725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Establishing a European Phenological Data Platform for Climatological Applications Start date 05/04/2004 End date 05/04/2009

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Phenology ? Phenology ? Study of the timing of recurring biological events in the animal and plant world asrecurring biological events in the animal and plant world as flowering, leaf unfolding, fruit ripeness, appearance and departure of migrating birds and animal breeding….

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Weather and climate play an important role in plant development INDIVIDU AL CHARACTE RISTICS ATMOSPHE RE SOIL BIOSPH ERE

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Phenology what for? Phenology what for? Important tool for climate change impact studies - IPCC AR4Important tool for climate change impact studies - IPCC AR4 interaction between atmosphere and biosphere is a crucial area of study for increasing knowledge of critical exchanges in the planetary carbon balanceinteraction between atmosphere and biosphere is a crucial area of study for increasing knowledge of critical exchanges in the planetary carbon balance important and necessary to have ground truth observations for NDVI-data (normalized differential vegetation Index – photosynthetic activity)important and necessary to have ground truth observations for NDVI-data (normalized differential vegetation Index – photosynthetic activity) Vegetation influences the albedo, the evapo/transpiration and thus the energy budget of the earth – atmosphere systemVegetation influences the albedo, the evapo/transpiration and thus the energy budget of the earth – atmosphere system knowledge about and the input of the status of vegetation leads also to a better performance of NWP modelsknowledge about and the input of the status of vegetation leads also to a better performance of NWP models

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Problems in Europe many national and regional phenological networks exists having their own specific observation programme often following country/region specific guidelines; data are stored in many different databases, underlying certain utilization restrictions. All these factors hamper a European wide phenological research which has become one of the focus points of climate change impact studies All these factors hamper a European wide phenological research which has become one of the focus points of climate change impact studies >>>solution: COST action

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 thus the Main Objective of cost725 is establishing a European reference data set of phenological observations, to be used for climatological purposes, especially climate monitoring, and detection of changes

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Secondary objectives Secondary objectives  harmonisation and recommendation for monitoring and collection procedures  selection criteria of data for further consideration  quality control of observations  commonly used formats of archiving and distribution of data  developing application methods of pheno data (as mapping techniques of phenological information and other  increasing the knowledge concerning relations between climate and phenological phases

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 +JRC Ispra cost participating countries and JRC Ispra

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Conferences 4th Annual Meeting of the European Meteorological Society, 5th Conference on Applied Climatology (ECAC) -26 – 30 September 2004, Nice, France 7th International Congress of Biometeorology ICB, September 5th - 9th 2005, Garmisch Partenkirchen, Germany 3rd HAICTA International Conference on: Information Systems in Sustainable Agriculture, Agroenvironment and Food Technology, 20 – 23 September 2006, Volos, Greece

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Workshops Workshop of WG 3 Dublin, 27 – 28 April 2006 ESF Phenology and Agroclimatology, Exploratory Workshop Volos 21 – 23 September 2006 Workshop of WG 2 Vienna 4 – 5 December 2006 Workshop of WG 3 Freising 22 – 23 January 2007 Workshop/scientific excursion Ivalo 6 – 10 June 2007 Workshop of WG 2 Ljubljana 12 – 13 November 2007 Workshop / scientific fieldtrip Bucharest 6 – 7 May 2008

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 1 METADATA information collected from all participating countries and from Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia Herzegovina about phenological networks observed plants phases, observations sites… This metadata built the bases for the selection of plants and phases for the database of COST725

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 1 METADATA historical overview and present status of the national phenology networks in all member countries + IPG, Croatia, Bosnia Hercegowina and Albania 182 pages ©COST Office 2008 ISBN

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 2 DATABASE Decision that all observed plants and phases have to be classified according to one guideline:BBCH code Biologische Bundesanstalt, Bundessortenamt and CHemical Industry StageDescription 0Germination / sprouting / bud development 1Leaf development (main shoot) 2Formation of side shoots / tillering 3Stem elongation or rosette growth / shoot development (main shoot) 4Development of harvestable vegetative plant parts or vegetatively propagated organs / booting (main shoot) 5Inflorescence emergence (main shoot) / Heading 6Flowering (main shoot) 7Development of fruit 8Ripening or maturity of fruit and seed 9Senescence beginning of dormancy

