Dehradun: Forest Ecology and Climate Change Division, FRI organized a one-week compulsory training course on ‘Management of Forests for Water Quality Improvement’ for officers of Indian Forest Service’s. This training program was designed to expose the participants to the recently studied advances in forest management. Various topics were discussed to enhance the understanding of the issues related to forest hydrology, management plan, and the policies for improving the water quality by forestry interventions. Topics covered in the training were from basic to the applied such as water issues and forestry interventions, ecohydrology supported ecological engineering, vegetative and mechanical measures for resource conservation and improving the ecohydrological aspect of forest ecosystems, forest management for sustained water yield case studies on River rejuvenation, etc.
Among the 16 IFS officers of the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Gujarat, Utter Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Nagaland, Uttarakhand, Odisha, and National Capital New Delhi attended the compulsory program. Field visits were conducted for the participants on rehabilitated limestone quarries at Sahastradhara and hydrological services assessment at the Kempty watershed. The installations of various instruments have been done at the site such as weather station, water yield assessment (H-Flumes), sediment load and soil moisture sensors to assess the hydrological services of the watershed at Kempty with the help of the forest department. All participants have learned about the functioning of the instruments at the watershed. This field visit has been completed successfully by hydrologist Dr. Parmanand kumar, Scientist-D, and his team from FRI accompanied by Divisional Forest Officer, forest division of Kempty. On the valedictory occasion, all the participants expressed their experiences of the training and emphasized that such training needs to be conducted regularly to enhance the skills and knowledge on such important aspects.
The session was Chief Guest of the function Sh. Rajiv Bhartari, Chairman, Biodiversity Board Government of Uttarakhand River rejuvenation planning is necessary along with water conservation and forest management. Also expressed that rivers have different owners and stakeholders so should be treated meticulously and biodiversity assessment should be done to minimize the loss of biodiversity. He insisted that FRI should undertake analytical studies to know the ground reality also. DG ICFRE and Director, FRI Arun Singh Rawat said that as per the direction of the MOEF the course was designed to provided recent advances in hydrological studies in forests. He also appreciated the idea of taking site and doing an analytic study. He said that project on this aspect is submitted to the Ministry of Environment Forests & Climate Change on that. The training ended with the vote of thanks by Dr. Parmanand Kumar Coordinator of the training course.
