External datasets catalogue

Grapevine and climatic change — 04 Nov 2011

Meteorological data recorded since 1972 at the INRA Station in Colmar (Alsace, France). Phenological data recorded on INRA grapevine collections over the same period.

Monitoring Agricultural ResourceS (MARS) — 03 Nov 2011

 For the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy, the European Commission needs timely information on the agricultural production to be expected in the current season. This is a main concern of the MARS-project (Monitoring Agricultural ResourceS) of the AGRI4CAST and FOODSEC units of the Directorate General Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission in Ispra (Italy).     Available products include:     Graphs and maps of weather indicators based on observations and numerical weather models     Graphs and maps of crop indicators based on agro-meteorological models     Graphs and maps of vegetation indices and cumulated dry matter based on remote sensing images

Daily Soil Moisture of Europe — 03 Nov 2011

Continuous simulations with the LISFLOOD model within the European Flood Alert System produce daily soil moisture maps of Europe. This information provides an instantaneous image of the current situation of the water content as modelled by LISFLOOD . Meteorological input information is derived from measured and spatially interpolated meteorological point data provided by the MARS-STAT activity of IPSC-JRC (so called JRC-MARS data). Due to the reception via the Global Telecommunication System of WMO and further processing the data are typically one to two days behind the current date. Within EFAS the simulations with JRC-MARS data provide the initial conditions for various simulations in the flood forecasting mode. The spatial resolution of LISFLOOD on the pan-European scale is currently at 5 km.   Information on soil moisture is presented in form of soil suction (pF) values of the top soil layer that commonly range between 1.5 for very wet conditions up to 5.0 for very dry soils. The pF value describes the forces necessary for plants to apply in order to extract water from the soil for their use. It incorporates variations in the water holding capacity of different soil types and thus allows for comparison of the soil water status at different locations throughout Europe.

Soil erosion risk assessment in Europe — 03 Nov 2011

Factors influencing erosion have been graded for the diverse geographical situations existing in Europe and erosion mechanisms have been expressed with the help of experimental and expert-defined empirical rules. Land cover and crust formation on cultivated soils were considered as key factors influencing runoff and erosion risk. A soil geographical database has been created for Europe, and a model of erosion risk has been developed using a Geographical Information System (GIS). The model uses empirical rules to combine data on land use (CORINE Land Cover database), soil crusting susceptibility, soil erodibility (determined by pedotransfer rules from the Soil Geographical Data Base of Europe at scale 1:1 Million), relief (USGS HYDRO1K digital elevation model), and meteorological data at a 1 x 1 k m pixel size (Space Applications Institute, Ispra Joint Research Center). Spatial units for the presentation of results are defined using either administrative units or watershed catchment units.

National Soils Inventory (NSI) — 03 Nov 2011

National Soil Inventory (NSI) data is a set of point data. NSI data covers England and Wales on a 5 km grid and provides detailed information for each intersect of the grid. Collectively NSI data are statistically representative of England and Wales soils and they offer a valuable foundation for future monitoring of soil quality. The original sampling was from around 1980 and there have been partial resamplings in the mid-1990s. NSI site includes erosion, landuse and lithological information. NSI profile gives a very detailed soil description including stone abundance, root descriptions and boundary information. NSI topsoil gives detailed measurements of over 20 elements from the soils, in addition to pH. NSI textures describes the soil texture. NSI features provides depth data to various layers and includes a flood risk indicator.

Trends in trophically interacting species — 03 Nov 2011

Species specific differences in the reaction to climate change can become particularly important when interacting species are considered. Current studies have evidenced temporal mismatching of interacting species at single points in space, and recently two investigations showed that species interactions are relevant for their future ranges. However, so far we are not aware that the ranges of interacting species may become substantially spatially mismatched. We developed separate ecological-niche models for a monophagous butterfly (Boloria titania) and its larval host plant (Polygonum bistorta) based on monthly interpolated climate data, land-cover classes, and soil data at a 100-grid resolution. We show that all of three chosen global-change scenarios, which cover a broad range of potential developments in demography, socio-economics, and technology during the 21st century from moderate to intermediate to maximum change, will result in a pronounced spatial mismatch between future niche spaces of these species.

Trends in avian breeding and migration in Europe — 03 Nov 2011

In this study we aim to show how laying dates for a long-distance migrant, the pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), and a short-distance migrant, the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris), have changed over their European breeding grounds during the last 25 yr.

Emission factors for treatment of kitchen and garden waste — 03 Nov 2011

Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung Heidelberg GmbH

Environmental accounts (Eurostat) — 03 Nov 2011

Environmental Accounts (EA) track the links between the environment and the economy at EU, national, regional and industry level.

