INVENTORY AND CLASSIFICATION OF WETLANDS IN INDIA

The Indian subcontinent has a large variety of freshwater, saline and marine wetlands. Whereas the mangroves are relatively well documented, very little is known about the other wetlands, with few exceptions. O nly recently an inventory of these welands has been prepared but no ef fort has been made to classify them. A vast majority of the inland wet lands are temporary and/or man-made, and they have been traditionally used and managed by the local human populations. In this paper, first, we evaluate the classification schemes of the IUCN, US Fish and Wildl ife Services and those of the Australian wetlands, for their applicabi lity to Indian wetlands. Then, we propose a simple hierarchical classi fication of wetlands based on their location (coastal or inland), sali nity (saline or freshwater), physiognomy (herbaceous or woody), durati on of flooding (permanent or seasonal) and the growth forms of the dom inant vegetation. We stress upon the hydrological factors which determ ine all the structural and functional characteristics of the wetlands. We consider that the various growth forms of wetland vegetation integ rate the totality of hydrological variables and therefore, can be used as the indicators of different hydrological regimes.