weather-station-klosters

maintainer: Maxime Hervo

title_for_slug: weather-station-klosters

en: klosters weather raclets wind precipitation temperature

en: Weather Station Klosters

en: All in one weather station measuring temperature (°C), humidity (%), wind (m s‾ ¹) and precipitation type. The time format is: number of days from January 0, 0000, UTC.

en: A weather station (Lufft WS600) measured meteorological parameters at Klosters (LON: 9.880413, LAT: 46.869019). Detailed information on the specifications can be found [here](https://www.lufft.com/products/compact-weather-sensors-293/ws600-umb-smart-weather-sensor-1832/productAction/outputAsPdf/).

klosters

display_name: klosters

precipitation

display_name: precipitation

raclets

display_name: raclets

temperature

display_name: temperature

weather

display_name: weather

wind

display_name: wind


en: hydropower ecosystem-protection integral-water-management gis decision-making

state: active

type: dataset

en: Indicators

media_type: text/markdown

en: The indicators capture supporting ecosystem functions.

format: SERVICE

media_type: SHP

format: SHP

en:
 A spatial dataset and tool to simultaneously assess hydropower potential and ecological potential of the Swiss river network (Version 2016)

 Introduction
The steadily growing demand for energy and the simultaneous pursuit of decarbonisation are increasing interest in the expansion of renewable energies worldwide. In Switzerland, various funding projects have been launched to promote technologies in the field of renewable energies and their application as quickly as possible. With the introduction of a funding instrument in 2009, the number of projects submitted to produce renewable energies increased rapidly. The applications for small hydropower plants (≤ 10 MW) were correspondingly numerous. However, the assessment of the environmental impact and its comparison with hydropower importance is still not standardized.
To provide a basis for decision-making, a methodology was developed to determine the overall hydropower potential of a region. A detailed assessment of each river reach, and the systematic and holistic assessment of small hydropower projects at a regional scale are combined here. The assessment of a river reach is conducted at the river space (i.e., the river and adjacent areas) and at the surrounding landscape level. The HYDROpot_integral methodology was developed as part of Carol Hemund's dissertation (2012) at the University of Bern. It allows the evaluation of river reaches holistically, regarding ecological, social, economic and cultural criteria. As a second part of the overall project, the theoretical hydropower (or hydraulic) potential was calculated for the entire river network, which complemnets the spatial assessment. In particular, it is possible to classify river reaches into those that are more suitable for hydropower production (=”use”) and those that are more suitable for protection.

 Material and method
The HYDROpot_Integral method was developed and tested on the basis of cantonal and national data (Hirschi et al. 2013). The method relies on 73 geodata sets. This holistic assessment is the key element of the entire assessment procedure. Its aim is to quantify the importance of the ecosystem functions in terms of services. The river network (GWN07) is divided into reaches of about 450m and for each reach two study units are defined. The river space (RS) records the ecosystem functions of the water body and the nearby riparian area. The length of the RS is 315 m on average in Switzerland and a maximum of 450 m, whereas the width is based on the FOEN definition (BWG 2001: 18f) and varies between 7-107 m. The surrounding landscape (SLS) is the second survey unit that records the ecosystem functions of the surrounding area over a range of 21 m to 321 m. The SLS is calculated over three times the RS width. The length of the SLS is identical to the length of the RS. The ecosystem functions are divided into three types: regulating (service A), cultural (service B) and provisioning (service C) functions. Accordingly, the assessment of the functions is divided into three parts and three values are assigned to each river reach. The more functions there are and the greater their performance, the higher these values are and the more important the corresponding functions are. Hence, these values quantify the importance of the ecosystem functions and the ecological, cultural and economic ecosystem services of each river reach. The concatenation of ecosystem services results in a value (ABC) that can occur in 125 different versions due to the chosen five-level value scale; i.e. each digit of the three-digit number sequence can be assigned a value between 1 and 5. Each of the 125 combinations, and thus each river reach, has its own characteristics determined by the assessments of the three function types. To record the suitability, the combinations are ranked according to their ecological, cultural and economic ecosystem services. These rules mean that the combination that is most suitable for hydropower production at minimum cost in terms of ecological and cultural ecosystem services and has a high economic potential is ranked first; rank 125 indicates the highest ecological and cultural ecosystem services and the lowest economic services and is therefore most suitable for protection. A river reach that is excluded from hydropower use due to legislation, a so-called priority reach, is given rank 126 from the outset and specially marked. A more detailed description of the methods can be found in Hirschi et al. 2013 [Link]. The dataset presented here presents the latest state of the HYDROpot_integral methodology applied at the national level. Only national data that is easily accessible was used in the preparation of the dataset. The cantonal data, such as renaturation and revitalization, would have to be requested by each canton individually and was excluded here. The nationwide value synthesis was made with R.
A list of data sources can be found here [link to text file]
A list of all parameters can be downloaded here [link to PDF and text files]

 Dataset description
Data is presented as a single shapefile. It contains the river network and all assessment results obtained with HYDROpot_Integral.

 Changes in the methodology compared to the original method (Hirschi et. al 2013)

 * RS_A11 Ecomorphology: recorded for the whole of Switzerland and zero values equated with NA;
individual cantons such as Zug and St. Gallen have no mapped values according to the modular
concept of the federal government, Valais and Graubünden only the main valleys, Ticino and Fribourg not
completely (BAFU 2009).
 * RS_A14 Renaturation and revitalization data: not centrally available at the time of data collection.
centrally available, therefore values in GR were equated with NA.
 * RS_A15 Dilution ratio at wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) for discharges: Zero values
equal to NA.
 * RS_A20 Water flow: use WASTA (2013) with hydroelectric power plants (> 300 kW) under
Federal control and dams serving hydroelectricity (Dam, as of 2013).
 * RS_C05 Synoptic hazard maps: are cantonally managed at the time of data collection,
Values in GR are marked with a 5 so that the systematics in the decision tree is not affected.
is affected.
 * Water quality (RS_A15, RS_A16, RS_A17, RS_A18, RS_A19): for the evaluation of the function type.
A Nature, it is important whether the median of the five values is less than or equal to 3 in total. This
evaluation is based on the decision tree for evaluating GR (Hirschi et al. 2013:22).
Therefore, an evaluation of the station data is made where critical and possible river segments
with poor quality (median less than 3) exist. Only two longer and one short
sections in Switzerland receive a lower median than 3 for water quality.
 * SLS_B06 Visibility: For 99 percent of the river segments (30,733 of 31,062) in the canton of
Bern (2015 reduced version), the landscape area is considered to be visible. Due to this high number
of sections, a large number of viewpoints in the layer of Swisstopo and
the computation time and computability in ArcGIS, the landscape area is classified as generally viewable
(equal to 1).
16 Method
Additional indicators were added (see Appendix B.2):
 * SLS_A21 Dissection
 * SLS_A22 Forest areas
 * SLS_B03 Hiking trails
 * SLS_B10 Residential and vacation homes
 * SLS_B11 Tourist infrastructure
 * SLS_C01 Landfill
 * SLS_C03 Infrastructure
 * SLS_C05 Industry
 * SLS_C06 Agricultural land
Not to be added, although present to some extent:
 * SLS_B06 Cultural assets of national importance: here, too, the calculability of the visibility analysis is
for the whole of Switzerland is limited
 * SLS_A15 Legally binding protection and land use planning: the individual river sections are not
clearly designated, i.e. no geodata exist
The following data are also not supplemented, as they are cantonal data:
 * SLS_A10 Cantonal nature reserves
 * SLS_A16 Forest reserves
 * SLS_A17 Cantonal inventories and contractually protected areas

