Land Use Classification and Land Degradation in India

Why do two similar plots end up used differently?

Physical factors decide what land can be used for. These include slope, soil, climate and water.

Human factors decide what it actually gets used for. These include population and technology.

So two plots with the same physical potential can end up in different categories.

Sources: Dept of Agriculture, land use drivers.

Who owns land?

Private land belongs to individuals. Community land is owned collectively and used for shared needs such as fodder and fuelwood.

The community kind is called a common property resource. Village common grazing land is a good example. The official records count it as its own category.

Sources: Dept of Agriculture, village grazing land.

Where does the nine-fold grid come from?

The grid was recommended by the Technical Committee on Coordination of Agricultural Statistics in 1948. The Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare compiles it every year.

District data come from the states and union territories. The unit is the hectare.

Sources: Dept of Agriculture, Land Use Statistics metadata.

What counts as forest area?

Forest area is all land classified as forest under any law, or administered as forest. It can be state-owned or private. It can be wooded or kept as potential forest land.

Crops raised inside forests, and grazing areas inside them, stay in this category.

The legal record and the tree cover on the ground can differ. Exams like to test that gap.

Sources: Dept of Agriculture, forest area.

What are the next three categories?

Non-agricultural uses cover land under buildings, roads, railways and water such as rivers and canals.

Barren and unculturable land covers mountains, deserts and land that can be farmed only at exorbitant cost.

Permanent pasture and other grazing land includes village common grazing land.

Sources: Dept of Agriculture, middle categories.

What is land under miscellaneous tree crops?

This is cultivable land that is not counted in net area sown but is put to some farm use.

Casuarina trees, thatching grasses, bamboo bushes and fuel groves belong here, if they are not counted as orchards.

Sources: Dept of Agriculture, tree crops and groves.

What is fallow land?

Fallow land is farmland left unsown for a time. Two kinds are listed.

Current fallow is cropped area kept fallow during the current year.

Other fallow was taken up for cultivation but has been out of cultivation for at least one year and at most five years.

Sources: Dept of Agriculture, fallow land.

When does fallow land become culturable waste?

Culturable waste land is land available for cultivation but not cultivated for five years or more in succession, including the current year.

Such land may be fallow, or covered with shrubs and jungle that are not put to any use.

So the five-year line separates other fallow from culturable waste.

Sources: Dept of Agriculture, culturable waste.

Why do two totals exist for the same farmland?

When one plot grows two crops in a year, two totals track it. Gross cropped area counts each sowing separately. Net sown area counts the plot once.

Cropping intensity is gross cropped area divided by net sown area.

A higher value means more harvests a year from the same land.

Sources: Dept of Agriculture, net area sown.

Why is soil erosion easier to cause than to reverse?

FAO defines soil erosion as the loss of topsoil and nutrients. It is a natural process in mountain areas. Poor management often makes it much worse.

Once the fertile top layer is gone, it takes far longer to rebuild than it took to lose.

Sources: FAO Soils Portal, soil erosion.

How can too much water ruin farmland?

FAO explains that a water table rises when irrigation-driven recharge is greater than the natural discharge. In many irrigated areas, rising water tables have led to waterlogging and salinity problems.

Salinity problems in irrigated farming are often linked to an uncontrolled water table within one to two metres of the surface.

Sources: FAO, drainage water management · FAO, salinity problems.

Why does population crowd onto so little land?

Land covers only about 30% of the earth’s surface. Not all of that is fit to live on.

Roughly 90% of the world’s people live on that same 30%. Rugged terrain, deserts and thick forest stay thinly populated.

India shows the same pattern in miniature. Plains are about 43% of its land and support most farming and industry. Mountains are about 30% and hold water sources. Plateaus are about 27% and hold mineral reserves.

What are the main kinds of soil erosion?

Wind and flowing water strip the fertile top layer from a field. This happens most where natural vegetation has been cleared.

Sheet erosion happens when water flows as a thin sheet down a slope. It removes soil evenly across the surface.

Gully erosion happens when water cuts deep channels. It scars the land into bad land. In the Chambal basin, these gullies are called ravines.

Wind erosion blows loose soil off flat or gently sloping land. It does not carve channels.

Soil takes centuries to form. A single monsoon can wash it away.

Why does poor drainage cause two separate problems?

Heavy irrigation with poor drainage raises the water table close to the surface. The soil becomes waterlogged. Plant roots drown, and the land becomes unfit for most crops.

A second problem follows. Water evaporates from the topsoil and leaves salts behind. Over time, salinity and alkalinity build up. The land can become unusable for farming.

Both problems have one root cause. Water arrives but never drains away.

Which physical measures slow runoff?

FAO lists contour bunds, terraces and ridges as physical measures that reshape the land to cut runoff.

On slopes with heavy rain, stone barriers, bunds and terraces are advised.

Contour ploughing runs the plough across the slope, not up and down it.

Sources: FAO, runoff management · FAO STI Portal, contour ploughing.

What does mulching do?

Mulch farming keeps a protective cover of plant residues, such as straw or stalks, on the soil surface.

The cover helps rain soak in rather than run off. Residues also return nutrients and organic matter to the soil.

Sources: FAO, mulch farming · FAO STI Portal, contour ploughing.

What lies under the soil you can see?

Soil is the thin, grainy layer covering the earth’s surface. It forms when parent rock breaks down by weathering. It holds minerals, weathered rock and organic matter.

A cross-section shows layers. Topsoil is at the top and is rich in humus. Subsoil lies below it and mixes sand, silt and clay. Beneath that is weathered rock, and at the bottom is solid parent rock.

