The Private Forestry Programme (PFP) operates over a large geographical area of the Southern Highlands in Tanzania. Knowledge about the existing forest plantations in that area could serve as an important baseline for future plantation management and development (PFP, 2015). Unfortunately, while the area has a substantial number of commercial and privately operated forest plantations, it is unclear what the geographical extent of forest coverage is, how many plantation forests lie in each district of the Southern Highlands, how large a proportion of them are privately run, and other key information is missing.
The lack of spatially explicit information about forest plantations has made it challenging to engage in strategic forest management planning. Clearly, there is a dire need for maps and statistics forest plantation to support the efforts of the project. Having more geospatial information about current forest plantations would support plantation management, the monitoring of changes,the planning of future investments and the allocation of new land areas for planting.
