Guwahati: The Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE)-Rain Forest Research Institute (RFRI), Jorhat, in collaboration with the Assam Forest Department, launched the state’s first Forest Soil Health Cards (FSHC) on Tuesday.
The cards, covering all 33 territorial forest divisions, were officially released by Assam’s PCCF & HoFF Sandeep Kumar in the presence of Dr. Nitin Kulkarni, Director, ICFRE-RFRI, Jorhat, Dinesh K. Meena, Scientist-D & Principal Investigator of the All India Coordinated Research Project on Preparation of Forest Soil Health Cards, and other senior forest officials.
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Developed to address the lack of scientific data on forest soil health in Assam, the FSHCs provide recommendations for improving soil fertility and boosting productivity in degraded or low-producing forest areas.
The cards were formally handed over to the Assam Forest Department.
ICFRE-RFRI, Jorhat, is spearheading FSHC development for Northeast India. This initiative comes as India works towards its commitment, made at the 2015 UNFCCC conference in Paris, to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through afforestation by 2030.
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While the Ministry of Agriculture launched the Soil Health Card Scheme for agricultural soils, forest soils were initially excluded.
To address this, the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, through CAMPA, funded the All India Coordinated Research Project, implemented by ICFRE, Dehradun.
This project aims to develop FSHCs for all 788 forest divisions nationwide, assessing 12 key soil fertility parameters.
The program is crucial for improving soil health management and achieving India’s climate goals.