decision-making

display_name: decision-making

ecosystem-protection

display_name: ecosystem-protection

gis

display_name: gis

hydropower

display_name: hydropower

integral-water-management

display_name: integral-water-management

education

fr: Education, science

de: Bildung, Wissenschaft

en: Education and science

it: Formazione e scienza

envidat

fr: EnviDat: le portail de données environnementales

de: EnviDat: das Umwelt-Datenportal

en: EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal

it: EnviDat: il portale dei dati ambientali

fr: EnviDat est le portail de données du WSL; il offre un accès uniformisé et réglementé aux données de surveillance et de recherche en matière d’environnement. Ce portail est capable d’héberger et de publier des ensembles de données précieuses et uniques, qui sont partagées aux quatre coins de la planète. Ce faisant, EnviDat favorise la recherche et contribue à l’avancement des sciences environnementales.

en: EnviDat is the WSL data portal providing unified and managed access to environmental monitoring and research data. The portal has the capability to host and publish data sets. Through the sharing of unique and high-value data sets worldwide, EnviDat fosters research and contributes to advancing environmental science.

de: EnviDat ist das Datenportal der WSL für einen einheitlichen und verwalteten Zugang zu Umweltdaten aus Monitoring- und Forschungsprojekten. Auf dem Portal können Datensätze gehostet und veröffentlicht werden. Durch die weltweite Bereitstellung einzigartiger und wertvoller Datensätze leistet EnviDat einen Beitrag zur Forschung im Bereich der Umweltwissenschaften.

it: EnviDat è il portale dati del WSL che fornisce un accesso unificato e gestito ai dati di monitoraggio ambientale e di ricerca. Il portale ha la capacità di ospitare e pubblicare serie di dati preziosi e unici che vengono condivisi in tutto il mondo. Così facendo, EnviDat promuove la ricerca e contribuisce al progresso della scienza ambientale.

political_level: other

wsl

capacity: public

type: organization

approval_status: approved

key: guid

key: uri

value: Envidat Harvester


maintainer: Ionut Iosifescu Enescu

en: open-science hpc open-data open-source reproducibility jupyter-notebooks research-data-management

en: Open Science Support @ WSL (Poster)

media_type: application/pdf

format: PDF

mimetype: application/pdf

en:
This poster was originally created for the swissuniversities Open Science Action Plan: Kick-Off Forum, and showed to the audience on 17.10.2019. It illustrates how the environmental data portal EnviDat provides the tools for fostering Open Science and Reproducibility of scientific research at WSL.

Supporting open science is a highly relevant user requirement for EnviDat and for implementing FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) principles at dataset level.
EnviDat encourages WSL scientists to complement data publication with a complete description of research methods and the inclusion of the open source software, code or scripts used for processing the dataset or for obtaining the published results. By openly publishing open software (e.g. as Jupyter notebooks) alongside research data sets, researchers can contribute to mitigate reproducibility issues.

EnviDat also promotes and supports, where possible and practical, the publication of software as Jupyter notebooks. Jupyter notebooks provide a solution for improved documentation and interactive execution of open code in a wide range of programming languages (Python, R, Octave/Matlab, Java or Scala). These programming languages are widely used in environmental research at WSL and well supported by the Jupyter-compatible kernels. We have sucessfully interfaced EnviDat-hosted notebooks with the WSL High-Performance Computing (HPC) Linux Cluster through a JupyterHub/JuypterLab beta installation on the HPC cluster implemented in close collaboration with the WSL IT-Services.
For existing software that cannot be easily migrated to Jupyter Notebooks, the Open Science and Reproducibility is assisted by containerisation. We have proven that several Singularity containers can successfully run on WSL's HPC cluster.

Finally, the researchers can upload the data/results complemented by code (e.g. as Jupyter Notebooks, or Singularity containers) and any additional documentation in EnviDat. Consequently, they will receive a DOI for the entire dataset, which they can reference in their science paper in order to publish a more reproducible research.

_License_: This poster is released by WSL and the EnviDat team to the public domain under a Creative Commons 4.0 CC0 "No Rights Reserved" international license. You can reuse this poster in any way you want, for any purposes and without restrictions.

hpc

display_name: hpc

jupyter-notebooks

display_name: jupyter-notebooks

open-data

display_name: open-data

open-science

display_name: open-science

open-source

display_name: open-source

reproducibility

display_name: reproducibility

research-data-management

display_name: research-data-management

en: Open Science Support at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL. The EnviDat Concept


restoring-grassland-multifunctionality

maintainer: EnviDat Support

title_for_slug: restoring-grassland-multifunctionality

en: plants mineralization fungi soil-biodiversity grassland nematodes restoration biodiversity ecosystem-multifunctionality bacteria

format: XLS

en: Functional diversity above_belowground fauna

media_type: XLSX

en: Please note that C.sto and Corg have been corrected.

en: Please note that EMF, MF.below, MF.abio and Soil.hetero have been corrected.

en:
Please cite this paper together with the citation for the datafile.

Resch, M. C., Schütz, M., Buchmann, N., Frey, B., Graf, U., van der Putten, W. H., Zimmermann, S., Risch, A. C. 2021. Evaluating long-term success in grassland restoration – an ecosystem multifunctionality approach. Ecological Applications 31, e02271.

 Study area

The study was conducted in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland, in and around two nature reserves Eigental and Altläufe der Glatt (47°27’ to 47°29’ N, 8°37’ to 8°32’ E, 417 to 572 m a.s.l.). All studied grasslands were located with a radius of approximately 4 km. Average monthly temperatures range from 0.7 ± 2.0 °C (January) to 19.0 ± 1.5 °C (July), and monthly precipitation range from 60 ± 42 mm (January) to 118 ± 46 mm (July [maxima]; 1989-2017; MeteoSchweiz 2018). In our study, we focused on semi-dry and semi-wet oligo- to mesotrophic grasslands characterized by high plant species richness and groundwater fluctuations throughout the year (Delarze et al. 2015, see also Resch et al. 2019).

