LULC Changes: Implications for Reclamation of Ecosystem Hydrological Services: An Empirical Study

Preventing extremes of flood and drought and lending perenniality to rivers/shorter zero flow periods to intermittent rivers is an important ecosystem service provided by natural forests. Yang et al. [11] in their comprehensive assessment of long-term stationarity of annual streamflow for 11 069 catchments showed that, while long-term stationarity is evinced in almost 80% of catchments that have undergone only minimum human intervention, streamflow had remained stationary in less than 40% of catchments which have undergone substantial human interventions. Vitousek et al. [10] had already pointed out that the risk posed by anthropogenic large-scale land use changes can go beyond that of climate change. Increasingly large tracts of forest land are being cleared and brought under cultivation to supply the needs of the growing human population. Measures for reclaiming some of the ecosystem services provided by erstwhile forests include rewilding; it may be noted that the FAO UN classifies plantation forests also as forests in the matter of resources. Here, the results of a study of landscape scale mean bulk density (BD) of soil–water content (SWC) and its relation with the mean BD of soil organic carbon (SOM) and sand/silt/clay content, across the soil of 21 natural forests and a total of 100 rubber plantations set up on deforested land/converted cultivated land, randomly located over a ~700 km long narrow stretch from Shivamogga to Kanyakumari on the west coast of the Indian peninsula is presented. The implications for water resources, in the light of measures promoted for the sequestration of carbon in soil, are pointed out.