Twenty years tree demography in an undisturbed Dipterocarp Permanent Sample Plot at Uppangala, Western Ghats of India

Dataset on tree species demography monitored over a 20-year period in Uppangala Permanent Sample Plot (UPSP), an undisturbed wet evergreen dipterocarp forest located within the Pushpagiri Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot of India. During 1989-90, all trees ≥ 30 cm girth at breast height (gbh) were sampled in five north-south oriented transects of 20 m wide and 180 to 370 m long, which covers a total sampling area of 3.12 ha. In 1992-93, additional rectangular plots were established, bringing the area sampled to 5.07 ha in total. In all plots, a total of 3,870 trees were identified, tagged and mapped, and installed with permanent dendrometer bands. Since then, the sampled area has been regularly screened for tree recruitment, mortality and growth at ca. 4-5-year intervals. We report here the basic data of censuses conducted in 1990-93, 1994, 1997-98, 2001-02, 2007 and 2010. These data have been used to study the natural forest dynamics and to calibrate spatially-explicit simulation models.