How Green Is Jammu & Kashmir? A Simple Look at the Forest Report 2023
Every two years, the Forest Survey of India (FSI) publishes the India State of Forest Report, or ISFR. It is built from satellite images, checked against field surveys, and it is the most detailed record we have of India’s forests. It is also a long document packed with tables, and most people never read it.
Author- Pardeep Kumar, ( Editor-geohimachal.com)
I went through the Jammu & Kashmir chapter of the 2023 report table by table. Below are the numbers that matter, in plain words, along with what I think they tell us.
First, some background
The Survey of India’s digitised boundary (November 2023) puts the area of Jammu & Kashmir at 54,634 sq km. This includes Mirpur and Muzaffarabad districts, which India counts as part of the UT, so the report has 22 districts in total. All 22 are classed as hill districts.
A few other figures from the chapter’s opening page:
- Population (Census 2011): 1.25 crore, including Ladakh
- Rural share: about 73%
- Tribal population: about 12%
- Livestock (19th Livestock Census): 92 lakh animals, also including Ladakh
That is a large rural, farming and herding population that depends directly on forests and pastures for fuelwood, fodder, grazing and timber.
The big picture: 39% forest
Out of 54,634 sq km, 21,346 sq km is forest. That is 39.07% of the land.
The FSI sorts forest by how much of the ground the tree crowns cover:
| Class | What it means | Area (sq km) | % of land |
|---|---|---|---|
| Very Dense Forest | Canopy above 70% | 4,209 | 7.70 |
| Moderately Dense Forest | Canopy 40–70% | 8,007 | 14.66 |
| Open Forest | Canopy 10–40% | 9,131 | 16.71 |
| Total forest | 21,346 | 39.07 | |
| Scrub | Degraded, below 10% | 262 | 0.48 |
| Non-forest | Everything else | 33,025 | 60.45 |
The largest share is open forest, where trees stand apart and sunlight reaches the ground. Truly dense forest is less than one-tenth of the land.
Compared with the 2021 assessment, total forest cover went up by 83.55 sq km. That is a small gain, but a gain all the same.
District by district
The district-wise table is where things get interesting. Here is the full list, sorted from greenest to least green:
| District | Forest (sq km) | % of district | Change since 2021 (sq km) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopian | 316 | 62.50 | −4.98 |
| Doda | 1,484 | 61.56 | +6.63 |
| Udhampur | 1,362 | 59.75 | −5.55 |
| Kupwara | 1,520 | 55.41 | +3.39 |
| Reasi | 1,033 | 53.45 | +7.40 |
| Kathua | 1,329 | 52.90 | +4.90 |
| Ramban | 660 | 51.25 | +5.19 |
| Poonch | 2,000 | 47.13 | +8.73 |
| Rajouri | 1,218 | 46.22 | +6.78 |
| Baramulla | 886 | 42.99 | +4.31 |
| Pulwama | 375 | 41.87 | +0.19 |
| Anantnag | 1,077 | 39.49 | +9.27 |
| Muzaffarabad | 1,743 | 37.37 | −4.41 |
| Samba | 335 | 36.14 | +0.81 |
| Mirpur | 1,323 | 35.18 | +11.07 |
| Ganderbal | 496 | 30.65 | +4.19 |
| Kulgam | 385 | 30.44 | −3.87 |
| Jammu | 694 | 28.79 | +5.14 |
| Budgam | 353 | 28.24 | +5.45 |
| Bandipora | 923 | 22.84 | +5.73 |
| Kishtwar | 1,788 | 21.86 | +12.86 |
| Srinagar | 44 | 15.79 | +0.32 |
A few things stand out.
Shopian is the greenest district by percentage, with more than 62% of its area under forest. Yet it is also among the four districts that lost forest cover. Udhampur, the third greenest, lost the most of any district: 5.55 sq km.
Poonch has the most forest by area, a full 2,000 sq km. That is nearly a tenth of all the forest in J&K.
