BENGALURU: Bengaluru-originated community ecologist Dr. Meghna Krishnadas, from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), has spent about a decade of her life studying the Western Ghats, and how fragmentation of the tropical rainforests in the region has impacted the ecosystems therein. Conceived by Shreni Sanghvi and Abhishek Kapahi, Science Gallery Bengaluru’s (SGB) new exhibition Walk Into a Fragmented Forest, which is set to run till September 17, utilises Krishnadas’ work to inform the general public about fragmentation, and the myriad ways it can occur, often inconspicuous to the common gaze.
Central to Krishnadas’ work is the phenomenon of forest fragmentation causing a loss in biodiversity and ecosystemic imbalance. If a highway cuts through a forest, for example, it essentially allows for a break in the forest canopy. This, in turn, causes a disbalance of sunlight dissipation: instead of the canopy allowing for sunlight to be dispersed evenly in flecks, there would be an open swathe of sunlight cutting through the forests. Now, instead of fair and diverse “competition” between plant species, only species that are light-hungry or light-tolerant would grow, creating what is called a monoculture. Sanghvi and Kapahi’s installation depicts this dissection – and consequent fragmentation – through light installations on the ground: within the periphery lies plurality, and outside it, homogeneity.
Krishnadas alluded to the far-reaching consequences that fragmentation can have, by alluding to the Amazon Rainforest being fragmented, which in turn is affecting the local climate there. “These systems have been large swathes with very little light. And when you fragment it, you're suddenly changing those circumstances. You're flipping things around, and you're bringing in abiotic conditions that these species may not have experienced before. So the goal as scientists is to understand what happens if the rules are changed,” said Krishnadas, adding that while a change like what is happening in the Amazon Rainforest has not been noted yet in the Western Ghats, it is very likely to occur.
As aforementioned, both in the animal and plant kingdoms, monocultures come at the cost of diversity. Despite appearances, not all of fragmentation comes in brutal forms like highway constructions; agricultural practices that involve clearing out a patch of forest to grow a certain crop – tea or coffee, the latter of which is grown abundantly in the Western Ghats, for example – are also practices that by definition erect monocultures. While this has the image of Carbon neutrality, what is lost in the process is biodiversity. “A forest or a natural ecosystem is multi-species. Yes, you're replacing it with plants, but the main thing is you're probably replacing 50 species with a single one. That has consequences. There is no food anymore for all of the other organisms that depended on the eroded species. So there are some changes that are very visible and obvious, and there are other invisible changes that happen even if, you know, agriculture is just plants,” Krishnadas explained.