A Regional Database on Vegetation for Central Africa 
Catherine Vits 
University of Gent 
Belgium 
The presentation consists of 2 parts: 
- the main part elaborates on the regional database for Central Africa that has been established 
at our laboratory by Franciska Borry; 
- the second part briefly presents the ongoing feasibility study about setting up a network 
activity to facilitate access to data on vegetation for Central Africa. 
1. Established database focused on tropical forest for Central Africa 
The database has been established in the context of a modeling exercise for the estimation of forest 
biomass, on the basis of bio-geo-physical parameters and existing forest inventory data (method of 
the Brown S. research team), using spatial information techniques as a tool. 
The study area encompasses the humid tropics of Central Africa, which covers the Guineo Congolian 
rain forest and the transition to Zambesian and Sudanian vegetation in Cameroon, the Central African 
Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, and Zaire. 
This research project is important since : 
- it is the first attempt to model above ground biomass on a regional scale for Central Africa, 
- it fills an important data gap for the global carbon budget models, and thus contributes to the 
global change research 
- the compiled regional database constitutes an important 'field' data source for future studies 
in the area. 
The major effort for this project was not the modeling itself, but involved the acquisition, 
coregistration and preprocessing of suitable data sets. 
The main sources of the data sets were the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization 
(FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme's Global Resources Information Database 
(UNEP/GRID) through World Data Center A (Boulder, USA), CIRAD-Foret (France), the Canadian 
consultancy firm Poulin Thierrault (Canada), and the archives of the Royal Museum for Central 
Africa (Belgium). 
Different data types were used providing information which was both thematic and numerical : paper 
maps, digital maps (raster format), tabular data, and databases of point measurements. 
The major processing actions included the conversion to digital format (maps, tables, etc.) of an 
important part of the data, and the georeferencing to a common coordinate system (Lambert 
Azimuthal Equal Area, Clark 1880). 
The data sets used are : 
(1) forest inventories and floristic surveys, containing : 
* map boundaries (scale 1:50 000 to 1:200 000), 
x stem-diameter distributions, and 
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