Submission Guidelines

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