Our trees and shrubs serve a multitude of uses. They provide us with fuel and materials for building and crafting; some are a source of medicine or food, or hold special significance in our varied cultures; many feed our livestock and wildlife; and they all help to bind the soil, preventing erosion. Yet, despite their importance to us, a record of basic information on their distribution, abundance and general biology has been lacking.

The Tree Atlas Project (TAP) was initiated to help gather this information, record it, and make it available for the management and conservation of this important resource. The Project was launched on Arbour Day in October 1997 when it first invited the participation of interested volunteers - atlassers - to gather information and share their knowledge of trees and shrubs. Information was collected over six years - until December 2003 - and entered into a database housed at the National Botanical Research Institute. The book gives a synthesis and summary of the information in that database. It provides a 'snapshot' of which woody plants are found in Namibia, where they are found, and in what abundance during the time period of the project, as well as some biological and ecological characteristics of these plants.

Project Outputs

BOOK and CD: "Tree Atlas of Namibia"

• B. Curtis & C. Mannheimer, 2005. Tree Atlas of Namibia. ISBN 99916-68-06-3. B4, soft cover, line drawings, maps as well as black and white photographs, 688 pages. PDF FILES can be downloaded for each species and the book is also available on CD.

MAPS AND DISTRIBUTION DATA

• Search by scientific, common name or family, to find SPECIES DISTRIBUTION MAPS and view them online.
• Download the distribution data as KMZ, SHP, PDF or CSV FILES for your own use.
• See Namibian common names for each tree species in Namibia
• Generate SPECIES LISTS PER QUARTER DEGREE SQUARE.
  • species list per QDS for one or more QDS
  • species list for several QDS combined

• Download the data as a zipped ACCESS DATABASE [mdb 2.2 MB].