|
Extensive_description_of_the_dataset
|
Changes in phenology induced by climate change are happening across the globe with important implications for ecosystem functioning, services, invasions, species performance and trophic interactions. A globally co-ordinated research effort is needed in order to understand the drivers and implications of such changes and to develop management strategies. Much of the work on phenology has been undertaken on woody plant species with very few studies investigating phenology of herbaceous species, which differ in many ways from trees and shrubs. Despite half of the plant species on Earth being herbaceous, we know very little about their phenology. PhenObs aims to improve our knowledge of the phenological responses of herbaceous species to the biotic and abiotic environment, which will enable us to predict herbaceous phenology from species provenance, climatic requirements, phylogeny and plant traits. PhenObs was established in 2017 by the botanical gardens of Jena, Halle, Berlin and Leipzig and is co-ordinated in Jena. It has since expanded to include gardens outside of Germany. We undertake coordinated, standardized phenological monitoring and measurements of plant functional traits. Because of their diverse collections of plants, botanical gardens represent ideal locations to carry out research across large numbers of species from diverse habitats. For 346 vascular plant species 11 vegetative and reproductive phenological stages covering the seasonal life cycle were monitored in twelve Botanical Gardens (7 in Germany and one each in the Austria, India, Italy, Norway and Russia) in 2021.
For all phenological stages, the date of onset was recorded as soon as observed on at least one plant. The time of all events is given in the day of year (doy) format. "Initial growth", "Onset of leaf unfolding", "Onset of flowering", "Onset of fruiting" and "Onset of senescence" were defined as the first day in the raw data, whereas "End of flowering", "End of fruiting" and "End of senescence" were defined as the last day in the raw data, on which the phenological stage could be observed. The intensity (i.e. the percentage) of open flowers and leaf senescence was recorded. By selecting the day of the year with the highest intensity the peak of flowering and the peak of leaf senescence were calculated. The length of the species’ flowering duration was calculated from the number of days between the onset and the end of this stage. In addition, we offer the raw data of the weekly recordings (with the exception of the botanical garden in Leipzig). Date of the observations are converted into day of year (doy) format. From these, the day of the year of the above-mentioned phenological events were calculated.
File description:
- processeddata_PhenObs_2021.csv: Phenological stages of the dataset from 2021
- metadata_processeddata_PhenObs_2021.csv: Metadata for the phenological stages of the dataset from 2021
- rawdata_PhenObs_2021.csv: Raw data of the weekly recordings
- metadata_rawdata_PhenObs_2021.csv: Metadata for the raw data of the weekly recordings
Updates:
In version 1 of this dataset, species Calla palustris and Caltha palustris had the same ID (Cal_Pal_Garden). This issue was fixed by using the first 4 letters of the species and genus to create the ID in version 1.1 (i.e, Calla palustris and Caltha palustris have now Call_palu_Garden and Calt_palu_Garden, respectively).
Stages not available for specific species are indicated with "NA". All csv files are encoded as: UTF-8. |
|