Welcome To ATREE

Centre for Conservation Science

ATREE's Centre for Conservation Science has a charter to build a critical body of knowledge about India's biodiversity. Understanding biodiversity is crucial to galvanizing conservation awareness. Recognizing the structure, function, and value of biodiversity enables us to prioritize outreach activities and natural resource management initiatives.

The Centre for Conservation Science comprises three major foci of research and action:

Structure and Function of Biodiversity
Human Impacts on Biodiversity
Responses to Biodiversity Changes

Structure and Function of Biodiversity

That ecosystems are composed of multiple interacting species and communities is a basic tenet of ecology. These interactions are complex and many-layered, and underlie the living web that keeps ecosystems functioning. The suite of compositional and functional characteristics associated with an ecosystem provides a unique signature to that ecosystem. Many researchers at ATREE are engaged in studies of our forest ecosystems. We seek answers to the following key questions: What is the multiplicity of species that comprise the biodiversity we see in India today, and which of those species could face extinction? How do species interact and what is their role in maintaining ecosystem functioning? More importantly, given that many of our ecosystems have been degraded by injudicious use, what is the effect of degradation on ecosystem functioning? And finally, despite the fragmentation or loss of ecosystem components that we have already experienced, are our forests still alive with the vital interactions that are required for their persistence ?

Human Impacts on Biodiversity

India's economic development and the technological advances that have accompanied it are not without their downside: intense use of India's natural resources, undertaken at significant costs to land, water, and our biological wealth. Our ecological systems are unlikely to continue to sustain us if the current use trends continue. Certain types of natural resource use and management-for example, clear felling for timber, or burning to encourage regeneration of fodder for grazing livestock-have very apparent impacts on natural ecosystems. Other types of natural resource use-such as the extraction of non-timber forest products, or fossil fuel burning-may have no immediately apparent impacts on natural ecosystems and impacts may only manifest themselves over longer time scales. Many ATREE research projects are dedicated to assessing the impacts of the manifold human uses of natural resources on ecosystems, and where possible, seeking ways to mitigate these impacts.

ATREE conservation scientists are researching the regeneration of forest systems that have experienced different intensities of disturbance in two Western Ghats locations. These disturbances range from logging to managing forests for non-timber products, in the Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR), and the BRT sanctuary respectively.

Responses to Biodiversity Changes

ATREE's initiatives are addressing environmental challenges in manifold ways including partnerships with and dissemination of information to stakeholders such as other researchers, academic organizations, nongovernmental organizations, students and teachers. ATREE is currently working with the Wildlife Institute of India under the aegis of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and UNESCO on a project to strengthen biodiversity conservation in protected areas by building replicable models at existing and proposed UNESCO World Heritage Biodiversity sites.