Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Land Use Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol Forest cover change and flood hazards in India Kasturi Bhattacharjee ⁎ , Bhagirath Behera Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal - 721302, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Forest cover Flood damages Mortality ratio Socio-economic parameters Meteorological parameters India ABSTRACT Forests provide numerous environmental services such as watershed protection, nutrient cycling, pollution control, climatic regulation, carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, and protection from storms, landslides, and soil erosion. Degradation of forest resources is likely to cause adverse effects on the economy and environment both locally and globally. Further, it is observed that the natural forests do reduce the frequency and severity of floods as it traps water during heavy rainfall and releases the same slowly into streams reducing the run off. However, this link between forest covers and flood damages is still unclear and yet to be settled in empirical literatures. Also, the protective role of forests in Indian context has remained largely unexplored and this paper attempts to fill this research gap. The objective of this study is, therefore, to examine the impact of forest cover on the extent of flood damage in India controlling various social, economic and demographic aspects. The study uses secondary data across the Indian states for the period 1998–2011. The data were analyzed using the Poisson and ordinary least square (OLS) regression models. The findings suggest that forest cover in India has an inverse relationship with the flood damages. In addition, socio-economic factors such as literacy, per capita net state domestic product and population size have significant influence on the extent of flood damages. Hence, in- vestments in forest protection and regeneration are necessary to restrict flood damages and protect human lives and properties. 1. Introduction Among all environmental resources, forests are the most crucial ones in the ecosystems (Reddy et al., 2002; Brang et al., 2006). Apart from providing direct use values such as food, fuel, timber etc., forests provide numerous environmental services including watershed protec- tion, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, pollution control, climate regulation, flood mitigation, prevention of adverse effects of storms, regulation of run-offs, river discharge and infiltration, groundwater recharge, soil preservation, and prevention of landslides and soil ero- sion (DeGroot et al., 2002; Hamilton, 2005; Heal, 2000; Kibria, 2013; Laurance, 2007; Reddy et al., 2002; Upadhyay et al., 2002). Loss of forest cover can make the ecosystem, human habitation and various natural resources more vulnerable to changing climatic conditions in the form of extreme weather events such as floods and other related natural disasters (Wisner et al., 2003). It is observed that the native forests do reduce the frequency and severity of floods as they trap water during heavy rainfall and release the same slowly into streams, redu- cing the run off rate (EEA, 2015; Laurance, 2007). Hence, there exists a strong linkage between forest cover and flood hazards (Barua et al., 2010; Bradshaw et al., 2007; Brang et al., 2006; Kibria, 2013; Lang, 2002). Presence of forest cover results in low rate of surface run-offs and soil erosion (Sanderson et al., 2012). It is argued that forest cover reduces flood occurrences by removing a proportion of the storm rainfall and allowing the build-up of soil moisture deficits (Calder and Aylward, 2006). A study comprising of 56 developing countries of the world have shown that frequency of floods decreases with increase in natural forest cover and rises with increase in non- natural forest cover (Bradshaw et al., 2007). However, this particular study does not take into account the flood events occurring in- dependently of the land use patterns, such as hurricanes, making it ambiguous to draw conclusions as to what extent this apply to extreme rainfall events. Another study on Sri Lanka shows that presence of mangrove forests has reduced the intensity of tsunami waves sig- nificantly (Adger et al., 2005). Studies carried out in the aftermath of the Odisha super cyclone in the year 1999 and tsunami in 2005 have indicated that forests have a lifesaving ability against storms and waves (Alongi, 2008; Dash and Crépin, 2013; Dash and Vincent, 2009; EJF report, 2006). It is observed that regions with large width of forests have recorded less damage as compared to those with no or con- siderably less forests (Barua et al., 2010; Dash and Vincent, 2009; Jayatissa and Hettiarachi, 2006). Incidence of frequent and devastating floods is common in India and its neighbouring South Asian countries (Kundzewicz et al., 2008; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.06.013 Received 3 December 2015; Received in revised form 1 May 2017; Accepted 9 June 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: kasturi.bhattacharjee9@gmail.com (K. Bhattacharjee), bhagirath9@gmail.com (B. Behera). Land Use Policy 67 (2017) 436–448 0264-8377/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK