Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network (TEAM Network)

The Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) Network (http://www.teamnetwork.org) – a partnership among Conservation International, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Wildlife Conservation Society – is a multidisciplinary network operating at a global scale, across a set of tropical forest landscapes.The vegetation-monitoring protocol (http://www.teamnetwork.org/protocols/bio/vegetation) requires the spatial mapping and taxonomic identification of all trees and lianas larger than 10 cm diameter at breast height in 1-ha plots. Each TEAM Network site has at least six 1-ha plots where all stem diameters are measured annually. The data generated from these permanent 1-ha forest-inventory plots are useful for both the tropical forest diversity and the tropical forest carbon research communities. Data collection is done either using paper field forms, which are subsequently transcribed into digital form, or using a mobile EcoPDA device (http://www.teamnetwork.org/ content/ecopda) to directly enter the information in digital form. The final digital data set is uploaded into the TEAM Network datamanagement system using a suite of data-acquisition tools. Data management and distribution is provided by the www.teamnetwork.org web portal. This report describes the available content in the vegetation-plot database of the TEAM Network (GIVD ID 00-00-002).