 Experimental design and sampling

A large-scale restoration experiment to expand and reconnect isolated remnants of species-rich grasslands was initiated in the nature reserve Eigental in 1990. Twenty hectares of adjacent intensive grasslands were chosen for restoration. In 1995, three restoration methods of increasing intervention intensities were implemented. The goal of all three methods was to lower the availability of soil nutrients and hence, facilitate ecosystem development towards the targeted nutrient-poor grasslands. These methods were: Harvest only (hay harvest twice a year), Topsoil (removal of the nutrient-rich topsoil), and Topsoil+Propagules (topsoil removal combined with the application of hay from target vegetation). Plant biomass harvest (once a year in late summer/early autumn) commenced in Topsoil and Topsoil+Propagules five years after the soils were removed and is still ongoing today. We measured restoration success by comparing the three restoration methods with intensively managed (Initial) and semi-natural grasslands (Target) 22 years after restoration. Initial grassland sites share the same agricultural history as the restored sites: mowing and subsequent fertilizing (manure) up to five times a year, as well as different tillage regimes (Resch et al. 2019). Target sites were the sites from which hay for seeding the Topsoil+Propagules sites was collected. Soil conditions (i.e., soil types, soil texture) were comparable to those found in the restored grasslands (Resch et al. 2019). Additionally, Target sites were selected to represent a variety of semi-natural grasslands, including semi-dry to semi-wet conditions. In Target grasslands, biomass is harvested once a year in late summer or early autumn. Eleven 5 m x 5 m (25 m2) plots were randomly established in each of the five treatments (in total 55 plots; for a detailed map see Neff et al. 2020). An additional 2 m x 2 m (4 m2) subplot was randomly established at least 2 m away from each 25 m2 plot for destructive sampling. Data sampling took place between June and September 2017.

Vegetation properties

All plant species were identified within the 25 m2 plots (nomenclature: Lauber and Wagner 1996) in mid-June 2017 (in total 250 species). Vegetation structure and plant biomass were assessed diagonally on a transect of 2 m x 10 cm within the 25 m2 plot in early July 2017. We measured the maximum and mean height of the vegetation at the start, middle and end of the transect and calculated the standard deviation of these measures to describe vegetation structural heterogeneity (Schuldt et al. 2019). Thereafter, biomass was clipped on the entire transect to 1 cm height, sorted into five functional groups (graminoids, forbs, legumes, litter, and woody species), dried at 60 °C for 48 h, and weighed (Meyer et al. 2015).

 Aboveground arthropods

Aboveground arthropods were sampled at two locations in each 25 m2 plot in early July 2017 (see also Neff et al. 2020). Briefly, two cylindrical baskets (50 cm diameter, 67 cm height; woven fabric) were thrown simultaneously from outside the plot into two opposite corners. A closable mosquito mesh sleeve was mounted to the top of the baskets and an integrated metal ring at the bottom was fixed to the ground with metal stakes to assure that insects could not escape. A suction sampler (Vortis, Burkhard Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Hertfordshire, England) was then inserted into one of the baskets through the opening of the sleeve and the plot was “vacuumed" twice for 105 seconds with a 30 seconds break. The collected animals were immediately transferred into 70% ethanol. Arthropods were sorted and assigned to 23 taxonomic groups. Holometabolic larvae were lumped into one category while hemimetabolic larvae were grouped separately from adults in the respective taxonomic rank. We used mean values of individuals per plot for total abundance. Aboveground arthropod richness was defined by the number of different taxa to lowest taxonomic level (in total 23 taxa). All taxa were assigned to one of five trophic levels: 1) primary producers, 2) primary consumers, 3) secondary consumers, 4) tertiary consumers, and 5) quaternary consumers.

 Belowground fauna

Sampling of all belowground fauna took place in mid-July 2017. Earthworms were sampled in two 30 cm x 30 cm x 20 cm soil monoliths at two opposite corners of the 25 m2 plot (opposite to aboveground arthropod sampling). The excavated soil monolith was broken by hand, all earthworms collected and immediately transferred in a 4% formaldehyde solution. Thereafter, earthworm individuals were identified to species level (in total 10 taxa; Christian and Zicsi 1999) and species assigned to three functional groups (Bouché 1977).
To assess soil arthropod communities, we randomly collected one undisturbed soil core (5 cm diameter, 12 cm depth) in each 4 m2 subplot with a slide hammer corer lined with a plastic sleeve (AMS Samplers, American Falls, Idaho, USA). Soil arthropods were extracted using Berlese-Tullgren funnels (3 mm mesh), starting the day of sampling and lasting 14 days. Individuals were stored in 70% ethanol. Soil arthropods were assigned to 41 taxonomic groups and 4 feeding types. Holometabolic and hemimetabolic larvae were treated as previously described for aboveground arthropods. Belowground arthropod richness refers to the 41 taxonomic groups.

For soil nematode sampling, we randomly collected eight soil cores of 2.2 cm diameter (Giddings Machine Company, Windsor, CO, USA) within each 4 m2 subplot to a depth of 12 cm. The eight cores were combined, gently homogenized, placed in coolers, kept at 4 °C and transported to the laboratory at NIOO in Wageningen (NL) within one week after collection. Free-living nematodes were extracted from 200 g of fresh soil using Oostenbrink elutriator (Oostenbrink 1960) and prepared for morphological identification and quantification as described by Resch et al. (2019). Nematodes were identified to family level (39 taxa) according to Bongers (1988), assigned to 17 functional groups, 5 feeding types and 5 colonizer-persister (C-P) classes (Yeates et al. 1993, Bongers 1990, Resch et al. 2019).