Five things shape soil: parent rock, climate, relief, living organisms and time. Building one centimetre of soil can take hundreds of years. That is why erosion is so hard to reverse.

What do afforestation and contour ploughing each stop?

Each method targets a different cause of erosion. The aim is the same: slow whatever removes the soil.

Afforestation means planting trees on degraded or bare land. Roots bind the soil in place.

Terracing cuts a steep slope into flat steps. Both terracing and contour ploughing slow runoff. Rain gets more time to soak in.

Controlled grazing rotates where animals feed. No single patch is stripped bare.

Shelter belts are rows of trees that block wind. They stop it from carrying loose soil away.

Which other conservation methods work alongside terracing?

Mulching covers bare ground between plants. It keeps moisture in the soil.

Contour barriers and small rock dams are stone or grass barriers. They slow water and trap soil before it washes away.

Intercropping grows different crops in alternating rows. The ground is never fully bare. Rain wash is reduced.

Can damaged land actually recover?

Yes, at village scale. In Sukhomajri, Haryana, villagers built rainwater dams in the mid-1970s. They also agreed to keep animals off the watershed hills.

Tree cover on the hillside rose from 13 to 1,292 trees per hectare. Wheat yields rose sharply between 1977 and 1986.

The lesson is that rules and incentives matter as much as engineering.

Sources: Watershed Markets, Sukhomajri.

What forest target did India set in 1952?

The National Forest Policy of 1952 aimed to put one-third, or 33%, of the land under forest.

The State of Forest Report 2023 puts forest cover at 21.76% of the country. Adding tree cover gives 25.17%.

So India is still short of the one-third goal.

Sources: Eco-Intelligent, National Forest Policy 1952 · PIB, State of Forest Report 2023.

What is regur, or black soil?

Regur is clayey and holds moisture for a long time. It forms from the lava flows of the Deccan Trap.

It suits cotton well. It is a main reason cotton grows without heavy irrigation in the Deccan.

Its poor drainage is a strength here, not a weakness. Exams like to flip this into a trap.

What are red and laterite soils?

Red soil forms on crystalline igneous rocks. It is found in low-rainfall parts of the eastern and southern Deccan plateau. Iron diffused through the rock gives it its colour. The same soil looks yellow when it is hydrated.

Laterite comes from the Latin word for brick. It forms under alternating wet and dry tropical seasons through heavy leaching.

It is found in the Western Ghats, Odisha and the Northeast. With proper conservation it suits tea, coffee and cashew.

What are arid soils?

Arid soils are sandy and saline. They are short on humus. They are found mainly in western Rajasthan.

A hard kankar layer in the lower horizons blocks water from sinking in. With proper irrigation, these soils can still be made cultivable.

Which traps do exams set on this topic?

Do not confuse forest area with tree cover on the ground. One is a legal record. The other is what grows there.

Learn the five-year line that separates other fallow from culturable waste.

Black soil’s poor drainage helps rainfed crops. A statement saying it stops them is a trap.

Desertification has no climatic boundary. Parts of Rajasthan and the Deccan Plateau that are not deserts still lose land to overgrazing and heavy groundwater use.

How much of India’s land is degraded?

ISRO’s Space Applications Centre mapped 97.85 million hectares as degraded in 2018-19. That is about 29.7% of India’s 328.72 million hectares.

Of this, 83.69 million hectares is classed as desertified.

Sources: Down To Earth, ISRO atlas.

What has India promised to restore?

At the 14th UNCCD Conference of the Parties in 2019, India raised its restoration goal from 21 to 26 million hectares by 2030.

Sources: Deccan Herald, COP14.

Why does the legal record matter more than the tree count?

The land use grid is an administrative tool. It tells planners who is responsible for a plot and what rules apply to it.

A plot recorded as forest stays under forest rules even if the trees are gone. That is why forest area and forest cover are reported as two different numbers.

The same logic applies to every other category. The record shows how land is classed, not only how it looks today.

Why does a land-scarce country care about cropping intensity?

India cannot add farmland the way it can add roads. The pressure to feed more people falls on the land already sown.

So planners watch two things. They watch how much land is sown. They also watch how many crops each plot yields in a year.

Irrigation and short-duration varieties raise cropping intensity. Poor drainage and salinity pull it down, because they take land out of use.

Quick recap: why can forest area have no trees, and what is the five-year line?

Forest area is a legal record, not a live tree-cover survey. Land stays classified as forest even if the cover was cleared long ago.

Other fallow land has been out of cultivation for one to five years. Beyond five straight years, it is reclassified as culturable waste.

Quick recap: name three kinds of land degradation and a fix for each

Soil erosion is slowed by afforestation, contour ploughing and terracing.

Waterlogging is reduced by proper drainage, so that irrigation water does not pile up under the field.

Salinity and alkalinity are controlled by careful irrigation with enough drainage.

All three problems start with how water and soil are managed on the land.

Why is black soil’s poor drainage a strength?

Water drains slowly through clayey regur. The soil holds moisture for a long time after the rains stop.

A cotton crop can use that stored water through the dry months. This is why the crop does well in the Deccan without heavy irrigation.

What should you remember?

Keep five anchors. There are nine land-use categories. Forest area is a legal record. Five years or more uncultivated makes culturable waste.

Net sown area counts each plot once. Cropping intensity is gross over net.

About 29.7% of India’s land was degraded in 2018-19.

Sources: Dept of Agriculture, summary · Down To Earth, ISRO atlas.