Potential Natural Vegetation of Eastern Africa (Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia): raster and vector GIS files for each country

The map of potential natural vegetation of eastern Africa (V4A) gives the distribution of potential natural vegetation in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi and Zambia.

The map is based on national and local vegetation maps constructed from botanical field surveys - mainly carried out in the two decades after 1950 - in combination with input from national botanical experts. Potential natural vegetation (PNV) is defined as “vegetation that would persist under the current conditions without human interventions”. As such, it can be considered a baseline or null model to assess the vegetation that could be present in a landscape under the current climate and edaphic conditions and used as an input to model vegetation distribution under changing climate.

Vegetation types are defined by their tree species composition, and the documentation of the maps thus includes the potential distribution for more than a thousand tree and shrub species, see the documentation (https://vegetationmap4africa.org/species.html)

The map distinguishes 48 vegetation types, divided in four main vegetation groups: 16 forest types, 15 woodland and wooded grassland types, 5 bushland and thicket types and 12 other types. The map is available in various formats. The online version (https://vegetationmap4africa.org/vegetation_map.html) and for PDF versions of the map, see the documentation (https://vegetationmap4africa.org/documentation.html). Version 2.0 of the potential natural vegetation map and the woody species selection tool was published in 2015 (https://vegetationmap4africa.org/docs/versionhistory/). The original data layers include country-specific vegetation types to maintain the maximum level of information available. This map might be most suitable when carrying out analysis at the national or sub-national level.

When using V4A in your work, cite the publication: Lillesø, J-P.B., van Breugel, P., Kindt, R., Bingham, M., Demissew, S., Dudley, C., Friis, I., Gachathi, F., Kalema, J., Mbago, F., Minani, V., Moshi, H., Mulumba, J., Namaganda, M., Ndangalasi, H., Ruffo, C., Jamnadass, R. & Graudal, L. 2011, Potential Natural Vegetation of Eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia). Volume 1: The Atlas. 61 ed. Forest & Landscape, University of Copenhagen. 155 p. (Forest & Landscape Working Papers; 61 - as well as this repository using the DOI <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11125645>.

The development of V4A was mainly funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and supported by University of Copenhagen

If you want to use the potential natural vegetation map of eastern Africa for your analysis, you can download the spatial data layers in raster format as well as in vector format from this repository <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11125645>

A simplified version of the map can be found on Figshare <https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1306936.v1>. That version aggregates country specific vegetation types into regional types. This might be the better option when doing regional-level assessments.