NCBS Launches INvenTree Dataset for Indian Forests

Exam-focused facts from the 24 July 2026 current affairs briefing.

Key facts

The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) has compiled the INvenTree-meta dataset, the largest meta-dataset of tree inventory studies from India.
The dataset aggregates data from 465 published studies spanning over 4,650 hectares across all Indian biomes, conducted between 1991 and 2023.
The study identified that biodiversity-rich regions like the northern Western Ghats, northeastern India, the Western Himalayas, and the Nicobar Islands remain under-sampled.
Over 80% of the underlying datasets from Indian tree inventory studies are not publicly accessible, hindering their integration into global analyses.
The median sampled area of these studies is only two hectares, and data accessibility was identified as the main bottleneck for India's inclusion in global forest databases.