A new study led by researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and other institutions has compiled InvenTree-meta, the largest meta-dataset of tree inventory studies from India.
The database brings together information from 465 published studies conducted between 1991 and 2023, spanning more than 4,650 hectares of forests across all of India’s biomes.
Contributing to global databases
Scientists around the world use vast forest datasets to understand how trees store carbon, support biodiversity, and respond to climate change. Despite being home to some of the world’s most diverse and human-influenced forests, South Asia, especially India, contributes little to global forest databases.
By harmonising datasets of tree inventory studies from India into a common framework, the researchers say, Indian forests could become a much stronger part of global ecological analyses.
“We wanted to see whether data availability (limited sampling) or data accessibility might be a larger contributor to the India-gap in global studies. What we found indicates that there has been extensive sampling, but accessibility might be the bottleneck,” said Krishna Anujan, Post-doctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute & Lead, Network Building, India Tree Inventory Network.
Identifying gaps
Most tree inventory studies in India are relatively small, with a median sampled area of just two hectares. More than 80% of the underlying datasets are not publicly accessible. This makes it difficult to combine them into larger regional or global analyses, even though, collectively, they represent an enormous scientific resource.
“Although we didn’t explicitly test these, there are practical and structural barriers to making these data reusable. There are high costs (effort required to meet reusability standards), and no clear incentives, and maybe even disincentives (publishing power is often in the Global North) for Indian researchers to make hard-collected forest data openly available and reusable,” said Anujan.
By mapping where tree inventories have been conducted, the researchers also identified important knowledge gaps. Biodiversity-rich landscapes, such as parts of the northern Western Ghats, northeastern India, the Western Himalayas and the Nicobar Islands, remain relatively under-sampled. Several regions undergoing rapid forest loss, including parts of northeast and eastern India, lack sufficient ecological data, making it harder to monitor changes in biodiversity, and guide conservation efforts.
“We hope that INvenTree serves as a collaborative platform, connecting researchers for regional synthesis research, which can then provide the foundation for broader applications in conservation, management and education. As the community of Indian vegetation ecologists burgeons, we hope to lower barriers for researchers across career stages, institutions and geographies to share skills and learning,” said Mahesh Sankaran, Professor, NCBS.
Published – July 21, 2026 12:42 pm IST