We randomly collected two more soil cores (2.2 cm diameter x 12 cm depth) within each 4 m2 subplot to determine soil microbial communities. Again, the soil cores were combined, homogenized, placed in coolers and transported to the laboratory at WSL in Birmensdorf (Switzerland) where the metagenomic DNA was extracted from 8 g sieved soil (2 mm) using the DNeasy PowerMax Soil Kit (Quiagen, Hilden, NRW, GER) according to the manufacturer`s instructions. PCR amplification of the V3-V4 region of the prokaryotic small-subunit (16S) and the ribosomal internal transcribed spacer region (ITS2) of eukaryotes was performed with 1 ng of template DNA utilizing PCR primers and conditions as previously described (Frey et al., 2016). PCRs were run in triplicates and pooled. The pooled amplicons were sent to the Genome Quebec Innovation Centre (Montreal, QC, Canada) for barcoding using the Fluidigm Access Array technology (Fluidigm) and paired-end sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq v3 platform (Illumina Inc., San Diego, CA, USA). Quality filtering, clustering into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and taxonomic assignment were performed as described by Frey et al. (2016) and Adamczyk et al. (2019). We used a customised pipeline largely based on UPARSE (Edgar 2013) implemented in USEARCH v. 9.2 (Edgar 2010). After discarding singletons of dereplicated sequences, clustering into OTUs with 97% sequence similarity was performed (Edgar 2013). Quality-filtered reads were mapped on the filtered set of centroid sequences. Taxonomic classification of prokaryotic and fungal sequences was conducted querying against most recent versions of SILVA (v.132, Quast et al. 2013) and UNITE (v.8, Nilsson et al. 2018). Only taxonomic assignments with confidence rankings equal or higher than 0.8 were accepted (assignments below 0.8 set to unclassified). Prokaryotic OTUs assigned to mitochondria or chloroplasts as well as eukaryotic OTUs assigned other than fungi were removed prior to data analysis. In addition, prokaryotic and fungal datasets were filtered to discard singletons and doubletons. Thereafter, OTU abundance matrices were rarefied to the lowest number of sequences per community, to normalize the total number of reads and achieve parity between samples (Prokaryota: 29,843 reads; Fungi: 26,690 reads). Finally, prokaryotic and fungal observed richness (number of OTUs) were estimated (Prokaryota: 14,010 OTUs; Fungi: 5,813 OTUs). For prokaryotes, we distinguished five and for fungi six functional types based on lowest taxonomic resolution (Nguyen et al. 2016, Tedersoo et al. 2014). Belowground taxon richness was defined by the total number of earthworm, arthropod, nematode, fungi, and prokaryote taxa assigned to lowest taxonomic level. Finally, all belowground taxa were assigned to the same five trophic levels as the aboveground arthropods.

 Soil chemical and physical properties, soil nitrogen mineralization

We randomly collected three 5 cm diameter x 12 cm depth soil samples in each 4 m2 subplot with a slide hammer corer (AMS Samplers, American Falls, Idaho, USA), pooled them and then made two subsamples. One was field-fresh and stored at 3 °C until analysis, the other was dried for 48 h at 60 °C and passed through a 4 mm mesh. From the dried sample, we measured soil pH potentiometrically in 0.01 M CaCl2 (soil:solution ratio=1:2; 30 minutes equilibration time). Total and organic carbon content were measured on fine-ground samples (≤ 0.5 mm) by dry combustion using a CN analyzer NC 2500 (CE Instruments, Wigan, United Kingdom). Inorganic carbon of samples with a pH > 6.5 was removed with acid vapor prior to analysis of organic carbon (Walthert et al. 2010). We calculated total soil carbon (C) storage after correcting its content for soil depth, stone content and density of fine earth (see below). Exchangeable cations were determined on another 5 g dry soil sample with 50 mL unbuffered 1 M NH4Cl solution (soil:solution ratio=1:10, end-over-end shaker for 1.5 hours) and measured by an ICP-OES (Optima 7300 DV, Perkin-Elmer, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA). Thereafter, cation exchange capacity (CEC) was calculated as the sum of exchangeable cations and protons (and expressed as mmolc per 1 kg soil) and used to describe nutrient retention capacity in our plots. Concentrations of exchangeable protons were calculated as the difference between total and Al-induced exchangeable acidity as determined by the KCl-method (Thomas 1982).

Ammonium (NH4+) and nitrate (NO3−) were extracted from a 20 g fresh subsample with 80 mL 1M KCl for 1.5 hours on an end-over-end shaker and filtered through ashless folded filter paper (DF 5895 150, ALBET LabScience, Hahnemühle FineArt GmbH, Dassel, Germany). NH4+ concentrations were determined colorimetrically by automated flow injection analysis (FIAS 300, Perkin-Elmer, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA). NO3− concentrations were measured colorimetrically according to Norman and Stucki (1981). Potential soil net nitrogen (N) mineralization was assessed during an 8-week incubation period under controlled moisture (60% of field capacity), temperature (20 °C) and light conditions (dark) in the laboratory. We weighed duplicate samples of fresh soil equivalent to 8 g dry soil (24 h at 104 °C) into 50 mL Falcon tubes. Soil samples were extracted for NH4+ and NO3− at the beginning and after eight weeks as described above. Soil net N mineralization was calculated as the difference between the inorganic nitrogen (NH4+ and NO3−) before and after the incubation (Hart et al. 1994), corrected for the total incubation time and represented per day values expressed as mg N kg-1 soil d-1.

To assess soil physical properties, we randomly collected one undisturbed soil core per 4 m2 subplot (5 cm diameter, 12 cm depth) in a steel cylinder that fit into the slide hammer (AMS Samplers, American Falls, Idaho, USA). The cylinder was capped in the field to avoid disturbance. We then measured field capacity in the laboratory. For this purpose, the cylinder and soil therein were saturated in a water bath and drained on a sand/silt-bed with a suction corresponding to 60 cm hydrostatic head. The moist soil was dried at 105 °C to constant weight. Field capacity was calculated by dividing the mass of water by the total mass of wet soil contained at 60 cm hydrostatic head and used to describe water holding capacity. Thereafter, samples were passed through a 4 mm mesh. Fine-earth and skeleton fractions were weighed separately to assess bulk soil density (fine-earth plus skeleton), density of fine earth, and proportion of skeleton. Particle density was determined with the pycnometer method (Blake and Hartge 1986), and total porosity and proportion of fine pores were calculated (Danielson and Sutherland 1986). Clay, silt, and sand contents were quantified with the sediment method (Gee and Bauder 1986).

Surface and soil temperature (12 cm depth, water-resistant digital pocket thermometer; IP65, H-B Instrument, Trappe, Pennsylvania, USA) as well as volumetric soil moisture content (12 cm depth, time domain reflectometry; Field-Scout TDR 300, Spectrum Technologies, Aurora, Illinois, USA) were measured at five random locations within the 4 m2 subplots every month from June to September. We calculated the standard deviation of each temperature and moisture measure over four months to describe seasonal variations. Slope inclination was determined at plot-level via GPS measurements (GPS 1200, Leica Geosystem, Heerbrugg, Switzerland) and categorized into slope gradient classes according to FAO standards (1990). Thickness of the topsoil horizon (equivalent to Ah or Aa horizon) was determined at one soil monolith (30 x 30 x 30 cm3) per 4 m2 subplot in cm and rounded to next integer.

 References

Adamczyk, M., F. Hagedorn, S. Wipf, J. Donhauser, P. Vittoz, C. Rixen, A. Frossard, J. Theurillat, and B. Frey. 2019. The soil microbiome of GLORIA mountain summits in the Swiss Alps. Frontiers in Microbiology 10:1080-1101.

