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Global Urban Tree Species (GUTS): Revealing tree species diversity across the world’s urban areas

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Abstract

Diverse tree communities can bolster urban ecosystem resilience and provide vital ecosystem services. However, existing urban tree species datasets have limited geographic coverage and contain inadequate attributes. To address those gaps, we developed the Global Urban Tree Species (GUTS) dataset by integrating data from literature, biodiversity databases, and other open sources. The new dataset encompasses 159,845 occurrence records of 10,094 tree species in 8,349 cities and 139 countries. Among them, 109,879 records were confirmed from urban areas, representing 11.18% of global tree species diversity. The dataset has been validated using multiple methods. GUTS fills critical data gaps and provides a foundation for future research and management of global urban biodiversity.

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Data availability

The dataset is available at Figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.26970220.

Code availability

The code used to curate the data in this data descriptor is available on Mendeley Data Repository (https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/pghkfm5sm9/1)20.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all authors whose work was included in our systematic review for sharing their valuable data. We also extend our gratitude to the institutions that curate the biodiversity databases used in this study. Their generous data sharing made this research possible. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 32171542).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth System Science, Institute for Global Change Studies, Ministry of Education Ecological Field Station for East Asian Migratory Birds, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Xudong Yang, Xinyi Liu & Jun Yang

  2. School of Tourism Ecology and Environment, Guilin Tourism University, Guilin, China

    Pengbo Yan

  3. Institute of Agricultural Information, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Nanjing, China

    Jing Jin

Authors

  1. Xudong Yang
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  2. Pengbo Yan
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  3. Jing Jin
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  4. Xinyi Liu
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  5. Jun Yang
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Contributions

J.Y. conceived the dataset plan and supervised the work. X.Y., P.Y., J.J. and J.Y. collected and compiled data. X.Y. conducted data validation. X.Y. and J.Y. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to
Jun Yang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Yang, X., Yan, P., Jin, J. et al. Global Urban Tree Species (GUTS): Revealing tree species diversity across the world’s urban areas.
Sci Data (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06868-2

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