Thar desert is expanding fast, say scientists

Bangalore: Northwestern India's Thar Desert is expanding in both east and northeast directions, scientists say, and warn that desertification is becoming a more serious challenge to the country.

"Projections indicate significant increase in the desert area over India in the next 100 years," said scientists P. Goswami and K.V. Ramesh of the Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation here, a centre of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.

Their findings were published in the Current Science journal, brought out in collaboration with the Indian Academy of Sciences.

The Thar Desert, also known as the Great Indian Desert, is a large, arid region in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. It has an area of more than 200,000 square kilometres, and currently is the world's seventh largest desert.

Varying size

It lies mostly in the state of Rajasthan, and extends into the southern portion of Haryana and Punjab states and into northern Gujarat state.

In Pakistan, the desert covers eastern Sind province and the southeastern portion of Pakistan's Punjab province.

Its boundary in the north is ill defined. So the size of the Thar desert varies widely, depending on which areas are included.