We [Jonas Dierenbach, Franz-W. Badeck, Jörg Schaber] present an online database that provides unrestricted and free access to over 16 million plant phenological observations from over 8,000 stations in Central Europe between the years 1880 and 2009.
Unique features are (1) a flexible and unrestricted access to a full-fledged database, allowing for a wide range of individual queries and data retrieval, (2) historical data for Germany before 1951 ranging back to 1880, and (3) more than 480 curated long-term time series covering more than 100 years for individual phenological phases and plants combined over Natural Regions in Germany. Time series for single stations or Natural Regions can be accessed through a user-friendly graphical geo-referenced interface.
The joint databases made available with the plant phenological database PPODB render accessible an important data source for further analyses of long-term changes in phenology. The database can be accessed via www.ppodb.de .
Die PPODB besteht eigentlich aus drei Datenbanken bzw. -quellen: DWD, HPDB, und HIS. Hier wird erklärt, welche Beobachtungszeiträume darin erfasst wurden, und aus welchen Quellen die Daten erhoben wurden.
About
The Plant-Phenological Online Database PPODB comprises plant-phenological observations collected in Central Europe between 1880 and 2009 with an emphasis on Germany. Most of the data presented here was kindly provided by the Deutscher Wetterdienst (German meteorological service, DWD ), a public-law institution in the area of accountability of the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development.
The PPODB offers a unique data source, where, for the first time, plant-phenological observations from 129 years are brought together in one consistent database. Moreover, sophisticated outlier detection methods and quality checks are applied.
For more information about the different databases, please refer to the documentation or (Schaber, 2002) and (Schaber and Badeck, 2005).
Generally, access to the database is unrestricted and free of charge. For more details see Acknowledgments . The raw data can also be ordered directly from the DWD (www.dwd.de) .
Data Sources
The PPODB comprises three main data sources.
DWD
Phenological observations collected by the Deutscher Wetterdienst (German meteorological service, DWD) from 1951 to 2009. This data is referred to as ‘DWD’-data and tables containing this data are named with the prefix ‘DWD’.
HPDB
the historical phenological database (HPDB) provided by the DWD, which is a collection of phenological observations from Central Europe, mainly Germany, covering the years 1880 until 1941 compiled from various sources. This data is referred to as ‘HPDB’-data and tables containing this data are named with the prefix ‘HPDB’.
HIS
To supplement the data for the time before 1951 and to fill the gap between 1941 and 1951 we digitalized phenological data that were available only in printed form.
These data were collected by the volunteer network of the precursor of the DWD, the Deutscher Reichswetterdienst, and were published after world war II (Schnelle and Witterstein, 1952; Schnelle and Witterstein, 1964). These observations cover the years 1922 until 1944. Additionally, we digitalized phenological data that were published between 1951 and 1961 in the meteorological yearbooks of the DWD (DWD, 1951; DWD, 1953; DWD, 1960; DWD, 1961).
All these historical data were stored in yet another historical phenological database (HIS), which for the first time is made publicly available. Only the meteorological yearbooks of the former US-Zone in Germany covered the whole time span from 1945 until 1951, whereas the meteorological yearbooks of the other occupied zones started publishing later, e.g. the British-Zone started 1949. Thus, continuous time series for the whole period from 1880 until 1999 could only be found for southern Germany. This data is referred to as ‘HIS’-data and tables containing this data are named with the prefix ‘HIS’.
– PPODB » Datasources
Thanks
The PPODB team thanks the DWD for providing the data stored in the DWD- and HPDB-databases and for continuous support concerning the DWD data for more than a decade.
We also thank the DWD for giving us access to their archive in Potsdam, and providing the Meteorological Yearbooks from which we digitalized the data now stored in the HIS database.
We thank Edda Klipp and Ivo Maintz from the Institute for Theoretical Biophysics at the Humboldt University , which kindly hosts PPODB.
PPODB was funded by German Ministry for Science and Education (BMBF) .
– PPODB » About
The plant phenological online database (PPODB): an online database for long-term phenological data – Jonas Dierenbach & Franz-W. Badeck & Jörg Schaber