According to India State of Forest Report 2023 (ISFR 2023) :

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, the maximum tree cover has been found in Maharashtra followed by Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. This option is lifted almost word for word from ISFR 2023, which puts Maharashtra's tree cover at 14,524.88 sq km, Rajasthan's at 10,841.12 sq km and Uttar Pradesh's at 8,950.92 sq km — that exact order. It looks wrong to a candidate who has memorised the forest-cover league table, because none of these three is a forest-rich state, and that is precisely the point being tested. 'Tree cover' in the Forest Survey of India's vocabulary is not forest at all: it is the trees standing outside the recorded forest area in patches smaller than one hectare — orchards, farm bunds, avenue plantations, homestead and village groves. States with vast irrigated farmland and horticulture therefore top it, while the forested states of central and north-eastern India do not, because their trees are already counted as forest cover. Maharashtra's fruit orchards, Rajasthan's arid-zone agroforestry and Uttar Pradesh's mango and poplar plantations are exactly the landscapes that generate tree cover. The other two statements fail on figures FSI itself publishes. India's forest cover in ISFR 2023 is 7,15,343 sq km, or 21.76 per cent of the geographical area, and tree cover a further 1,12,014 sq km, or 3.41 per cent; the two together are 8,27,357 sq km — 25.17 per cent, not 15 per cent. And the three largest recorded forest areas belong to Madhya Pradesh at 94,689 sq km, Maharashtra at 61,952 sq km and Odisha at 61,204 sq km, followed by Chhattisgarh at 59,816 and Arunachal Pradesh at 51,540; Jharkhand has 25,118 sq km, Manipur 17,418 and Andaman & Nicobar just 7,171. Only one statement survives, so (d) cannot stand either. ISFR 2023 is the 18th report in a biennial series FSI has run since 1987, released on 21 December 2024 by Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav at the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, and it remains FSI's current edition.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) ISFR 2023 reports forest cover at 21.76 per cent and tree cover at a further 3.41 per cent of the geographical area — 25.17 per cent together, or 8,27,357 sq km. The figure 15 per cent corresponds to nothing FSI publishes: not forest cover, not tree cover, and not the National Forest Policy 1988 target of 33 per cent. It is a plausible-sounding number with no source behind it, which is what makes it a good distractor.  (b) This confuses a high percentage with a large area. Andaman & Nicobar is 81.62 per cent forest-covered and Manipur and Jharkhand are heavily wooded, so all three feel forest-rich — but they are small. Recorded forest area in absolute square kilometres is dominated by big states: Madhya Pradesh 94,689, Maharashtra 61,952, Odisha 61,204. Andaman & Nicobar has only 7,171 sq km, and it is a Union Territory, not a State as the option claims.  (d) This needs at least two of the three statements to be true, and only one is. Statement (a) misstates 25.17 per cent as 15 per cent and statement (b) names three of the smallest recorded forest areas as the largest, so both fail on FSI's own published tables. The composite option is the paper's standard fourth choice and is right only where the stem genuinely admits several — here it does not.

Concept: The Forest Survey of India measures three different things, and almost every mistake on this topic comes from treating them as one. Recorded forest area is a legal category: land entered as forest in government records, classified as reserved, protected or unclassed, regardless of whether a single tree stands on it. Forest cover is a satellite measurement: every patch of one hectare or more with a tree canopy density of ten per cent or above, counted irrespective of ownership or legal status — so a mango orchard or a bamboo grove on private land is forest cover, while a barren but legally notified hillside is recorded forest area and not forest cover. Tree cover is the residual: tree patches smaller than one hectare and isolated trees outside the recorded forest area, the 'trees outside forests' that a ten-metre-resolution satellite pass cannot resolve as forest. FSI has published this assessment biennially since 1987; ISFR 2023, the 18th edition, was released on 21 December 2024. Because the three measures answer different questions, their state rankings differ sharply — Madhya Pradesh leads on recorded forest area and on forest cover, Lakshadweep and Mizoram lead on forest cover as a share of their area, and Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh lead on tree cover.

State PCS 2025 Q38 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q38 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer