Key Points
The absence of forest cover and land use change such as construction activities and expansion of monoculture plantations may have exacerbated the impact of continuous heavy rainfall that triggered landslides in Keralas Wayanad on Tuesday and left at least 121 people dead and scores injured, experts said.P)..
There has been heavy rain over two or three days in central and northern parts of Kerala..
Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology scientist Roxy Mathew Koll said it was too early to understand the specifics of the Wayanad landslides but admitted that monsoon patterns are increasingly erratic, and the quantum of rainfall we receive in a short period has increased..
Koll said roughly half of Kerala is hilly and mountainous, where the slope is more than 20 degrees, making the land prone to landslides amid heavy rains..
The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, which the central government constituted under Gadgils chairmanship, in 2011 recommended that 75% of the 129,037 sq km of the Western Ghats spanning Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, and Kerala be declared an environmentally sensitive area because of its dense, rich forests and a large number of endemic flora and fauna..
