This is an experiment to plot data from data.gov, the open data portal by Government of India. The tool used for plotting is CARTO.

From the data above, a quick observation that pops up is - reduction in forest areas seems to be pretty high in the North East states during 2009-2011 period. The swath of reds in the North East India is hard to miss. In particular, Manipur and Nagaland stand out with more than one percentage point decrease in total forest area during this period. Looking at the 2011 forest cover layer in the above map(enable it to see it), it is clear that North Eastern India has a very high percentage of forest cover, especially in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. However, the deforestation trend is very striking in the entire region.

On the other end of the spectrum, Punjab and Jharkhand increased their forest areas by an impressive 6.0% and 2.9% respectively.

A quick google search on deforestation in North East India yields links to articles like this, this and programs like Climate Change Adaptation – North Eastern Region of India.

One of the things I learned from this exercise, about my own country, is that the North East region is considered as one of the biodiversity hot-spots in the world. It appears North East region is already facing challenges from a changing climate and the reduction in forest areas could only exacerbate this trend.


  • p.s: My home state did not fare particularity well. It posted a net decrease in forest area by 0.6%.

  • This Map was generated using cartoDB. The data is from : data.gov. Link to csv