Newsletter Issue 3 - June 2026

newsletter

Greetings from the India Tree Inventory Network!

With this periodical, we hope to keep the community updated on working group activities, new members and new and relevant publications by researchers in the network.

Welcome to new members!
Please join us in welcoming new members to the group! Dr. Anzar Khuroo, University of Kashmir, A P Madhavan, Nature Conservation Foundation, Dr. Sudhakar Reddy, National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad, Dr. Sandeep Pulla, National Centre for Biological Sciences and Dr. Jayashree Ratnam, National Centre for Biological Sciences have joined us.

Do check out our member directory to see the full list of members and their affiliations.

Team Updates

Network Building

Members: Krishna Anujan (lead), Neha Mohanbabu, Tanaya Nair, Nasla Najeeb, Karun Jose, Mahesh Sankaran

This working group is focussed on building the network and engaging with members. Updates include:
1. In-person meeting: The first in-person meeting of the India Tree Inventory Network was organised at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru from 16-17 January 2026. Read the full report here.
2. Seeking early career members: We are actively reaching out to new student and early career members to join the network. If you mentor or collaborate with students or postdocs who might benefit from this community, please put them in touch with us at indiainventree@gmail.com
3. Group policies: Following the meeting, we have drafted a collaboration policy for participating in network projects. Please review the document here: Collaboration Policy.

Planned activities:
Research papers: We plan to further the research themes identified at the in-person meeting. Many groups have conducted one or two meetings. The network building team will support the collaborative activities of these groups along with the Data Visibility Team.

Data Visibility

Members: Neha Mohanbabu (lead), Krishna Anujan, Nasla Najeeb, Karun Jose

This working group is focused on making collated datasets accessible and reusable. Current and planned projects:
1. Shiny app: The first Shiny app to visualise INvenTree metadata was launched at the INvenTree in-person meeting! Explore and download the data here.
2. Collating plot metadata: This group is currently collating metadata on one-time and repeat census tree inventory plots in India. This will contribute to discussions on collaborative research. If you are a data owner or plot data manager with plot metadata that you would like to contribute, please reach out to indiainventree@gmail.com for details.

Recent Publications from members

  1. Mugal, M. A., Wani, S. A., Reddy, C. S., Naskar, S., Maity, D., & Khuroo, A. A. (2026). Endemic Tree Flora of India: Diversity, Distribution and Drivers. Ecological Research, 41(2), e70056. https://doi.org/10.1111/1440-1703.70056
  2. Wani, S. A., Reddy, C. S., & Khuroo, A. A. (2026). Climate Suitability, Environmental Heterogeneity and Anthropogenic Factors Jointly Shape the Spatial Patterns of Alien Plant Distributions Across India. Journal of Biogeography, 53(6), e70274. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.70274
  3. Joshi, J., Dey, P., Mohan, A. V., Barve, V., Prasad, G. V. R., Goswami, A., Pulla, S., Page, N., Agarwal, I., Shanker, K., Karanth, K. P., Ramakrishnan, U., & Chattopadhyay, D. (2025). Linking eras and data: Natural history collections as the foundation of India’s biodiversity science. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 146(3), blaf100. https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blaf100

Have you published a paper with tree inventories recently? Write to us at indiainventree@gmail.com and we’ll send it around!