Longwood Shola forest

Subject: Geography

Context:

The Longwood Shola, the last and the only urban shola forest in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu was recently granted the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy (QCC) accreditation, a forest conservation programme across the commonwealth countries to conserve unique indigenous forest patches.

Longwood Shola

Longwood Shola, the only urban shola forest in the Nilgiris, is a 116-hectare forest patch interspersed with grasslands.
The shola forest has proven to maintain the hydrological regime of the region, capturing rainwater through marshes and releasing it via streams and played a significant role in maintaining the biodiversity
Home to the threatened Nilgiri marten and other rare fauna and flora, the forest patch is rich in biodiversity. The Nilgiritahr is endemic to the ecosystem.
Longwood Shola is an ancient forest that has nutrient-rich soil formed over hundreds of years.
Like other shola forests, Longwood Shola is nestled between two hills and acts as a perched aquifer, retaining the water that flows from these two hills
The soil is dark and has high water retention capacity. Even in case of high rainfall, the soil has the capacity to absorb that water and release it in small amounts throughout the year
The ecosystem services provided by Longwood Shola make a case for the urgent need to preserve urban forest patches across the world.

Shola forest

Classified as ‘southern montane wet temperate forest
The sholas are found in the upper reaches of the Nilgiris, Anamalai hills, Palani hills, Kalakadu, Mundanthurai and Kanyakumari in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala
This is a unique system, seen at an elevation range of 1400-2700 km, where “the vast grassland is interspersed with forest made up of evergreen native trees which are dwarf in nature and hill slopes covered with native grass species.”
The vegetation is a double-layered storey with a closed canopy. Various features of shola (shola derived from Tamil solai meaning tropical rainforest) forests, such as persistent cloud cover, and moisture-capturing capabilities, make them play a critical role in hydrology and biogeochemistry.
The shola-grassland ecosystem is one of the most diverse but threatened landscapes of the Western Ghats.
These ecosystems are very sensitive to climate, making them vulnerable to climate change.
They have been degraded by many natural and anthropogenic pressures like land use changes to facilitate agriculture and infrastructure.