Blake, G.R., and K. H. Hartge. 1986. Particle Density. Pages 377-382 in A. Klute, editor. Methods of soil analysis: Part 1—Physical and mineralogical methods. Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) Inc., Madison.

Bongers, T. 1988. De nematoden van Nederland. Stichting Uitgeverij van de Koniklijke Nederlandse Natuurhistorische Verenigung (KNNV), Utrecht.

Bongers, T. 1990. The maturity index: an ecological measure of environmental disturbance based on nematode species composition. Oecologia 83:14-19.

Bouché, M. B. 1977. Strategies lombriciennes. Ecological Bulletins 25:122-132.

Christian, E., and A. Zicsi. 1999. Ein synoptischer Bestimmungsschlüssel der Regenwürmer Österreichs (Oligochaeta: Lumbricidae). Die Bodenkultur 50:121-131.

Danielson, R. E., and P. L. Sutherland. 1986. Porosity. Pages 443-461 in A. Klute, editor. Methods of soil analysis: Part 1—Physical and mineralogical methods. Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) Inc., Madison.

Delarze, R., Y. Gonseth, S. Eggenberg, and M. Vust. 2015. Lebensräume der Schweiz: Ökologie ‐ Gefährdung ‐ Kennarten, Ott Verlag, Bern.

Edgar, R. C. 2010. Search and clustering orders of magnitude faster than BLAST. Bioinformatics 26:2460–2461.

Edgar, R. C. 2013. UPARSE: highly accurate OTU sequences from microbial amplicon reads. Nature Methods 10:996–998.

FAO. 1990. Guidelines for soil description, third ed. Land and Water Development Division at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome.

Frey, B., T. Rime, M. Phillips, B. Stierli, I. Hajdas, F. Widmer, and M. Hartmann. 2016. Microbial diversity in European alpine permafrost and active layers. FEMS Microbiology Ecology 92:fiw018.

Gee, G.W., and J. W. Bauder. 1986. Particle-size analysis. Pages 383-411 in A. Klute, editor. Methods of soil analysis: Part 1—Physical and mineralogical methods. Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) Inc., Madison.

Hart, S. C, J. M. Stark, E. A. Davidson, and M. K. Firestone. 1994. Nitrogen mineralization, immobilization, and nitrification. Pages 985-1016 in R. W. Weaver, S. Angle, P. Bottomley, D. Bezdicek, S. Smith, A. Tabatabai, and A. Wollum, editors. Methods of soil analysis: Part 2—Microbiological and biochemical properties. Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) Inc., Madison.

Lauber, K., Wagner, G., 1996. Flora Helvetica. Flora der Schweiz. Haupt Verlag, Bern.

MeteoSchweiz, 2018. Klimabulletin Jahr 2017. MeteoSchweiz, Zürich.

Meyer, S. T., C. Koch, and W. W. Weisser. 2015. Towards a standardized rapid ecosystem function assessment (REFA). Trends in Ecology and Evolution 30:390-397.

Neff, F., M. C. Resch, A. Marty, J. Rolley, M. Schütz, A. C. Risch, and M. M. Gossner. 2020. Long-term restoration success of insect herbivore communities in semi-natural grasslands – a functional approach. Ecological Applications 0:e02133

Nguyen, N.H., Z. W. Song, S. T. Bates, S. Branco, L. Tedersoo, J. Menke, J. S. Schilling, and P. G. Kennedy. 2016. FUNGuild: an open annotation tool for parsing fungal community datasets by ecological guild. Fungal Ecology 20:241–248.

Nilsson, R. H., K.-H. Larsson, A. F. S. Taylor, J. Bengtsson-Palme, T. S. Jeppesen, D. Schigel, P. G. Kennedy, K. Picard, F. O. Glöckner, L. Tedersoo, I. Saar, U. Kõljalg, and K. Abarenkov. 2018. The UNITE database for molecular identification of fungi: handling dark taxa and parallel taxonomic classifications. Nucleic Acids Research 47:259–264.

Norman, R. J., and J. W. Stucki. 1981. The Determination of Nitrate and Nitrite in Soil Extracts by Ultraviolet Spectrophotometry. Soil Science Society of America Journal 45:347-353.

Oostenbrink, M. 1960. Estimating nematode populations by some selected methods. Pages 81-101 in J. J. Sasser, and W. R. Jenkins, editors. Nematology. Univ. of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Quast, C., E. Pruesse, P. Yilmaz, J. Gerken, T. Schweer, P. Yarza, J. Peplies, and F. O. Glöckner. 2013. The SILVA ribosomal RNA gene database project: improved data processing and web-based tools. Nucleic Acids Research 41:590-596.

Resch, M. C., M. Schütz, U. Graf, R. Wagenaar, W.H. van der Putten, and A. C. Risch. 2019. Does topsoil removal in grassland restoration benefit both soil nematode and plant communities? Journal of Applied Ecology 56:1782-1793.

Schuldt, A., A. Ebeling, M. Kunz, M. Staab, C. Guimarães-Steinicke, D. Bachmann, N. Buchmann, W. Durka, A. Fichtner, F. Fornoff, W. Härdtle, L. R. Hertzog, A-N. Klein, C. Roscher, J. Schaller, von G. Oheimb, A. Weigelt, W. Weisser, C.Wirth, J. Zhang, H. Bruelheide, and N. Eisenhauer. 2019. Multiple plant diversity components drive consumer communities across ecosystems. Nature Communications 10:1460.

Tedersoo, L., M. Bahram, S. Põlme, U. Kõljalg, N. S. Yorou, R. Wijesundera, L. Villarreal Ruiz, A. M. Vasco-Palacios, P. Q. Thu, A. Suija, M. E. Smith, C. Sharp, E. Saluveer, A. Saitta, M. Rosas, T. Riit, D. Ratkowsky, K. Pritsch, K. Põldmaa, M. Piepenbring, C. Phosri, M. Peterson, K. Parts, K. Pärtel, E. Otsing, E. Nouhra, A. L. Njouonkou, R. H. Nilsson, L. N. Morgado, J. Mayor, T. W. May, L. Majuakim, D. J. Lodge, S. See Lee, K.-H. Larsson, P. Kohout, K. Hosaka, I. Hiiesalu, T. W. Henkel, H. Harend, L.-D. Guo, A. Greslebin, G. Grelet, J. Geml, G. Gates, W. Dunstan, C. Dunk, R. Frenkhan, L. Dearnaley, A. De Kesel, T. Dang, X. Chen, F. Buegger, F. Q. Brearley, G. Bonito, S. Anslan, S. Abell, and K. Abarenkov. 2014. Global diversity and geography of soil fungi. Science 346:1256688.

