Kew GIS Unit

Welcome to the GIS Unit at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

'GIS' stands for Geographic Information Science. GIS provides the means to visualise and analyse masses of information about the state of the world's plant life and allows us to reveal new relationships, patterns and trends in an rapidly changing environment. As well as mapping plants and vegetation, we can also analyse the information we collect alongside other environmental data to find specific relationships for a variety of practical applications.

Our work includes species conservation assessments, conservation management and planning, climate change modelling and mitigation and the use of state-of-the-art satellite imagery to monitor what is happening on the ground.

GIS enables Kew to understand and deliver key information for global conservation.

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GIS Unit gallery

Latest blog posts

Mapping Coffee in Ethiopia part two

by: Paul Little, GIS team blog
08 May 2013
Kew photographer Paul Little has just returned from accompanying a field trip to the Highlands of Ethiopia to research the impact of climate change on the vital coffee crop. Read part two of his diary of the trip.

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Mapping Coffee in Ethiopia part one

by: Paul Little, GIS team blog
16 Apr 2013
Kew photographer Paul Little has just returned from accompanying a field trip to the Highlands of Ethiopia to research the impact of climate change on the vital coffee crop. Read part one of his diary of the trip.

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Mapping tools for botanists, part one: SimpleMappr

by: Steven Bachman, GIS team blog
27 Feb 2013
The first in a series of reviews by Kew’s Geographic Information Science (GIS) Unit of online mapping tools: this time we look at an online tool for distribution mapping called SimpleMappr

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Live updates from Kew's GIS team

Sourced from KewGIS

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:16:58
KewGIS: PhD Oslo “Thermophilous vascular plants: data quality, distributional constraints and responses to climate change" http://t.co/ieDEcH2Ohr
Fri, 17 May 2013 16:03:19
KewGIS: @KewGIS BTW this is Puya raimondii,known as Queen of the Andes.
Fri, 17 May 2013 16:02:29
KewGIS: This just in from team in Peru! World's largest eye liner? Thanks Carlos. http://t.co/Q8fLVgcauV
Fri, 17 May 2013 15:48:26
KewGIS: Researchers develop highest-resolution global forest cover dataset to date http://t.co/4CVZOgwqa3 via @po_st
Thu, 16 May 2013 09:23:59
KewGIS: Most distinct species mapped http://t.co/vnAJXJ9MVJ

Examples of our work

Mapping Harapan plants - towards restoring habitats

Biodiversity inventory and monitoring to conserve critically threatened lowland forest in Harapan, Sumatra.

Find out about our botanical work at the RSPB Harapan site in Jambi, Sumatra. Thanks to a grant from DEFRA, we will be producing a vegetation map of the area. Once complete, it will be used to guide the reforestation of this former lowland rain forest site.

Find out more about Kew's work in Harapan

Plants at risk

A major baseline for plant conservation and the first time that the true extent of the threat to the world’s estimated 380,000 plant species is known.

A global analysis of extinction risk for the world's plants (IUCN Sampled Red List Index for Plants) has revealed that the world’s plants are as threatened as mammals, with one in five of the world’s plant species threatened with extinction.