Landscape, stand and tree characteristics influence the distribution of lightning damage in Central African forests

Lightning is an important but understudied disturbance in tropical
forests. We surveyed 134 km of transects in two Central African forests
and identified 121 strike locations. Trees on ridges were more likely to
show damage than those in valleys, while at the stand scale, taller trees
and trees with wider canopies—and some species independent of size—were
more often struck. These results suggest that lightning acts as a
selective force, possibly reinforcing ridge–valley differences and
influencing forest structure and composition. Together, the datasets
provided here support analyses of how landscape, stand-level, and
tree-level characteristics influence the spatial distribution of lightning
damage in Central African forests.