Optimizing restoration: A holistic spatial approach to deliver Nature's Contributions to People with minimal tradeoffs and maximal equity.

Ecosystem restoration is inherently a complex activity with inevitable tradeoffs in environmental and societal outcomes. These tradeoffs can potentially be large when policies and practices are focused on single outcomes versus joint achievement of multiple outcomes. Few studies have assessed the tradeoffs in Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) and the distributional equity of NCP from forest restoration strategies.

Forest cover resilience to climate change over India using the MC2 dynamic vegetation model.

It is imperative to understand the climate change impact on the forest ecosystem to develop appropriate mitigation and management strategies. We have employed a process-based dynamic vegetation modeling (MAPSS-CENTURY: MC) approach to project change in vegetation life forms under projected climate conditions that attained 81% overall accuracy. The present and projected climate conditions suggested highly resilient/stable forest covers in wet climate regimes and moderately resilient in dry semi-arid regions.

Land use and climate change impacts on distribution of plant species of conservation value in Eastern Ghats, India: a simulation study.

Effective monitoring of the current status of species distributions and predicting future distributions are very important for conservation practices at the ecosystem and species levels. The human population, land use, and climate are important factors that influence the distributions of species. Even though future simulations have many uncertainties, such studies can provide a means of obtaining species distributions, range shifts, and food production and help mitigation and adaptation planning.

Dynamics and determinants of land change in India: integrating satellite data with village socioeconomics.

We examine the dynamics and spatial determinants of land change in India by integrating decadal land cover maps (1985-1995-2005) from a wall-to-wall analysis of Landsat images with spatiotemporal socioeconomic database for ~630,000 villages in India. We reinforce our results through collective evidence from synthesis of 102 case studies that incorporate field knowledge of the causes of land change in India. We focus on cropland-fallow land conversions, and forest area changes (excludes non-forest tree categories including commercial plantations).