Thomas, G.W. 1982. Exchangeable cations. Pages 159-165 in A. L. Page, R. H. Miller, and D. R. Keeney, editors. Methods of Soil Analysis: Part 2—Chemical and microbiological properties. Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) Inc., Madison.

Walthert, L., U. Graf, A. Kammer, J. Luster, D. Pezzotta, S. Zimmermann, and F. Hagedorn. 2010. Determination of organic and inorganic carbon, δ13C, and nitrogen in soils containing carbonates after acid fumigation with HCl. Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Sciences 173:207-216.

Yeates, G. W., T. Bongers, R. G. M. de Goede, D. W. Freckman, and S. S. Georgieva. 1993. Feeding habits in soil nematode families and genera – an outline for soil ecologists. Journal of Nematology 25:315-331.

bacteria

display_name: bacteria

biodiversity

display_name: biodiversity

ecosystem-multifunctionality

display_name: ecosystem-multifunctionality

fungi

display_name: fungi

grassland

display_name: grassland

mineralization

display_name: mineralization

nematodes

display_name: nematodes

plants

display_name: plants

restoration

display_name: restoration

soil-biodiversity

display_name: soil-biodiversity

en: Restoring grassland multifunctionality


en: antarctica meteorological-data mass-flux drifting-snow snowmicropen terrestrial-laser-scanning

en: Dataset

media_type: Link

en: Links to the dataset

en: README

media_type: text/plain

en: Describes the dataset in detail

format: TXT

mimetype: text/plain

en:
This dataset contains the data acquired during the expedition to Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Station in December 2016 and January 2017. The dataset consits of meterorological data, drifting snow mass flux data, SnowMicroPen data and Terrestrial Laser Scanning data.

Please refer to the README for more information about the data.

This dataset is the basis of the following publication:

Sommer, C. G., Wever, N., Fierz, C., and Lehning, M.: Wind-packing of snow in Antarctica, The Cryosphere Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2018-36, in review, 2018.

antarctica

display_name: antarctica

drifting-snow

display_name: drifting-snow

mass-flux

display_name: mass-flux

meteorological-data

display_name: meteorological-data

snowmicropen

display_name: snowmicropen

terrestrial-laser-scanning

display_name: terrestrial-laser-scanning

en: Expedition to Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Station, 2016/2017


en: ecology environmental---history switzerland historical-carthography environmental--policy wetlands

en: Wetlands 1850 - 2010 (shapefiles)

media_type: application/zip

en:
 History of wetlands - GIS-Layers
 Location of wetlands based on signatures in topographic maps
* Basis 1850: original measuring table sheets Dufour created between the years 1834 and 1863.
* Basis 1900/ Basis 1950: The Siegfried maps were updated and published at regular intervals between 1870 and 1949. This long period of time made it possible to reconstruct wetlands for two periods based on the Siegfried Maps: the first edition (hereinafter referred to as "1900") and the last edition ("1950").
* Basis 2010: Map sheets from the National Map from 2006 to 2011 were used for the most recent time period of the reconstruction.
 Location of wetlands due to reconstructions
The reconstruction **must not** be interpreted in the sense of a surface-accurate separation, but shows without claim to location accuracy the approximate extent of the areas that would have corresponded to the mapping criteria for wetlands used in today's topographic maps around 1850, 1900 and 1950. The basics can be found in Stuber & Bürgi 2019, chapter 5.4.

format: ZIP

mimetype: application/zip

en:
Naturally, large parts of the Swiss Plateau are characterised by wetlands
and meandering rivers. That this is no longer the case today is the result
of centuries of efforts to obtain dry land. But how did this process take
place? What were the relevant actors and what were their motivations? And
what can be said about the ecological consequences of this development?

In a research project on the history of wetlands in Switzerland since 1700,
we conducted (a) a historical analysis of the development of land use in
wetlands and the actors involved, (b) a historical-cartographic
reconstruction of wetland extent since 1850 and (c) an evaluation of
ecological effects of changes in wetlands on various organisms groups.

The series of GIS layers on wetland history stem from the second part of
the project. The area reconstruction is based on digitized and homogenized
signatures from national map series, as they have been available since
about 1850. Details about the digitalization process and the homogenization
procedures applied ("Rekonstruktionen") are included in Stuber & Bürgi
2019.

Book Citation:
 > Stuber M, Bürgi M (2019) Vom «eroberten Land» zum Renaturierungsprojekt. Geschichte der Feuchtgebiete in der Schweiz seit 1700. "Bristol Schriftenreihe", Band 59. Haupt Verlag, Bern, Stuttgart, Wien. 262 Seiten.

ecology

display_name: ecology

environmental---history

display_name: environmental---history

environmental--policy

display_name: environmental--policy

historical-carthography

display_name: historical-carthography

switzerland

display_name: switzerland

wetlands

display_name: wetlands

education

en: Education and science

envidat

en: EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal

en: EnviDat is the WSL data portal providing unified and managed access to environmental monitoring and research data. The portal has the capability to host and publish data sets. Through the sharing of unique and high-value data sets worldwide, EnviDat fosters research and contributes to advancing environmental science.

en: History of wetlands in Switzerland since 1850


en: large-eddy-simulations micro-rain-radar turbulence eddy-covariance-measurements mass-flux meteorological-data drifting-snow blowing-snow antarctica

en: Measurement data from Micro Rain Radar (MRR)

media_type: NetCDF

en: Remote sensing data of blowing snow from a Micro Rain Radar (MRR).

en: Measurement data from snow particle counter at MRR site

media_type: zip-compressed folder of csv

en: Near-surface observations of drifting snow from a Snow Particle Counter (SPC) installed at the location of the Micro Rain Radar.

media_type: zip-compressed folder of text files (f90)

en: Source code of the large-eddy simulations coupled with a Lagrangian stochastic model (LES-LSM), available on GitLab.

en: Simulation data for a situation with significant snow transport

en: Data from two LES-LSM simulations called Drift_1 and Drift_2, which reproduce the conditions observed at the S17 site on 11th January 2019, 00:40 to 00:50 UTC.

en: Readme

media_type: TXT

en: Meta data

en: Measurement data from micro-meteorological station

media_type: zip-compressed folder of ASCII files

en: Automatic in-situ measurements of micro-meteorology and snow transport

en: Simulation data for a situation with negligible snow transport

en: Results from two LES-LSM simulations called NoDrift_1 and NoDrift_2, which reproduce the conditions observed at the S17 site on 12th January 2019, 05:40 to 05:50 UTC.

en:
This dataset contains measurement and simulation data. The measurements characterize the standard meteorology, turbulence, and snow transport at the S17 site near Syowa Station in East Antarctica during an expedition in austral summer 2018/2019. Large-eddy simulations with sublimating particles provide additional insight into the latent and sensible heat exchange between snow and air in two example situations observed at the S17 site.

