baobabs: symbol of resilience or victim of climate change?

In 2018, Patrut et al. published a paper in Nature Plants entitled “The demise of the largest and oldest African baobabs” and reported that 10 of the 15 trees they examined had recently died or collapsed. The authors characterized this mortality as “most unexpected”, although they did not provide demographic data of entire baobab populations to illustrate what might be expected. In addition, in the penultimate sentence they proposed that “the demise of monumental baobabs may be associated at least in part with significant modifications of climate conditions that affect southern Africa in particular”, despite not mentioning climate effects previously. Although the authors then clearly stated that “further research is necessary to support or refute this supposition”, the suggestion that recent failure of some of the largest, most ancient baobabs may have been due to climate change caught the media’s attention and went viral. A fleeting speculation became exaggerated and cast as an endurin..., Baobab trees that had been measured in 2006  in South Africa (see https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2019.117593 ) were revisited in April and November 2023 to varify if they were still alive or if they had died over the last 17 years., , # Baobabs: symbol of resilience or victim of climate change?

#### Baobab Survival 2006 - 2023

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sj3tx96bp](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sj3tx96bp)

A list of baobab trees that were initially measured in 2006 as part of a previously published study in 2013 (see [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2019.117593 )](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2019.117593). This data is a summary of the 2023 assessment of the survival rate of these baobab trees.

Data is stored in an Excel file.

The data file is a list of trees, the date they were first assessed and the date of their reassessment with the result of whether they are still alive or not.

The tree names used are unique identifiers of each of the trees in the study. No other codes or abbreviations are used.