{"id":39813,"date":"2019-01-03T17:22:54","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T11:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=39813"},"modified":"2019-01-03T17:22:54","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T11:52:54","slug":"exotic-trees-eating-up-western-ghats-grasslands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/exotic-trees-eating-up-western-ghats-grasslands\/","title":{"rendered":"Exotic trees eating up Western Ghat\u2019s grasslands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/national\/kerala\/exotic-trees-eating-up-western-ghats-grasslands\/article25892844.ece\">Exotic trees eating up Western Ghat\u2019s grasslands<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>News:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Western Ghats lost almost one-fourth high-altitude grasslands due to invasion of exotic trees.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Important Facts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Most of this loss occurred on the mountain tops of the <strong>Nilgiri, Palani and Anamalai hill<\/strong> ranges, which comprise more than half of the Ghat\u2019s shola-grassland ecosystems.<\/li>\n<li>The satellite images revealed that 60% of the shola-grassland landscape has changed and almost 40% of native high-elevation grasslands have disappeared.<\/li>\n<li>The loses are primarily due to the expansion of exotic trees (pine, acacia and eucalyptus).<\/li>\n<li>Shola-grassland ecosystems in Tamil Nadu showed the highest rates of invasion of exotic trees<\/li>\n<li>Even though no plantations were established between 2003 and 2017, invasion by existing trees increased areas under exotic plantations by 27% in the Palanis and 17% in the Nilgiris.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>About Shola Grassland:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Shola forests are tropical Montane forests found in the valleys separated by rolling grasslands only in the higher elevations.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The shola forests are patches of forests that occur only in the valleys and never grow on the mountain tops.<\/strong> This is such a unique landscape formation that is native only to the southern Western Ghats.<\/li>\n<li>The Shola forests are found in altitudes above 2000 meters of sea-level. Although they are found from altitudes higher than 1600 meters.<\/li>\n<li>Rivers originate in the sholas: Tunga Bhadra, Nethravathi, Cauvery etc.<\/li>\n<li>Shola forests are a native only to the Southern Western Ghats. They are found only in the high altitude mountains of the states Karnataka, Kerala and Tamilnadu. Nowhere else in the world exist such a kind of forests.<\/li>\n<li>The endangered Nilgiri tahr (an Asian goat-antelope) is endemic to the shola-grassland.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exotic trees eating up Western Ghat\u2019s grasslands News: Western Ghats lost almost one-fourth high-altitude grasslands due to invasion of exotic trees. Important Facts: Most of this loss occurred on the mountain tops of the Nilgiri, Palani and Anamalai hill ranges, which comprise more than half of the Ghat\u2019s shola-grassland ecosystems. The satellite images revealed that&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/exotic-trees-eating-up-western-ghats-grasslands\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Exotic trees eating up Western Ghat\u2019s grasslands<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1700905405},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}