ForestPlots.net is a website dedicated to tracking tropical forests. ForestPlots contains consistent data on over 2 million individual trees from over 4000 plots in 54 countries. The locations of the plots are displayed on a map on the website, and the data on individual trees may be downloaded for use in scientific studies. The data on this site allow scientists to study tropical forests worldwide and collaborate with other scientists working on tropical forests, which is important as tropical forests are vital to the health of the Earth, especially given our current context of climate change. The website receives funding from UK National Environment Research Council and The Royal Society. This website is relevant to research of the biosphere, and I know we will be able to recognize the importance of the data provided when we get to the biosphere unit.
Already, working on the campus tree survey, we have looked for trees in the Eco-Corridor; although we are not in a tropical forest, the focus of ForestPlots.net, our data will certainly be similar in content and format to the data on ForestPlots.net. I am sure our data will be useful in a similar manner to the data on ForestPlots if it becomes published in any way. ForestPlots.net does make one wonder as to whether there are any similar resources dedicated to forests that are not necessarily tropical.
https://www.forestplots.net/
This is an excellent resource! I love the connection that you made to our tree surveillance as a class in the Eco-Corridor. I think a similar documentation of other types of forests (such as temperate and boreal) would be extremely useful in analyzing the dynamics of growing and shrinking forests throughout the US – and, even more impressively, the world.
I can only imagine how usual this resource is for geographers. You did a great job explaining to someone, like me, who had no idea how this website worked what data was provided and the importance of it. I liked the way you connected it to our class twice as well. Well done!
This resource is awesome! It’s cool that in this class, we were able to get some insight into the scientific process of tagging trees that they probably use in this database, and even cooler that such projects that we’re doing at Richmond could be applicable to bigger studies and databases such as this. Thanks for sharing!
We so looked at stuff like this over the semester. I was a beast at getting tree data so this one hits close to home. Very cool how the network is so huge and people can share data so easily. Must be nice for geographers going to other places to do studies and they can use already collected data.
Charles, always love to learn more about forests with you. 🙂 It was interesting to see how our own tree study in class compares to this global study.