Global planted forest data for timber species

Discerning whether certain timber species were harvested from natural forests versus less restricted planted forests can help ascertain the legality of wood products that enter the global market. However, readily available global planted forest data to the species level have been scarce. We confronted the need for such data by developing a two-pronged dataset, consisting of ‘polygon’ and ‘non-polygon’ location-based data, collectively, Planted Forest Timber Data. We obtained the polygon data from the World Resources Institute’s Spatial Database of Planted Trees v2.0, extracting data specific to traded timber species. We derived the non-polygon data from peer-reviewed literature and government documents. The polygon dataset encompasses 27 countries and 253 species and the non-polygon dataset spans 91 countries and 447 species. The polygon data are stored among 27 geopackages, one for each country. Each summarized row of polygon data contains up to 13 possible fields. The non-polygon data are housed within one main file, with each row of data including up to 28 possible fields. Both datasets also include summaries of independent evidence for a species growing in the specified countries. We envision that the more these two living datasets grow, the more they will mutually benefit from one another for data cross-validation. This assembled information is meant to equip global leaders in forest governance, policy, enforcement, and research with vetted data for promoting legal timber trade and protecting biodiversity.