1. Change of address
CIFOR has moved to its new headquarters near Darmaga. Our postal address remains unchanged, but visitors should come to Jalan CIFOR, Situ Gede, Sindangbarang, Bogor Barat 16680. Please note our new numbers: Phone +62 251 622 622, Fax +62 251 622 100.Our internet site has also changed: the www.cifor.or.id domain no longer exists, and you should look for TROPIS (and other CIFOR) information at http://www.cgiar.org/cifor
2. Current Status of TROPIS
At present, TROPIS contains pointers to 11,000 plots with 2100 species, more-or-less equally distributed between plantation and natural forests. About half the entries relate to plots in Asia, one quarter to Africa, and the rest to plots in Latin America, the Australia-Pacific region, and a few in Europe. To date, 99 individuals from 36 countries have provided information for the TROPIS index: thank you all very much for your help.
Fourty-five people from 26 countries have requested 52 searches, which returned 8400 plots (from 125 contributors) matching search criteria. Only four searches have failed to provide relevant contact information. Some first searches of TROPIS were initially unsuccessful, but have subsequently been satisfied as the database coverage improved. Most, but not all, of the contributions and searches were received via email.
I presented a paper on TROPIS at an IUFRO conference in Ghana last November. If you want a copy of this 5-page summary, send me an email, and indicate if you want it as an email attachment, or as hard copy by post.
3. Searching TROPIS
As you probably know, the TROPIS index contains no growth data as such, but contains information about objectives, species, locations, and people responsible for experiments, trials and other permanent plot systems. Searches of the index provide a list of people (addresses, fax or email, etc.) who have plots corresponding to specified criteria. Eventually, it will be possible to access TROPIS via the internet, but at present, search requests must be directed via the TROPIS coordinator at CIFOR.
Search requests may include any combination of the many attributes available, including:
- Species (one, any of several, or all of several);
- Nature of stand (natural/planted, even-/uneven-aged, etc);
- Location (latitude, longitude, elevation, or country, etc.);
- Trial objectives (spacing, fertilizer, genotype, etc);
- Design (paired, replicated, minimum dbh, plot size, etc);
- Ancillary information (soils, climate, tree coordinates);
- Amount of data (no of plots, time span, no of remeasures);
- Keywords in titles and comments.
Thus, for example, it is possible to request a list of people who have thinning trials in stands with exactly two species (these need not be specified) planted as uneven-aged stands, complete with soil and site details and individual tree coordinates. Any other combination is possible.
To request a search of the TROPIS index, simply email, fax or post your request to Rita Mustikasari at CIFOR (see address below), stating the nature of your request.
4. Future Plans
The following activities are planned during the next few months:
- continue to solicit more information on permanent plots,
- verify information in TROPIS, seek corrections and missing details from original contributors,
- make the newly-enhanced MIRA system available to interested parties(MIRA is a multi-lingual database management system for permanent plot data developed by CATIE),
- make TROPIS available on the Internet for self-service searches,
- include on the TROPIS web-page, pointers to other services and databases with similar objectives (suggestions welcome!)
- provide access to WORLD and PLANTGRO so some inferences can be made when no empirical data are available.
More details in the next issue of TROPIS Update.
5. More Information
For more information on any of these items, any other aspect of TROPIS, or for information on how to contribute an entry to the TROPIS database, contact Rita Mustikasari at the address below.
Regards
Rita Mustikasari
TROPIS coordinator
CIFOR, PO Box 6596 JKPWB, Jakarta 10065, Indonesia.
Tel +62 251 622622, Fax +62 251 622100.
Email: r.mustikasari@cgiar.org