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 2 DATABASE

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 2 DATABASE in April 2005 the list of plants and phases to be stored in the common database was worked out the present status of the common database comprises data in total from 20 countries plus IPG from 7948 observation sites (among these 6406 German stations)

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 2 DATABASE

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 2 DATABASE Quality Checking: questionnaire on checking routines in use was sent and evaluated: Most frequent used visual and logical, less used statistical and spatial control,methods are frequently combined with each other - individual data treatment - need of very experienced phenologists A.Zust, 2006

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 3 APPLICATIONS increasing the knowledge concerning relations between climate and phenological phases A.Menzel et al., in Global Change Biology 2005)

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 3 APPLICATIONS Early spring phases – high inter-annual variability Earlier springs - larger spatial variability Menzel et al. GEB 2006 Fitter & Fitter 2002

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 3 APPLICATIONS

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 3 APPLICATIONS ……increasing the knowledge concerning relations between climate and phenological phases the first really European wide analyses using observational series of 542 plant and 19 animal species showed that 78% of all leafing, flowering and fruit ripening advanced and only 3% were significantly delayed in 1971 to while there was no clear signal for a later beginning of autumn characterized by leaf colouring and leaf fall. Temperature and phenological trends are significantly correlated thus the specious´ phenology is responsive to temperature of the proceeding month: mean advance of spring/summer 2.5 days per 1°C temperature increase

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 3 APPLICATIONS

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 WG 3 APPLICATIONS

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Impact of COST725 The Commission for Climatology CCl of WMO for the first time recommends phenological observations in the draft of the 3rd edition ” Guide to Climatological Practices” following the recommendation of COST725

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Impact of COST725 France network activities Ireland project on “Climate change impacts on phenology: implications for terrestrial ecosystems” started in April 2008 Sweden and Austria launched interactive web page Switzerland 2 major phenological studies started

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 European added value By financing workshops, conferences and meetings, STSMs and giving action support grants the COST framework not only helped but made possible: standardisation of phenological observation methods in Europe developing of common data quality checking routines creating a European wide database publishing of European wide pheno-climate studies triggering national activities exchange of knowledge promotion of young scientists

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Dissemination of results COST725 was presented by the chair and by the COST office at many conferences (oral & posters), flyer, publications, contributions to NEWS from COST, identifies, searches and collects information about phenological data and metadata that are stored in national archives. The observational rules and the performed quality checks prescribed by the agency responsible for the data are an essential part. guidelines for the selection of phenological data from national data sets, assessment on the question of which data become part of the common final data set will test and develop further applications on how to use phenological data and especially the reference data set, resulting from the action The methods under consideration are primarily mapping of phenological phases trend analyses correlation between phenological phases and other climate elements Collection of the selected data physically from the participating countries, definition of data formats and preparation of the information to be stored and distributed European phenological meta data; European phenological data platform; European Phenological Reference data set; Peer reviewed publications; Recommendations for observation and data quality control; Bi-annual status reports, Final report; Web site; Presentation on international conferences The stem and backbone: WG 2 The Database chair Wolfgang Lipa The fruits: WG 3 Applications chair Annette Menzel The roots: WG 1 Inventory of data and metadata chair Jiri Nekovar The Harvest 725

COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Dissemination of results the already mentioned meta analyses found a huge echo in the media e.g.:BBC news, SPIEGEL, CORDIS news

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Plans for the last year of COST725 Workshop on hostorical phenological data in November 2007 in Rome Special Issue of Climate Research Final scientific report Phenological conference in Geisenheim/Germany March 2008 (combined with last MCM) 4 STSMs

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Life after COST Possible follow up project in the frame of ECSN European Climate Support Network proposal was presented at the ECSN meeting in Svalbord 15 – 18 June 2008 Positively evaluated some amendments & justifications are necessary though

725 COST ESSEM Monitoring Event, Helsinki /06/08 Thanks for your attention