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Published November 19, 2018 | Version 1.0.1
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Chronicles of Nature Calendar: A long-term and large-scale multitaxon database on phenology

Authors/Creators

  • 1. University of Helsinki
  • 2. EarthCape
  • 3. Oviedo University
  • 4. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
  • 5. University of Maryland
  • 6. National Park Orlovskoe Polesie,
  • 7. Institute of Botany, Academy of sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan
  • 8. Kostomuksha Nature Reserve
  • 9. Kabardino-Balkarski Nature Reserve
  • 10. FSE Zapovednoe Podlemorye
  • 11. State Nature Reserve Stolby
  • 12. Carpathian Biosphere Reserve
  • 13. National Park Beringia
  • 14. State Nature Reserve Prisursky
  • 15. Zapovednoe Pribajkalje (Bajkalo-Lensky State Nature Reserve, Pribajkalsky National Park)
  • 16. Darwin Nature Biosphere Reserve
  • 17. Volzhsko-Kamsky National Nature Biosphere Rezerve
  • 18. Voronezhsky Nature Biosphere Reserve
  • 19. Baikalsky State Nature Biosphere Reserve
  • 20. Visimsky Nature Biosphere Reserve
  • 21. Pechoro-Ilych State Nature Reserve
  • 22. Kondinskie Lakes National Park named after L. F. Stashkevich
  • 23. Land of the Leopard
  • 24. A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution
  • 25. FGBU Zapovednoye Priamurye, Komsomolskiy Department
  • 26. Tigirek State Nature Reserve
  • 27. State Nature Reserve Bolshaya Kokshaga
  • 28. Sikhote-Alin State Nature Biosphere Reserve named after K. G. Abramov
  • 29. FSBI Prioksko-Terrasniy State Reserve
  • 30. National park Meshchera
  • 31. Ilmensky State Nature Reserve, Russian Academy of Sciences, Urals Branch
  • 32. FGBU National Park Kenozersky
  • 33. FSBI Zeya State Nature Reserve
  • 34. FGBU GPZ Kologrivskij les im. M.G. Sinicina
  • 35. Altai State Nature Biosphere Reserve
  • 36. Pryazovskyi National Nature Park
  • 37. State Nature Reserve Privolzhskaya lesostep
  • 38. Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (BIN RAS)
  • 39. Sary-Chelek State Nature Reserve
  • 40. Institute for Evolutionary Ecology NAS Ukraine
  • 41. FGBU State Nature Reserve Kuznetsk Alatau
  • 42. Kerzhenskiy State Nature Biosphere Reserve
  • 43. Chatkalski National Park
  • 44. Bryansk Forest Nature Reserve
  • 45. Pinezhsky State Nature Reserve
  • 46. The Central Chernozem State Biosphere Nature Reserve named after Professor V.V. Alyokhin
  • 47. Tyumen State University
  • 48. Reserves of Taimyr
  • 49. National Park Ugra
  • 50. Kaniv Nature Reserve
  • 51. Smolenskoe Poozerje National Park
  • 52. Polistovsky State Nature Reserve
  • 53. Ural State Pedagogical University
  • 54. Institute of Mathematical Problems of Biology RAS – the Branch of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences
  • 55. Kronotsky Federal Nature Biosphere Reserve
  • 56. Zhiguli Nature Reserve
  • 57. Central Forest State Nature Biosphere Reserve
  • 58. National Park Bashkirija
  • 59. State Nature Reserve Kurilsky
  • 60. Vodlozersky National Park
  • 61. State Nature Reserve Kivach
  • 62. Astrakhan Biosphere Reserve
  • 63. FSBI United Administration of the Lazovsky State Reserve and national park Zov Tigra
  • 64. State Nature Reserve Tungusskiy
  • 65. State Unitary Enterprise Research and Project Institute of General Planning for the city of Moscow
  • 66. Carpathian National Nature Park
  • 67. State Environmental Institution National Park Braslav lakes
  • 68. Mari Chodra National Park
  • 69. Information-Analytical Centre for Protected Areas
  • 70. State Nature Reserve Vishersky
  • 71. State Nature Reserve Olekminsky
  • 72. Crimea Nature Reserve
  • 73. Forest Research Institute Karelian Research Centre Russian Academy of Sciences
  • 74. Black Sea Biosphere Reserve
  • 75. Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Sciences Russian Academy of Science
  • 76. State Nature Reserve Nurgush
  • 77. FBSI Prioksko-Terrasnyi Nature National Reserve
  • 78. Caucasian State Biosphere Reserve of the Ministry of Natural Resources
  • 79. National Park Khvalynsky
  • 80. State Research Center Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute
  • 81. Mordovia State Nature Reserve
  • 82. State Nature Reserve Malaya Sosva
  • 83. Surhanskiy State Nature Reserve

