Vindhyam range of Uttar Pradesh, India comprises 149 alien species under 106 genera belonging to 44 families. On analysing the data it was observed that 73% of alien species are from tropical America including South America and 10.5% from tropical Africa. Present study is based on several years of intensive exploration of the area. Excursions were under taken in different areas at regular intervals. During excursions information regarding important alien species with their legitimate botanical name, families, local name brief description along with flowering and fruiting time were recorded.

Pollution has become a matter of grave concern at present with all the components of the environment laden with pollutants largely from anthropogenic sources and unplanned urbanization. Inland wetlands are very delicate ecosystems and encompass a variety of water bodies, namely ponds, rivers, swamps, etc. They house some unique floristic patterns that are crucial in the primary productivity and maintaining a balance of the wetland ecosystem. In addition to it, the inland water bodies are also productive and are of immense importance to humans. The inland wetlands are also an integral part of boosting the economy of the region as they support a number of industries including fishing and recreation. Thus pollution of water bodies has impacted the human race in a deleterious manner. This chapter is an attempt to overview the inland water bodies, their biodiversity pattern, pollution, and their effect on flora at large.

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Bryophytes are one of the simplest autotrophic cryptogams invading land and characterized either by simple thalloid or erect habit lacking true leaves, root and stem within the plant body. Although they are ubiquitous in distribution, yet becomes sensitive to certain environmental conditions that can be natural or induced due to anthropogenic activity. Due to their versatile tolerance and resistance capability they can be categorically used as potential bioindicators for monitoring pollution. Bryophytes can be utilized as ‘environmental specimen bank’ due to their unique capacity of indicating the presence of metal and their concentration gradient in the substratum. Apart from their utility in pharmaceutical products, horticulture, household purposes they are also ecologically important. As multidimensional applications of the flora are being increasingly standardized universally, their potential in the biomapping of atmospheric pollution as well as ecological biodegradation is also enormous. Currently, a change in global climate is intensified that affected Earth’s biomes and vegetation zones redistribution. At higher altitudes, this alteration is more promising with rapid consequences. Elevated temperatures are expected to produce a drier environment that affect site water balance and cause shifts in the distribution of ecosystems on a universal scale. These effects are rather evident in such ecosystems as peatlands which are sensitive to both climate and water level fluctuations. Decrease in epiphytic bryophytes because of gaseous and particulate pollutants as well as the greenhouse gases is also a serious problem. Besides this, very specific and unique responses are generated by the bryophytes; studies have proven that they act as potential monitoring bio-agents for heavy metal pollution. In the present paper, an attempt is done to do a comprehensive study on bryophytes that reflects their role as promising indicators in monitoring pollution.

Pollution of the biosphere with heavy metals has phenomenally increased since the commencement of industrial revolution. It poses several environment and health concerns. High regeneration and metal accumulation capacity the possibility of genetic transformation by homologous recombination extend the candidature of bryophytes as promising experimental models for heavy metal stress tolerance studies. Plants use several abiotic stress pathways which share common elements that are potential “nodes” for cross talks. Common elements/ molecules, which are likely to occur early in several stress response cascades in bryophytes seem to be the potential targets for heavy metal tolerance studies that can be worked out in future, at biochemical, protein and gene level.