Kishtwar looks poor in percentage terms, at under 22%. It is the largest district by far (8,179 sq km), and a big part of it lies above the treeline in glaciers, rock and alpine meadow. In actual area it holds nearly 1,800 sq km of forest, and it gained more forest since 2021 than any other district.
Srinagar is the least green district, which is no surprise for the most urban part of the valley.
Where the thick forests are
Percentages alone do not show how good a forest is. Here the very dense class tells a clearer story.
- Muzaffarabad: 829 sq km of very dense forest, the most of any district
- Kupwara: 765 sq km, which is half of all forest in that district
- Bandipora: 344 sq km
- Doda: 330 sq km
- Poonch: 326 sq km
The northwest, along the Pir Panjal and the hills of Kupwara and Muzaffarabad, holds the thickest, most closed forests.
At the other end, Jammu and Samba have no very dense forest at all, and Mirpur has only 2.65 sq km. In the dry south the forest is mostly open, with chir pine, khair and scrub. The scrub figures say the same thing: Mirpur (41.6 sq km), Jammu (27 sq km) and Udhampur (25 sq km) have the most degraded land.
The +83 sq km hides a lot of movement
The report also includes a “change matrix”, which tracks each patch of land from 2021 to 2023. It shows something the headline number hides.
Across J&K, roughly 550 sq km of non-forest land became forest in those two years. At the same time, about 460 sq km of forest became non-forest. The net gain of 83 sq km is the small difference between two much larger movements.
Most of this churn happens at the edge, between open forest and non-forest land:
- Outside recorded forest areas: 269 sq km of non-forest turned into open forest, while 221 sq km of open forest dropped to non-forest.
- Inside recorded forest areas: the same two figures were 209 and 151 sq km.
Dense forest, in contrast, is stable. Of 3,073 sq km of very dense forest inside recorded forest land in 2021, 3,042 sq km was still very dense in 2023.
In simple terms, the core forests are holding steady. The thin forest at the margins is constantly being lost and regrown, through lopping, grazing, fire and new plantations.
Forest outside “forest land”
The government keeps a list of Recorded Forest Areas, which is land officially notified as forest. The report compares this paper boundary with what the satellite actually sees.
| Very Dense | Mod. Dense | Open | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inside recorded forest | 3,074 | 5,353 | 4,685 | 13,112 |
| Outside recorded forest | 1,135 | 2,654 | 4,446 | 8,234 |
So close to 40% of all tree cover in J&K grows outside official forest land. This includes orchards, village woodlots, roadside trees, poplars and willows along the streams, and private land.
The quality differs too. Inside recorded forest, 23% of the cover is very dense. Outside, more than half is open forest. Even so, over 1,100 sq km of very dense forest lies outside the official forest boundary, and that deserves attention.
Height and slope: forests survive where people can’t reach
Using a 30 m SRTM elevation model, the FSI split forest cover by altitude:
| Altitude | Land area | Forest | Forest % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–500 m | 5,002 | 1,041 | 21% |
| 500–1,000 m | 6,565 | 3,395 | 52% |
| 1,000–2,000 m | 14,191 | 6,217 | 44% |
| 2,000–3,000 m | 12,157 | 8,154 | 67% |
| 3,000–4,000 m | 10,194 | 2,538 | 25% |
| Above 4,000 m | 6,525 | 1.8 | ~0% |
The 2,000–3,000 m band is the heart of J&K’s forests. Two-thirds of the land at this height is forested, and it holds about 69% of all very dense forest in the UT. This is the belt of deodar, kail (blue pine), fir and spruce.
Below 500 m, in the plains around Jammu, Samba and Kathua, only about a fifth of the land has trees. Above 4,000 m, trees are almost entirely absent.
Slope tells a similar story:
| Slope | Forest % |
|---|---|
| 0–5° (flat) | 20% |
| 5–10° | 37% |
| 10–15° | 43% |
| 15–30° | 45–46% |
| Above 30° | 45% |
Flat land is the least forested, because that is where fields, towns and roads go. Land steeper than 30 degrees holds over 5,000 sq km of forest, more than any other slope class, and about a third of all very dense forest. Forests have lasted mostly where farming and building are hard. Anyone who has walked in these hills will know this without a table.
