Assam has a geographic area of 7.84 million ha, which constitutes 2.39% of the country‘s total area. It is situated between lat. 24°57‘ to 28°00‘ N and long. 89° 42‘ to 96° 02‘E. Topographically, the state can be divided into three parts, viz. the Brahamputra valley, the Surma valley and the Assam range. The first two parts are plain areas, while the Assam range is a mountainous region. Climate of Assam is sub tropical with mean annual rainfall varying from 1,500 mm to 3,750 mm and the mean annual temperature in winter between 5°C to 32°C. Recorded forest area is 3.07 million ha which constitutes 39.15% of the total geographic area of the state. According to legal classification, Reserved Forest constitutes 59%, Protected Forest 13% and Unclassed Forest 28%. Forest types occurring in the state are Tropical Wet Evergreen, Tropical Semi-Evergreen, Tropical Moist Deciduous, Sub Tropical Broad Leaved Hill, Sub Tropical Pine and Littoral and Swamp Forests.

There are 3 National Parks and 13 Wildlife Sanctuaries in the state. Total protected area is 0.21 million ha which constitutes 2.69% of the total geographic area of the state. Manas Tiger Reserve is located in the state. Manas has also been declared as a Biosphere Reserve. Kaziranga National Park and Manas Wildlife Sanctuary are also included in the World Heritage sites.

There are 24,685 villages in the state of which 2,140 villages have forest as a land use. In these villages, 0.22 million ha is classified as forest. The population inhabiting these villages is 1.49 million. The villages having less than 100 ha, between 100-500 ha and more than 500 ha forest area in each village constitute 79%, 18% and 3% of the total villages, respectively.

Forest Plantations
Creation of forest plantations outside forest areas started mainly in early 1980s. Emphasis of the afforestation activity under social forestry schemes was mainly on the rehabilitation of abandoned shifting cultivation and degraded forest areas. An area of 0.45 million ha has been brought under forest plantations upto 1999. The forest cover of the state, based on satellite data of December, 1998, is 23,688 sq.km. which is 30.20% of the geographic area. Extent of dense forest and open forest has been assessed as 14,517 sq.km. and 9,171 sq.km respectively. There has been a net increase of 136 sq.km in the forest cover as compared to the previous assessment.