Submission Guidelines
Data, metadata and quality requirements and procedures.
Data Requirements
Draft for consultation: this follows the draft NFMS/FIP Data Sharing Protocol and Governance Structure, which take effect when approved by the Principal Secretary, State Department for Forestry.
- Use the standard FIP templates agreed by the NFMS/FIP technical working group.
- Send complete metadata with every dataset (the NFMS-FIP metadata template).
- Use the approved coordinate reference systems (including WGS 84), file formats and naming conventions.
- Follow the agreed submission schedule: quarterly, twice a year, or as data is generated.
- Validate and clean the data before submitting.
- Submit through approved exchange mechanisms: secure web services, APIs, file transfer or other approved means.
Data covered by the Protocol
- Land use / land cover and change detection
- Forest extent, canopy cover, biomass and vegetation indices
- Forest inventories, biodiversity and habitat quality
- Forest disturbance alerts (fire, logging, encroachment, pests, invasives)
- Soil and land suitability
- Hydrology, watersheds and water quality
- Climate and meteorological records
- Ecosystem services valuation
- Forest tenure, cadastral and land registry data
- Environmental compliance reports and EIAs
- Logging permits, concessions, harvesting plans, forest infrastructure
- Patrol and enforcement records
- Community forestry and PFM
- Socio-economic data on forest use and value chains
- Human–wildlife conflict and wildlife migration
- Agroforestry and sustainable land use
- High-resolution imagery, aerial photography and LiDAR
- Fire detection and burn scars
Source: Draft NFMS/FIP Data Sharing Protocol, version 1.0, Kenya Forest Service and State Department for Forestry (July 2026).