Global Wood Density Database v.2 (GWDD v.2)

The Global Wood Density Database v.2

The Global Wood Density Database v.2 (GWDD v.2) is a collection of 109,626 taxonomically standardized wood density records and 15,093 additional bark density records. Data include measurements at different levels of aggregation (individual, species) and both georeferenced records and values from the literature. For a full description of the database, please see the corresponding manuscript. (Fischer et al. 2026. Beyond species means – the intraspecific contribution to global wood density variation. New Phytol. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70860). It includes and supersedes the GWDD v.1 (Zanne et al. 2009, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.234).

When using the GWDD v.2 in your work, please cite Fischer et al. 2026 as well as this repository using the corresponding DOI (10.5281/zenodo.16919509). 

If you would like to report an issue or suggest improvements for future updates of the GWDD, please do so on github: https://github.com/fischer-fjd/GWDD/issues

Aggregated wood density data

We provide pre-aggregated wood density data, with wood density estimates at species, binomial species and genus level. Wood density estimates are derived from hierarchical (random effects) models and provided both as simple species mean values (wsg_est) and as species mean values for trunks (wsg_est_trunk) and branches (wsg_est_branch) separately. In addition, we provide raw wood density means (wsg_raw), but we do not recommend using them for practical purposes due to outliers for poorly sampled species.

gwddagg_v2.x_species: pre-aggregated wood density values for 17,261 species, including infraspecific epithets; comprises 16,828 taxonomically resolved species well as 433 values with uncertain taxonomic status

gwddagg_v2.x_binomial: pre-aggregated wood density values for 16,905 binomial species

gwddagg_v2.x_genus: pre-aggregated wood density values for 3,198 genera

 



Raw wood density data

In addition, we also provide the underlying raw wood density database. This collection contains one metadata file and raw data files in .csv format. Since special characters (e.g., in the references) can be distorted by operating systems when reading in .csv files, we also provide all data in .RData format, which can be loaded into R with the load() function. 

columns_gwdd_v2.x: metadata for all the columns included in the GWDD v.2

gwdd_v2.x: the GWDD v.2, including all 109,626 wood density records

gwdd_v2.x_withbark: the GWDD v.2, including all 109,626 wood density records and 15,093 additional bark density records