A different count: land-use records
The chapter also includes official land-use statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture (2021–22). These come from revenue records, not satellites, so they do not match the forest cover figures. Still, they give useful context.
Of the 38.4 lakh hectares for which land use is reported:
- Forests: 55.65%
- Net area sown: 19.07%
- Not available for cultivation: 13.61%
- Culturable wasteland: 4.01%
- Permanent pastures and grazing land: 2.77%
- Current fallows: 2.28%
Only about a fifth of the reported land is actually farmed. Farming in J&K is squeezed into the valley floors, the karewas and the terraces, and the rest is forest, mountain and pasture.
Forest fires: the biggest warning in this report
The fire figures are the most alarming part of the chapter. The FSI tracks fires using the SNPP-VIIRS satellite sensor.
- 2022–23 fire season: 131 fire detections
- 2023–24 fire season: 3,829 fire detections
That is almost 30 times more in a single year.
| District | 2022–23 | 2023–24 | Per 100 sq km of forest (2023–24) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rajouri | 26 | 797 | 65 |
| Udhampur | 0 | 557 | 41 |
| Reasi | 9 | 502 | 49 |
| Jammu | 8 | 458 | 66 |
| Kathua | 17 | 403 | 30 |
| Kishtwar | 5 | 193 | 11 |
| Samba | 4 | 174 | 52 |
| Poonch | 8 | 168 | 8 |
Measured against the amount of forest, Jammu, Rajouri and Samba were the hardest hit, with 50 to 66 detections for every 100 sq km of forest.
The Kashmir valley had very few fires. Budgam had one, Srinagar two, and Shopian and Muzaffarabad none.
A word of caution: satellite counts include repeat detections, so one large fire burning for days can be counted many times. The jump is real all the same. The lower Shivalik hills of Jammu are covered in chir pine, which drops dry, resin-rich needles every summer. Add dry spells and grass burning, and the hills catch fire easily.
The report’s fire-risk classes show where the danger lies:
| Fire-prone class | Forest area (sq km) | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Extremely fire prone | 0 | 0% |
| Very highly fire prone | 270 | 1.25% |
| Highly fire prone | 891 | 4.12% |
| Moderately fire prone | 1,244 | 5.76% |
| Less fire prone | 19,204 | 88.87% |
Nearly 89% of forest falls in the lowest risk class. The risky forest is confined to a narrow belt running from Mirpur and Rajouri through Reasi and Udhampur to Samba and Kathua. Firefighting effort in this belt would protect a lot with relatively little.
What kinds of forest are these?
The FSI maps forest types using the Champion and Seth classification, which has been used in India since 1968. J&K has 39 different natural forest types, plus plantations and three kinds of grassland. Grouped together:
| Forest group | Area (sq km) |
|---|---|
| Himalayan moist temperate (deodar, kail, fir, spruce, oak) | 8,407 |
| Subtropical pine (chir) | 3,941 |
| Himalayan dry temperate | 2,731 |
| Tropical dry deciduous | 2,023 |
| Sub-alpine (fir, birch) | 1,868 |
| Trees outside forest / plantations | 1,540 |
| Alpine scrub (rhododendron, juniper) | 958 |
| Subtropical dry evergreen (olive, acacia scrub) | 140 |
| Grasslands and pastures | 4,569 |
The single largest type is western mixed coniferous forest of spruce, kail and fir, covering 3,557 sq km. It is followed by:
- Lower Shivalik chir pine: 2,609 sq km
- Low-level blue pine (kail): 2,168 sq km
- Moist deodar: 1,675 sq km
- Northern dry mixed deciduous: 1,579 sq km
- Sub-alpine birch and fir: 1,426 sq km
- High-level dry blue pine: 1,271 sq km
The pastures matter just as much. Alpine pastures alone cover 2,637 sq km, and sub-alpine pastures another 1,134 sq km. These are the margs and dhoks where Gujjar and Bakarwal families take their herds every summer. In the report they count as a forest type, but not as forest cover.