A part of the measurement data was recorded by an automatic measurement station from 10th January 2019 to 26th January 2019. This measurement station was equipped with standard meteorological sensors, a three-dimensional ultrasonic anemometer, an open-path infrared gas analyzer, a snow particle counter, an infrared radiometer for measurements of the surface temperature, and a sonic ranging sensor measuring changes in snow surface elevation.

At a horizontal distance of approximately 500 m, a Micro Rain Radar (MRR) was installed in a tilted configuration with an elevation angle of 7° for remote sensing of blowing snow between 25th December 2018 and 24th January 2019. In addition, near-surface in-situ measurements of snow transport were performed at the location of the MRR by deploying a snow particle counter from 27th December 2018 to 24th January 2019.

The simulations cover a 18 x 18 x 6 m³ domain and reproduce the steady-state conditions during a 10-min interval with significant snow transport and another 10-min interval with negligible snow transport. We provide the model source code and the post-processed simulation data, i.e., horizontally averaged quantities as a function of height and time.

blowing-snow

display_name: blowing-snow

eddy-covariance-measurements

display_name: eddy-covariance-measurements

large-eddy-simulations

display_name: large-eddy-simulations

micro-rain-radar

display_name: micro-rain-radar

turbulence

display_name: turbulence

en: Meteorology and snow transport at S17 near Syowa, Antarctica, in austral summer 2018/2019


en: gcos wagital meteodat-gmbh snow-water-equivalent snow

en:
Total water reserves of the snow cover [mio m3] for Wägital catchment, Switzerland, for reference date April 1. Data is separated in 2 elevation zones 900m-1500m asl and 1500m-2300m asl. Time period 1943-2022, status 2022-04-20.

Funded currently or in the past by:

- Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss in the context of GCOS Switzerland
- Meteodat GmbH
- Institute of Geography, University of Zurich
- WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF
- Institute of Geography, ETH Zurich (IAC ETH Zurich)
- AG Kraftwerk Wägital (AXPO and EWZ)

See also https://www.meteodat.ch/waegital.html

gcos

display_name: gcos

meteodat-gmbh

display_name: meteodat-gmbh

snow

display_name: snow

snow-water-equivalent

display_name: snow-water-equivalent

wagital

display_name: wagital

education

en: Education and science

envidat

en: EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal

en: EnviDat is the WSL data portal providing unified and managed access to environmental monitoring and research data. The portal has the capability to host and publish data sets. Through the sharing of unique and high-value data sets worldwide, EnviDat fosters research and contributes to advancing environmental science.

en: Snow water equivalent for reference date April 1 for Wägital catchment, starting 1943


disdrometer-data-gotschnagrat

title_for_slug: disdrometer-data-gotschnagrat

en: disdrometer raclets precipitation hydrometeors visibility

en: Disdrometer Data Gotschnagrat

en: The zip folder contains one netCDF file per day for Gotschnagrat from February 11 to March 27 2019 with a temporal resolution of 30 seconds (time in UTC). The naming convention for the files is Gotschna_YYYYMMDD.nc and the files include the following: characteristics of hydrometeors (e.g. diameter, fall velocity, amount per diameter class,...), precipitation rate, radar reflectivity, visibility range, weather codes and instrument performance.

en: A laser optical disdrometer (Parsivel² , OTT Hydromet) was deployed at Gotschnagrat (LON: 9.849, LAT: 46.859) to measure hydrometeors by extinction when passing a laser beam. The instrument can classify eight different kinds of precipitation, including rain, hail, snow, drizzle, and hybrid forms. The dataset contains information on precipitation amount and type for the period of February 11 to March 27 2019 at Gotschnagrat.

disdrometer

display_name: disdrometer

hydrometeors

display_name: hydrometeors

precipitation

display_name: precipitation

raclets

display_name: raclets

visibility

display_name: visibility


maintainer: Benjamin Reuter

en: snow avalanche-activity avalanche-danger avalanche avalanche-problem-type snowpack snow-cover-modeling crocus weissfluhjoch snow-instability

en: 1999-2017 Avalanche problem types from Crocus

media_type: .csv

en:
Avalanche problem types were derived from snow cover simulations with the model Crocus at the Weissfluhjoch study plot, Davos, CH.
The data cover the winter seasons between 1999-2017 and include the simulated annual frequencies of new snow, wind slab, persistent weak layer, aging-persistent weak layer and wet snow problem types.
The data are presented in Figure 8 in Reuter et al. (2021).

en: 2015-2016 Seismic avalanche acitivity catalogue

en:
Avalanches were indentified in seismic data recorded by two seismic arrays, one deployed at Wannengrat (2,500 m) and another one deployed in the Dischma valley (2,000 m).
The data cover the period from 01.01.2016 - 30.04.2016 and are presented in Figure 7 in Reuter et al. (2021).

en: 2015-2016 Avalanche problem types from SNOWPACK

en:
Avalanche problem types were derived from a snow cover simulation with the model SNOWAPCK for the winter season 2015-2016 at the Weissfluhjoch study plot, Davos, CH.
The data cover the period 01.01.2016-30.04.2016. The binary indicator (0,1) tells whether an avalanche problem type was identified in the snow cover simulation (1) or not (0).
The data are presented in Figure 7 in Reuter et al. (2021).

en: 1999-2017 Avalanche problem types from SNOWPACK

en:
Avalanche problem types were derived from snow cover simulations with the model SNOWPACK at the Weissfluhjoch study plot, Davos, CH.
The data cover the winter seasons between 1999-2017 and include the simulated annual frequencies of new snow, wind slab, persistent weak layer, aging-persistent weak layer and wet snow problem types.
The data are shown in Figure 8 in Reuter et al. (2021).

en: 2015-2016 Avalanche problem types from Crocus

en:
Avalanche problem types were derived from a snow cover simulation with the model Crocus for the winter season 2015-2016 at the Weissfluhjoch study plot, Davos, CH.
The data cover the period 01.01.2016-30.04.2016. The binary indicator (0,1) tells whether an avalanche problem type was identified in the snow cover simulation (1) or not (0).
The data are presented in Figure 7 in Reuter et al. (2021).

en:
Avalanche problem types were derived from snow cover simulations with the models Crocus and SNOWPACK at the Weissfluhjoch study plot, Davos, CH. The data include annual frequencies of avalanche problem types for the seasons 1999-2017 and daily presence of avalanche problem types for the period 01.01.2016 - 30.04.2016.
Avalanche activity was derived from two seismic sensor arrays deployed no further than 15 km from Weissfluhjoch, Davos, CH. The data cover the period 01.01.2016 - 30.04.2016.

