) are Himalayan conifers that keep their needles all year, so they are evergreen.

Answer: D

The 'Flame of the Forest' is Butea monosperma.

Butea monosperma, known as palas or dhak, covers itself in bright orange-red flowers in spring after its leaves fall, so that whole stretches of forest seem to be on fire. It is the State flower of Jharkhand.

Cassia fistula (amaltas) has hanging yellow flowers and is called golden shower, Bauhinia variegata (kachnar) has orchid-like flowers, and Bombax ceiba (semal) is the red silk cotton tree.

Answer: B

Tropical forests are classified into 7 groups.

In the classification of Champion (1936) and Champion and Seth (1968), the tropical forests form seven groups: wet evergreen, semi-evergreen, moist deciduous, littoral and swamp, dry deciduous, thorn, and dry evergreen forests.

The 16 type groups of the full classification include these seven tropical groups along with subtropical, temperate, alpine and other groups, so 8, 6 and 5 do not match the tropical count.

Answer: B

The key's answer is May.

Teak is deciduous: it sheds its leaves through the cold and hot weather and stands bare for part of the dry season. The new foliage appears around May, at the end of the hot season, with the first pre-monsoon showers.

In March the trees are usually leafless, in July they are in full leaf, and October is when the leaves begin to age before falling.

Answer: A

The dominant tree of India's dry tract is khejri (printed 'Khejari'), Prosopis cineraria.

Khejri is the characteristic tree of the arid and semi-arid regions of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana. Its deep roots reach groundwater, it fixes nitrogen, and it supplies fodder, fuel and food (the pods, sangri), which is why it is called the king of the desert and is Rajasthan's state tree.

Khair grows in dry deciduous forests but is not the dominant species of the desert tract. Poplar is a tree of irrigated plains in the north-west, and Malabar neem (Melia dubia) of the south.