Indigenous Sacred Groves: Exploring Traditional Knowledge, Environmental Sustainability, and Conservation Practices at Ajodhya Hill region, Purulia District, W.B, India

The sacred grove holds significant importance for indigenous communities as it serves as a place to engage in traditional natural worship practices. Through the utilization of indigenous knowledge and the preservation of holy groves, local environmental sustainability becomes attainable. Participant observation determines how individuals implement their knowledge in everyday life, which indirectly benefits the environment. To examine the impact of a sacred culture in a sustainable environment, two clusters were formed of the vegetation areas as sacred groves and non-sacred groves, and tried to analyse the difference between the vegetation growths into two clusters for the NDVI technique used for the last 30 years and represent it in a line graph with the help of the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform and with this temporal analysis, spatial changes of the vegetation within sacred and non-sacred groves area were also done. 155 participants contributed their knowledge to the survey. In sacred groves, 24 plant families have been observed, along with numerous animals, birds, and invertebrates. The indigenous people residing in the area play a crucial role in protecting the sacred groves by placing their trust in oral traditions passed down through generations. The result shows that the consistency of vegetation growth is much higher in sacred groves than in the area of the non-sacred groves and has also been seen that deforestation and afforestation are much less in sacred groves whereas in the non-sacred cluster have very high deforestation happened last 30 years. Keywords: Environmental sustainability, NDVI, Traditional knowledge, sacred groves,