Contribution of the Brazilian National Forest Inventory to the knowledge of Cerrado woody flora

The National Forest Inventory (Inventário Florestal Nacional-IFN) is a large initiative that uses standardised methods to survey Brazilian forestry resources. One target of the IFN is the Cerrado, which contains one of the richest floras in the world. The aim of this study was to assess the contribution of the IFN to the knowledge of Cerrado woody flora. We analysed data from field-collected vouchers sampled by the IFN Cerrado. We restricted our analyses to IFN collections of native trees and shrubs, including palms, which were identified at the species level. Habitat of each collection was obtained by overlaying specimens’ geographic coordinates with land cover maps available in the Mapbiomas platform. Our final dataset comprised 28,602 specimens distributed in 2,779 sites (conglomerates) in Bahia, Distrito Federal, Goiás, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Piauí, São Paulo and Tocantins. Collections were located in the following habitats: savannas (40.5%), forests (30.2%), anthropic areas (25.6%), grasslands (3.5%), and water (0.2%). We recorded 1,822 species belonging to 543 genera and 105 families, representing 34% of Cerrado woody species recorded on Flora do Brasil 2020. Fabaceae had the largest number of species, while Tapirira guianensis and Matayba guianensis were the most collected species. We highlight 60 potentially new records of occurrence for several states and 64 new records for the Cerrado, primarily in riparian forests where species from other biomes occur. In addition, 232 recorded species are Cerrado endemics, while 36 are cited in the CNCFlora’s red list as endangered. The systematic sampling carried out by the IFN enabled vegetation sampling in remote and poorly known areas, which expanded the geographic range of many woody species and contributed to the knowledge of plant diversity in the Cerrado.