SWEA-Dataveg: A vegetation database for sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

SWEA-Dataveg is a vegetation-plot database collecting observations mainly in sub-Saharan Africa but also open to the rest of the African continent. To date this database contains more than 5,500 plot observations provided by 47 sources (projects, monographs, and articles). While the database is stored in PostgreSQL (including the PostGIS extension), the R-package “vegtable” implements a suitable exchange format. In this article we assess the current content of SWEA-Database and introduce its history and future as a repository of data for syntaxonomic assessments and macroecological research.