1. INTRODUCTION

a. Definitions

• Data: plot-aggregated estimates of forest structure (e.g. aboveground biomass, Lorey’s height, community-weighted mean wood density) and associated location and environmental (e.g. elevation, precipitation) data;
• Data Owner: individual or organization who legally owns the Intellectual Property Rights over the Data;
• Data Provider: individual or organization who provides the Data;
• Data User: person to whom Data access is granted following Data Use Agreement (defined below).

b. Generalities

DATA.GEO-TREES (https://data.geo-trees.org) is a European Space Agency (ESA)-funded international initiative to establish and maintain a global in situ forest biomass database. DATA.GEO-TREES provides Data Users access to high-quality Data by partnering with established networks responsible for managing and curating permanent forest plots. In doing so, DATA.GEO-TREES also aims at connecting the remote sensing community with Data Owners/Data Providers to foster their collaborations. DATA.GEO-TREES only stores and provides plot aggregated data and will neither ask for nor store tree-by-tree data.

The present Terms and Conditions of DATA.GEO-TREES do not replace those established by the different Data Providers and Data Owners. In case Data Providers are plot networks, their Terms and Conditions can be accessed at their websites. The plot networks currently involved in DATA.GEO-TREES are:

• ForestGEO (site-specific; see http://ctfs.si.edu/datarequest/index.php/main)
• ForestPlots.net (http://www.forestplots.net/en/join-forestplots/code-of-conduct)
• IIASA (http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/terms-of-use.html)
• TERN AusCover (https://www.tern.org.au/datalicence)
• TmFO (http://tmfo.org/Data/data%20policy.html)

2. DATA OWNERSHIP

The Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of the tree-by-tree plot data are with the Data Owners. Data Owners who decide to share plot-aggregated summary data, do so under a Creative Commons licensing. Data Users are strongly encouraged to get in touch with Data Owners/Data Providers to interpret their results.

3. DATA LICENSING

Unless otherwise stated, the Creative Commons – Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) of DATA.GEO-TREES Data is the default license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Data Users are free to share and adapt the Data for any purpose.

4. DATA ACCESS REQUIREMENTS

To help DATA.GEO-TREES to monitor its data use and to interact with the Data User community (e.g. to provide information about important updates) the following registration information is encouraged to be shared by the Data User:

• Name;
• Affiliation;
• Email;
• Address;
• Notification that the below Data Use Agreement has been read;;
• Statement of Intended Use.

5. DATA USE AGREEMENT

a. Transferability

In compliance with Data licensing CC BY-SA 4.0, Data Users are free to share the Data with other parties. Yet, such parties are strongly encouraged to register independently if they want to access and use the most up-to-date version of the Data.

b. Acknowledgements

The Data User commits to including an acknowledgment in any publication that utilizes the Data. This acknowledgment should reference the GEO-TREES initiative and, in addition, either the Plot networks (such as ForestGEO, ForestPlots.net, IIASA, TERN AusCover, TmFO, if substantial data from one of these networks is utilized) or the Plot PIs (if specific plot data were employed in the study).

c. Citation

To acknowledge the work done to create and share the Data, the Data User encouraged to include the following citation: Schepaschenko, D., Chave, J., Phillips, O.L. et al. The Forest Observation System, building a global reference dataset for remote sensing of forest biomass. Sci Data 6, 198 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-019-0196-1

DATA.GEO-TREES also appreciates that Data Users send them an electronic copy (e.g. via DOI link) of the publications that used the Data.

6. DISCLAIMER

THE DATA IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT ANY GUARANTEES.