Dendrometric Data from a Tropical Arboretum as a Teaching Dataset and Baseline for Living Collection Monitoring

Living collections in botanical gardens play important roles in conservation, research, and education, but their potential to generate interpretable biological information for teaching and management is often underused. This study reports a teaching experience based on dendrometric data from the arboretum of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden in a graduate course on applied statistics. The course combined R programming with a problem-oriented pedagogical approach, using a census dataset of 4621 individuals with DBH ≥ 10 cm as a common object of investigation. The dataset served as a common framework for linking statistical procedures, from exploratory analysis to model-based approaches, with botanical interpretation and management-oriented questions. Analytical outputs showed that taxonomic abundance, dominated by Arecaceae and Fabaceae, did not always correspond to structural dominance measured by total basal area. In addition, height–DBH models fitted for Roystonea and Carapa highlighted interspecific and between-bed variation within the arboretum. Student submissions reproduced and adapted the analytical workflows, while instructor feedback identified difficulties in regression interpretation and model diagnostics. Overall, the experience illustrates how dendrometric data from a living collection can be incorporated into applied statistics teaching while also providing information for collection assessment and future monitoring.