Research Projects

Soil erosion poses a significant threat to ecosystems and agricultural land, causing unstabilized soil aggregates, decreased floral and faunal diversity, changes in soil hydro-physical properties, repositioning of organic carbon stocks, and nutrient losses. This issue has led to significant expenditure and efforts to recover reduced land productivity and off-site damages. Soil erosion is a top priority in India, particularly in the Himalayas and Eastern and Western Ghats. The frequency of shallow landslides in this region has increased significantly over the last 50 years due to urbanization, industrialization, river valley projects, reckless deforestation, infrastructure, and road construction. Various agencies and departments are engaged in plantation programmers in hills for erosion control and slope stabilization. However, the choice of trees for these programs is random based on nativity or local importance. Trees are known for their role in soil fixation on unstable slopes, such as throughfall kinetic energy (TKE), slow water movement, improved soil hydro-physical properties, litter cover, and massive root systems. This proposal aims to evaluate trees on certain parameters to be used as bioengineers on hill slopes for soil fixation. The study will focus on hypotheses that the potential to control soil erosion and slope stabilization is species-specific, throughfall kinetic energy varies under different tree species, litter layers under trees reduce runoff and soil erosion, slope reinforcement depends on mechanical, architectural, and physiological traits of tree root systems, and plant functional traits can be used as selection criteria for hydrological reinforcement of slopes due to transpiration-induced matric suction.