Counting the trees
The National Forest Inventory section counts actual trees in the field. Inside recorded forest, the top five are:
| Species | Trees | Wood volume (million m³) |
|---|---|---|
| Kail / Blue pine | 7.68 crore | 99.6 |
| Chir pine | 4.30 crore | 52.8 |
| Deodar | 3.91 crore | 58.9 |
| Fir (Abies pindrow) | 3.72 crore | 96.7 |
| Kamala (Mallotus) | 1.87 crore | 2.0 |
Fir is fourth by number of trees, but it holds almost as much wood as kail. On average, each fir tree carries about 2.6 m³ of wood, twice that of a kail or chir tree. These are the old, giant trees of the high forests. Losing one means losing a lot.
In villages, the list changes completely:
| Rural areas | Trees |
|---|---|
| Wild pear (Pyrus) | 2.23 crore |
| Ban oak | 2.03 crore |
| Kamala | 1.90 crore |
| Subabul (Leucaena) | 1.76 crore |
| Beul / Dhaman (Grewia) | 1.59 crore |
These are working trees, planted or kept for fodder, fuel and fruit. Ban oak has the most wood of the rural group (10.4 million m³), and it is a key fodder tree in the middle hills.
In towns, the most common trees are Grewia, subabul, pear, willow and poplar.
The report also lists major non-timber forest product species, including khair (4.16 crore trees), used for kattha, and walnut (73.7 lakh trees), which needs no introduction in Kashmir.
Green spaces in towns
The report has a separate table for 36 urban local bodies in the Jammu division. Together they cover 165.67 sq km, of which 23.79 sq km (14.4%) is forest.
Some towns are surprisingly green:
- Billawar: 52.7% forest
- Ramnagar: 51.5%
- Batote: 44.2%
- Kalakote: 39.5%
- Basohli: 26.9%
Others have almost none. Arnia, Gho Manhasan, Parole and Ramgarh show zero forest cover. Kathua, the largest town by area at 18.56 sq km, is only 4.3% forested.
Unwanted guests: invasive plants
Five invasive species are listed inside recorded forest areas:
| Species | Area (sq km) |
|---|---|
| Lantana | 160.7 |
| Parthenium (gajar ghas) | 149.7 |
| Ichnocarpus frutescens | 10.4 |
| Mexican poppy (Argemone) | 8.3 |
| Ipomoea fistulosa (besharam) | 4.9 |
Lantana and Parthenium together cover over 310 sq km. Anyone from the lower hills has seen both spreading along roads and field edges and into the forest floor, pushing out grasses and native shrubs.
What I take away from all this
Jammu & Kashmir is still well forested, at about 39%. The figures point to a few clear conclusions.
- The best forests survive where people cannot easily reach them: high up between 2,000 and 3,000 m, and on steep slopes. The lowlands are much less green.
- The small net gain hides a lot of loss and regrowth. Hundreds of square kilometres of thin forest change hands every two years.
- A large share of tree cover lies outside official forest land. Farmers, villages and towns are part of the forest story.
- Fire is now the biggest threat in the Jammu hills. A thirty-fold rise in detections in a single year is a warning that cannot be ignored.
- The giant fir, deodar and kail trees of the high forests store most of the wood, and they are slow to replace.
The data in this post is all in one public report. I hope it helps more people look at J&K’s forests with numbers in hand, not just impressions.
Source: India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume 2, Chapter 10.33: Jammu & Kashmir, Forest Survey of India. Areas use the Survey of India digitised boundary (November 2023). Land-use figures are from the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (2021–22). Altitude and slope analysis is based on the SRTM 30 m DEM. Fire counts are SNPP-VIIRS satellite detections. Some derived figures (percentages by altitude and slope, fires per 100 sq km, wood per tree, forest-group totals, and gross gain and loss) were calculated from the report’s tables.