Tree planting occurrences

Tree planting over three centuries has radically affected the composition of treescapes in South Africa, contributing important ecosystem services, but also disservices. Rapid global change calls for diverse interventions to create more resilient ecosystems. Many nature-based solutions involve manipulating tree cover in rural and urban landscapes. There is a need for a spatially-explicit database of planted trees in South Africa to serve as the foundation for policy and management decisions.

The database contains 34943 records of 805 planted tree taxa in South Africa.

The community science platform iNaturalist was used to create a comprehensive database of planted trees in South Africa. Records were carefully checked to verify the accuracy of taxon identifications, locality data, and categorization as planted rather than wild-growing trees. The database provides the first spatially-explicit open-access resource for guiding decisions on tree planting and the management of tree infrastructure in South Africa.

This study was supported by the Centre for Invasion Biology, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University. DMR acknowledges support from Mobility 2020 project no. CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/18_053/0017850 (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic), long-term research development project RVO 67985939 (Czech Academy of Sciences). LJP received support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (grant 386151).