India in Numbers india.tf
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How much of India is under forest cover?

7,15,343 km²
2023▲ 156 vs 2021

FSI · ISFR · released 21 Dec 2024

How much of India is under forest cover?
PeriodValue (km²)
20237,15,343
20217,15,186

Use in your answer

India's forest cover was 7,15,343 km² in the 2023 assessment, compared with 7,15,186 km² in 2021 (Forest Survey of India). Source: Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume I.

Cite as: India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2023 (Forest Survey of India)

What this shows

  • Forest cover is 7,15,343 km², 21.76% of India's geographical area (ISFR 2023). With tree cover outside forests (3.41%), forest and tree cover is 25.17%.
  • Forest cover grew just 156 km² between the 2021 and 2023 assessments, on a like-for-like basis. Tree cover outside forests grew 1,289 km².
  • Don't subtract ISFR 2021's published total from ISFR 2023's: 2023 is raster-based without a normalisation factor, so the two published totals aren't comparable. Use the re-estimated 2021 figure.

Cite this

India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2023 (Forest Survey of India)

Cite a fixed version from every published version below.

Source and method

Source
Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume I
Table
ISFR 2023 Vol. I, Table 2.3 (2023) and Table 2.4 (2021 revised, without normalisation factor)
Released
21 Dec 2024
Retrieved
18 Oct 2026
Next due
ISFR 2025, date not announced
Processing
Copied as published.
Licence
GODL-India
What exactly is measured

Forest cover in square kilometres: all land of one hectare or more with tree canopy density of 10% or more, whatever its ownership or legal status, including orchards, bamboo and palm. From the Forest Survey of India's biennial India State of Forest Report. ISFR 2023 moved to raster-based area estimates and re-estimated 2021 the same way; only those two comparable figures are shown.

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History: every published version

Each time the source changes this series we archive the full series as it stood, with an archived copy of the source, and never delete an old version. Each version has a permanent page you can cite. Recorded since 18 Oct 2026: 1 version.

No figure in this series has been revised since we began recording on 18 Oct 2026.

  1. 2 periods, latest 2023: 7,15,343 km² · first snapshotArchived source7ae0a188807a
Release notes (2)
  • 7,15,186.20 km²2021 re-estimated on the raster basis in ISFR 2023
  • 7,15,342.61 km² (21.76%)ISFR 2023 assessment (satellite data 2021-22)

Get the data

Use it in Excel, Python or R

Excel (Data → From Web): https://india.tf/c/env-forest-005/data.csv

Python: pandas.read_csv("https://india.tf/c/env-forest-005/data.csv")

R: read.csv("https://india.tf/c/env-forest-005/data.csv")

All statistics: /api/index.json. Free to reuse with attribution (GODL-India).