Bengaluru, misaligned!

It was a very usual day for Manohar(an arbitrary name used and no other purpose intended). Early in the morning, he set out to his usual morning walk on the Kanakapura road. When he reached Yelchenahalli, to his utmost surprise, he was unable to continue his morning walk. He stood there stand still just wondering for a few minutes. All he could see in front of him was a huge pit! To accompany the pit, there lay a huger element of this earth! There was a huge, numb and helpless tree which was uprooted the previous night!

Unlike our own Manohar there are hundreds of others who off-late come across incidents like this in our once upon a time called “Garden city of India!”

The main reason for this kind of developments in Bangalore is told to be the coming up of the metro! Namma Metro! Even if one considers the amount of infrastructural development that is planned as part of Metro, we cannot neglect the impact it is having on the beauty and the environment of Bangalore.

Just to give you an example, consider the Large-leaved Mahogany’s tree trunk on the St.Mark’s road. It releases Rs.150000 worth of oxygen annually! The branches and the leaves would add more, as would the carbon fixed roots.

Here are the calculations for just the trunk of the tree. Height of the tree trunk is 7.5m. Girth at breast height is 4.25m. The average growth is 4 rings per inch. Hence the trunk would add 1.23m³ of wood every year. Since the density of Mahogany wood is 450kg/m³, this would amount to 552kg.*

A safe estimate as assumed in the Kyoto protocol is half the wood weight is contributed by Carbon. So the net Carbon fixed would be 276kg. The carbon to oxygen ration in Carbon-di-oxide (CO₂) is 12:32. Hence the oxygen released per year would be 736kg!*

The above provided data and calculations were just for one tree which is present in Bangalore. If we look at the statistics of the number of trees felt as part of the project Metro, the number reaches as high as 6000! Out of the total 1800kms present in Bangalore, 400kms are being covered as part of the Metro project. Hence one can imagine the amount of impact our city will be having after this act!*

To look at the big picture, in this present world which doesn’t have an economic plan which has considered environment as a factor, it’s very important for each and every individual to be aware of the implications and complications of the situations created by ourselves! In the name of industrialization, a major part of the environment has already vanished within a blink of an eye. Further to it, globalization has brought in a revolution which along with its good part has a very long lagging tail of a bad facet.

We can make a difference to the beautiful world around us! On this auspicious day which marks the last edition of this magazine for the year 2008, this is our humble appeal to you all to contribute your part to the Mother Nature! As the saying goes, “No science is rocket science apart from rocket science itself”, it’s not difficult to contribute to the environment we are living in. Even a very small step taken by us may lead to a huge change with a tremendous impact! (I actually wrote it for a journal for its december edition... Thats why you can see the mentioning of the year end :)...)

*All the statistical data and the calculations involved were provided by well known ornithologist and environmentalist, Prof.M.B.Krishna and are subject to slight variations due to the time factor.