From Plots to Possibilities: Advancing Tree Inventory Research in India through the first in-person INvenTree meeting
Building a nationwide understanding of India’s forests requires more than data—it requires community and collaboration. And being part of a community of people with shared values and visions is perhaps one of the most effective ways to produce meaningful research. This is true especially for a country as wide and vast in their ecology and culture as India. Therefore, hosting a gathering of researchers from across the country at National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, was an important step in forming the India Tree Inventory Network. A step that moves us closer in the direction towards our goals of synthesizing vegetation ecology in India openly and collaboratively.
We had 30 researchers across a range of institutions, areas of study, and career stages participate in an action-packed two-day programme of talks, discussions, and debates that spilt over generously into shared meals and breaks. We began with an introduction to INvenTree by Mahesh Sankaran, followed by Krishna Anujan outlining the paper metadata, and Neha Mohanbabu showcasing the INvenTree app and site-level metadata. These were complemented by invited talks on long-term ecological research and monitoring, as well as breakout discussions on research directions, data-sharing, capacity building and outreach to engage with the broader Indian ecology community, and the future of the network.
What unfolded was a rich discussion that highlighted the barriers to sharing data openly, particularly with the global community, and the need for synthesis research to answer ecological questions in India in a way that benefits Indian researchers and data owners. We realized that by network building and communication, we can build trust, find ways to standardize and put together our vegetation datasets across biomes and geographies, to answer novel questions and test ecological and evolutionary theories.
One of the highlights of day 1 was announcing the release of INvenTree Meta, an interactive metadatabase of published tree inventory data across India. These include plot data from studies published between 1990 to 2023, with annual updates. The metadata can be filtered, visualised on a map, and downloaded, and serves as a quick starting point for collaboration and to see what data is out there.
Another highlight from day 2, was the enthusiasm of the participants as they discussed what INvenTree could do to engage with the broader ecology community, such as hosting workshops for students on learning how to synthesise large datasets, and setting up open and reproducible workflows. Also, making protocols, field manuals, and methods related to ecological research available via articles and videos on the website. There was also a keen interest to collaborate with artists and design students to share stories of field researchers and their findings to inspire and educate people of all ages.
Our first in-person meeting served as a starting point to create a vision board for the network. But we hope the network will grow organically into something truly meaningful and impactful for the researchers within the network, and also for the broader community of people who will benefit from accessible ecological science.
The first INvenTree in-person meeting was supported by an ANRF meetings/symposia grant to convenor Mahesh Sankaran and co-convenor Krishna Anujan. The meeting organisation was led by the convenors with support from the rest of the INvenTree team - Neha Mohanbabu, Tanaya Nair, Aparna Krishnan and Ankitha Jayanth.
