Although the project currently does not have any collaboration in Tanzania their methods and results provide interesting information for researchers in the same field. Their work in East Africa covers several forest areas in Kenya and Uganda.

In their own words:
"BIOTA East Africa links a set of thematically and geographically strictly co-ordinated analyses of biodiversity changes in the East African highland rain forests. Projects are centered around Kakamega Forest in Western Kenya, and in relevant East African institutions responsible for research, nature conservation, and development in rural areas. Investigations take place along forest degradation/disturbance gradients and include various types of habitats - from moderately disturbed primary forest to secondary forests and completely degraded areas. In addition, the socioeconomic situation of rural livelihood and diversity of forest species in rural areas surrounding Kakamega Forest are investigated." (External link for more detail...)

Unlike many other research projects and initiatives BIOTA provides research based spatial data sets for download. This is good!
We too often see how the natural end point of a research project is a tiny map in an article or on a blurred power point presentation. Research ideally should be building stones for further research. But when researchers (and managers of protected areas for that) need those data, they are basically not available. Articles made available for download seldom has spatial data available for download.

Sharing spatial data is not easy. You need to document your data with meta data. You need to make sure that you actually have the relevant ownership of the baseline data. You need to check with your colleagues that it is OK to share the data. The government in the country might also have their say in this issue. Law and regulations might stop good data. Wildlife security for some species are of course also an issue to consider.

Then again - maybe are we trying the impossible. Maybe we should share more and trust our peers to help us make our data better - where they fall short of quality requirements? Wikipedia is a project which works on this principle. Maybe this is the way forward?

Tracks4Africa is a project aiming to establish a good road data set based on the inputs and collaborations from many. I recently had a look at their data set for Tanzania and it is good!

But again back to the Biota project. They are trying to share their data and it's a good start. Visit their website and be inspired.

The BIOTA Africa project website is: