Climate-Adjusted Tree Seed Sourcing for Forest Landscape Restoration in Ghana Dataset

Occurrence records of 31 timber species were georeferenced from GBIF within the national extent of Ghana and analysed for their suitability (presence or absence) across 266 forest and wildlife reserves in Ghana.    1.   This archive contains a list of 31 tree species compiled from a 2022 survey on tree seed sourcing strategies in Ghana, complemented by relevant scientific literature and forest inventories conducted by Hawthorne and Abu-Juam (1995) and Oteng-Amoako (2006). The selected species were prioritised for their economic importance and their relevance to restoration initiatives across the country. Species presence data were obtained from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, 2024) and processed in R Studio 4.4.0 using the Dismo, Jsonlite, rgbif, bgifdb, and Raster packages (R Core Team, 2024). The presence (occurrence) records retrieved from GBIF between May and June 2024 were restricted to Ghana’s national boundary (xmin: -3.258473, xmax: 1.191527, ymin: 4.741527, ymax: 11.17486). This ensured that the dataset is geographically appropriate for habitat suitability modelling within Ghana. The dataset’s reliability is further supported by the validated geographic coordinates provided by GBIF, as species occurrence is highly dependent on location-specific accuracy (GBIF, 2024).   2.   The archive consists of data on priority timber species availability for seed sourcing and conservation, assessed using a map of Ghana with overlaid suitability maps of 31 species on the national seed zone maps and forest reserve maps. These seed zones are numbered from 1 to 15. The suitability maps were superimposed on Ghana’s forest reserve and seed zone maps, allowing each forest reserve to be classified as either within or outside a given seed zone. Furthermore, within each Seed Transfer Zone, the maps indicate whether each forest and wildlife reserve is suitable or unsuitable for the presence of the 31 studied species. For each species, a corresponding file has been prepared, containing data on its presence or absence across 266 forest reserves in Ghana.