European phenological data platform for climatological applications — 02 Nov 2011

COST action 725 ‘Establishing a European phenological data platform for climatological applications’ comprising all phenological records digitally available at present. It included entire phenological networks of 11 countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Russia (provided by the 5FP project POSITIVE)), five specialists networks (Finland, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom) and the network of the International Phenological Gardens in Europe (http://www.agrar.huberlin. de/pflanzenbau/agrarmet/ipg_en.html), spreading over 14 countries including, in addition to countries named above, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Ireland and Macedonia. In total, phenological trends of 542 plant species in 21 countries (125 628 time series) and 19 animal species in three countries (301 time series) were analysed. The phenophases of wild plants, fruit trees and agricultural crops were assigned to a BBCH (Biologische Bundesanstalt, Bundessortenamt and CHemical Industry) code (Meier, 1997) and grouped either by BBCH code or BBCH subgroups (principal growth stages). If applicable, agricultural and natural phases were treated separately. Annual mean onset dates for nine countries (Austria, Belarus/northern Russia, Estonia, Czech Republic,Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine/southern Russia), comprising 254 records (phenophases countries) of 101 years, however, mostly covering the total period 1951–1999, were available for the quantitative assessment of temperature responses.  

Changes in distribution of Ilex aquifolium — 02 Nov 2011

Reanalysis of both biogeographic and bioclimatic data of equal spatiotemporal resolution, covering a time span of more than 50 years.   In this paper, we compare both detailed historic climatic and biogeographic records with updates of the same parameters at the same localities in the northern fringe area of the distribution of Ilex aquifolium, applying the same methodology as used in the original study ( Iversen 1944 ). We also compare our field data to predictions from simulations of Ilex distributions using a purely climate-driven bioclimatic model. Our aim is, therefore, to verify whether a potential shift in the local and regional distribution of a species is in synchrony with concurrent changes in climatic data on the same spatio-temporal resolution. Mean temperature values for the warmest and coldest month for a subset of climate stations used by Iversen (1944) and updated for the period 1971 – 2000.  

Natuurindicatoren — 02 Nov 2011

  Number of observations of dragonflies of southern Europe by year.  

Summer heatwaves promote blooms of harmful cyanobacteria — 02 Nov 2011

A coupled biological–physical model investigating how competition for light between buoyant cyanobacteria, diatoms, and green algae in eutrophic lakes is affected by the meteorological conditions of this extreme summer heatwave. The model consists of a phytoplankton competition model coupled to a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model, driven by meteorological data.

Biological Records Centre — 02 Nov 2011

The Biological Records Centre (BRC), established in 1964, is the national focus in the UK for terrestrial and freshwater species recording (other than birds). It works with the voluntary recording community throughout Britain and Ireland. The BRC database contains over 15 million records of more than 12000 species. BRC is the national custodian of data on the distribution of wildlife in the British Isles.

Global Lake and River Ice Phenology Database — 02 Nov 2011

The Global Lake and River Ice Phenology Database contains freeze and breakup dates and other ice cover descriptive data for 748 lakes and rivers. Of the 429 water bodies that have records longer than 19 years, 287 are in North America and 141 are in Eurasia; 170 have records longer than 50 years; and 28 longer than 100 years. A few have data prior to 1845. These data, from water bodies distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, allow analysis of broad spatial patterns as well as long-term temporal patterns.

Hydrology and Water Resources Management Data system — 02 Nov 2011

Lake Saimaa water temperature measurements

Water temperature in Lake Võrtsjärv — 02 Nov 2011

Water temperature in Lake Võrtsjärv in southern Estonia

River Danube water temperature measurements — 02 Nov 2011

River Danube water temperature measurements

DONAR (Historical water measurement data) — 02 Nov 2011

  The monitoring programme (MWTL) collects physical, chemical, biological and morphological measurement data for water.  After verification and validation the data are stored in the main database DONAR. Using the Waterbase web application, you can graph data in both numerical form and view on your screen. Additionally, you can select data as an Excel or text file download.

Variation of floods and droughts in France — 01 Nov 2011

A French national project was set up in 2002 in order to study the variation of floods and droughts in France, based on a large set of discharge data series. Numerous approaches can be used to study trends and variations on hydrological data series, e.g. statistical tests, segmentation procedures, Bayesian approaches, and multivariate or regional models. A comparative analysis aimed at defining a general framework for the selection of a limited number of tests, based on the statistical properties of the hydrological data series (sample size, autocorrelation) and the prior knowledge of the type of distribution and the expected change. The first results on a set of about 200 French long data series do not show conclusive proof that climatic change has affected flood and drought regimes. A Bayesian model has finally been developed to incorporate hydrological nonstationarity into frequency analysis, using MCMC algorithms for the weighting of different time dependent models.