Description

We present a large-scale and long-term dataset that can be used to examine community-level spatial variation in phenological dynamics and its climatic drivers. The database consists of 510,165 observation dates collected in 472 localities in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan (Fig. 1) over a 129-year period (from 1890 to 2018). During this period, researchers intensively conducted regular observations to record dates at which a predefined list of phenological and climatic events (Table 1) occurred. Although 96% of the observations were acquired from 1960 onwards, a few time series are very long. Events measured for plants include e.g. the onset days of leaf unfolding, first flowering time, and leaf fall; for birds they include e.g. days for first spring and last autumn occurrences; for insects, amphibians, reptiles and fungi they include e.g. day of first occurrence in the spring. The plant data were acquired in fixed plots, and the bird data along established routes. Climatic events were recorded as calendar dates when those events took place. Of all phenological dates, 88% were collected by research personnel of nature protected areas and national parks, who followed a systematic protocol. Thus, sampling effort remained nearly constant over time. The remaining 12% of the observations came from a well-established volunteer phenological network of volunteers, who followed a similar systematic protocol.

The recording scheme implemented at nature reserves offers unique opportunities for addressing community-level change across replicate local communities. These data have been systematically collected not as independent monitoring efforts, but using a shared and carefully standardized protocol adapted for each local community. Thus, variability in observation effort is of much less concern than in most other distributed cross-taxon phenological monitoring schemes. To enable analyses of higher-level taxonomical groups, we have included taxonomic classifications for the species in the database.

The compilation of the data into a common database was conducted by the database coordinators (EM and CL) in Helsinki (Finland). Those participants that already held the data in digital format submitted it in the original format, and those that had the data only in paper format digitized it using Excel-based templates developed in the project meetings. Submitted data were processed by the database coordinators according to the following steps:

 

  1. The data were formatted so that each observation (the phenological date of a particular event in a particular locality and year) formed one row in the data table (e.g. un-pivoting tables that involved several years as the columns). The phenological event names were split into event type (e.g. “first occurrence“) and species name.
  2. The event type names (provided originally typically in Russian) were translated into English and the species names (usually provided in Russian) were identified to scientific names, using dictionaries that were partly developed and verified in the project meetings. All scientific names were periodically verified by mapping them to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) backbone taxonomy25.
  3. We associated each data record with the following set of information fields: (1) project name, i.e. the source organization, (2) dataset name, (3) locality name, (4) unique taxon identifier, (5) scientific taxon name, and (6) event type.
  4. We imported the data records in the main database (maintained as an EarthCape database at https://ecn.ecdb.io). During the import, the taxonomic names, locality names, and dataset names were matched against already existing records.

The database is organized in six datasets: (A) a classification of taxa included; (B) a classification of climatic events included; (C) information on the study sites; (D) the phenology data, (E) an information sources table for classification data, and (F) an information sources table for phenology data. All tables are in csv format (columns separated by comas) (Data Citation 1). The tables can be linked to each other using the unique study site names and the unique identifiers for species and climatic evens.

  1. The taxonomy table has twelve columns: (1) the unique identifier of the taxon, (2) the scientific name of the taxon, (3) the highest taxonomical level to which the taxon is described, (4) kingdom, (5) phylum, (6) class, (7) order, (8) family, (9) genus, (10) species, (11) The GBIF key for the taxon, and (12) the GBIF status of the taxon.
  2. The climatic events table has two columns: (1) the type of the climatic event, (2) the type of the climatic event (e.g. related to temperature, snow or ice).
  3. The study sites table has three columns: (1) the name of the study site, (2) latitude, (3) longitude.
  4. The phenology table has nine columns: (1) the name of the project in which the data were collected (2) the name of the dataset to which the data belongs to, (3) the name of the study site in which the data were collected, (4) the unique identifier of the taxon (“Climate” for climatic events), (5) the scientific name of taxon (climatic group for climatic events), (6) the type of the event, (7) the year, (8) the date of the observation as the number of days since January 1st in the focal year, and (9) a column indicating if any quality issues were identified with the data.
  5. The information sources table for phenology data has three columns: (1) the name of the project, (2) the type of information sources (mostly Chronicles of Nature Books of the participating organizations) (3) the references used to extract the phenology data.

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