Online Quiz

Directions (Q 27–35): Read Passage 2E (environment) and answer the questions.

Along parts of India's coastline, where rivers meet the sea, grows a forest that seems to break the rules of botany. Mangrove trees stand with their roots in salty, muddy water that is flooded and drained twice a day by the tides. Most plants would die in such conditions; mangroves have adapted to them over a very long time.

Their adaptations are visible even to a casual visitor. Some species rest on arching stilt roots that hold them upright in soft mud. Others send up pencil-like roots from the mud into the air; these breathing roots help the tree obtain oxygen that the waterlogged soil cannot supply. Several species can keep out much of the salt at the root or get rid of extra salt through their leaves.

For coastal people, these forests are far more than a botanical curiosity. The tangled roots slow down waves and currents, which reduces the force of storm surges and holds the shoreline against erosion. The calm, shaded water among the roots serves as a nursery where young fish, crabs and prawns grow before moving out to sea, so the catch of nearby fishing villages depends partly on the health of the forest. Mangrove soils also store large amounts of carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere for long periods.

Despite these services, mangroves have often been treated as wasteland. Large areas in many countries have been cleared for shrimp ponds, salt pans, ports and housing. The loss is easy to underestimate, because the benefits of a standing mangrove are spread across many people and many years, while the profit from clearing it goes to a few, quickly.

Restoration is possible but not simple. Planting saplings in the wrong place – on mudflats that the tide covers for too long, for example – often fails. Successful projects usually begin by restoring the natural flow of tidal water and then allow young trees to settle where conditions suit them, planting only where natural recovery is too slow. In some restoration projects along the Indian coast, local communities have taken part in the work, digging channels that bring tidal water back to damaged areas and protecting young trees.

The lesson goes beyond mangroves. A forest that looks unproductive to a planner in a distant office may be quietly feeding a village and guarding a coast.