avalanche

display_name: avalanche

avalanche-activity

display_name: avalanche-activity

avalanche-danger

display_name: avalanche-danger

avalanche-problem-type

display_name: avalanche-problem-type

crocus

display_name: crocus

snow-cover-modeling

display_name: snow-cover-modeling

snow-instability

display_name: snow-instability

snowpack

display_name: snowpack

weissfluhjoch

display_name: weissfluhjoch

en: Simulated avalanche problem types and seismic avalanche activity around Weissfluhjoch


maintainer: Christoph Marty

en: hydrology climate-change-impacts water-cycle snow snowfall

en: Synthesis report chapter

en: DORA Persistent URL

en:
This report was prepared as one of the synthesis report chapters of the Hydro-CH2018 project of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). An important feature of snow cover is the fact that its volume and duration is subject to large year-to-year fluctuations. As frozen precipitation, snow cover is nothing other than a natural water reservoir that delays precipitation to runoff and is thus of outstanding importance for the seasonal water balance in Switzerland. Over a whole year, approximately 40% (22 km3) of the annual runoff currently comes from snow melting and only 1% from glacier melting. Typically, the snow cover in the Alpine region builds up over the autumn and winter months, reaches its maximum between February and May, depending on the altitude, and dominates the runoff processes during melting in the following spring and summer months.
Due to the great dependence on minus temperatures and precipitation, the snow cover reacts sensitively to temperatures above 0° Celsius and more or less precipitation. Due to climate change and the associated warming, the proportion of precipitation that falls as snow decreases measurably. In addition to this reduction in snowfall, the warmer temperatures also cause the snow cover to melt more quickly. The decline in snowfall has so far mainly affected lower altitudes, where winter temperatures often reach positive levels.
As climate change progresses, this trend is likely to continue and above all affect higher zones. Even at higher altitudes, the snow cover will then start later, melt away earlier and is increasingly no longer permanently present. This development will also have an effect on the water bodies. Today nival regimes, i.e. regimes shaped by snow, are shifting towards pluvial regimes, i.e. regimes dominated by rain. Overall, winter runoff increases, summer runoff decreases. By the end of the century, the proportion of runoff from snowmelt will decrease throughout Switzerland, albeit to a lesser extent than the proportion from glacier melt.

climate-change-impacts

display_name: climate-change-impacts

hydrology

display_name: hydrology

snow

display_name: snow

snowfall

display_name: snowfall

water-cycle

display_name: water-cycle

education

en: Education and science

envidat

en: EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal

en: EnviDat is the WSL data portal providing unified and managed access to environmental monitoring and research data. The portal has the capability to host and publish data sets. Through the sharing of unique and high-value data sets worldwide, EnviDat fosters research and contributes to advancing environmental science.

en: Snow and the water cycle in a changing climate


maintainer: Anita Risch

en: exclusion ecosystem-coupling ecosystem-functions grazing subalpine swiss-national-park ecosystem-multifunctionality vertebrates grassland invertebrates

en: Datafile

en:
ID: Plot ID composited of Fence & Treatment number (90 plots total)

Grassland: Name of the six subalpine grasslands where the exclosure setups were erected. In large grasslands (GRIM, MING, STAB), we established four hierarchical exclosure setups (two in short- and two in tall-grass vegetation), whereas in the small grasslands (BOTS, DADA, MARG) only one setup was erected per vegetation type. BOTS = Val dal Botsch, GRIM = Grimmels, MING = Val Mingér, STAB = Alp Stabelchod, DADA = Stabelchod da daint, MARG = Margunet

Fence: Number of exclosure setup (1 - 18). Note that uneven numbers (1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17) represent setups established on short-grass vegetation, even numbers (2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18) setups established in tall-grass vegetation
Vegetation	Vegetation type, 1 = short-grass vegetation, 2 = tall-grass vegetation; (9 replicate fences on each vegetation type)
Treatment	Progressive animal exclusion, numbers indicate which animals had access to the plot: 1 = Large/medium/small mammals, and invertebrates have access ("L/M/S/I"), 2 = Medium/small mammals, and invertebrates have access (“M/S/I”), 3 = Small mammals and invertebrates have access (“S/I”), 4 = Invertebrates have access (“I”), 5 = No animals have access (“None”)

Bulkden:	Fine fraction soil bulk density (g cm-3)

Soil.moist	: Soil moisture (%)

Soil.org.C: Rhizosphere soil C content (%)

pH: Soil pH

Nema.PC1: First principal component (PC1) of principal component analysis (PCA) of the soil nematode community composition

Nema.PC2: Second principal component (PC2) of principal component analysis (PCA) of the soil nematode community composition

Micro.PC1: 	First principal component (PC1) of principal component analysis (PCA) of the soil microbial community composition

Micro.PC2: Second principal component (PC2) of principal component analysis (PCA) of the soil microbial community composition

Abv.Inv.PC1: First principal component (PC1) of principal component analysis (PCA) of the aboveground-dwelling invertebrate community composition

Abv.Inv.PC2: Second principal component (PC2) of principal component analysis (PCA) of the aboveground-dwelling invertebrate community composition

Arthr.PC1: First principal component (PC1) of principal component analysis (PCA) of the soil arthropod community composition

Arthr.PC2: Second principal component (PC2) of principal component analysis (PCA) of the soil arthropod community composition

Plant.PC1: First principal component (PC1) of principal component analysis (PCA) of the plant community composition

Plant.PC2: Second principal component (PC2) of principal component analysis (PCA) of the plant community composition

Root.biomass: Root biomass (g m-2)

Micro.biomass	: Microbial biomass carbon (mg kg-1)

Plant.richness: Plant species richness

Plant.N: Plant tissue nitrogen content (%)

Soil.N.min: Soil net nitrogen mineralisation (kg ha-1 season)

Soil.resp: Soil carbon dioxide emissions (soil respiration; g m-2 h-1)

en:
This dataset contains all data on which the following publication below is based.

Paper Citation:
 > Risch AC, Ochoa-Hueso R, van der Putten WH, Bump JK, Busse MD, Frey B, Gwiazdowicz DJ, Page-Dumroese DS, Vandegehuchte ML, Zimmermann S, Schütz M. Size-dependent loss of aboveground animals differentially affects grassland ecosystem coupling and functions. 2018. Nature Communications 9: 3684. [doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-06105-4](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06105-4).

Please cite this paper together with the citation for the datafile.

#Methods
Study sites
The experimental exclosure setups were installed within the SNP (IUCN category Ia preserve; Dudley 2008), in south-eastern Switzerland. The park covers 172 km2 of forests and subalpine and alpine grasslands along with scattered rock outcrops and scree slopes. The entire area has been protected from human impact (no hunting, fishing, camping or off-trail hiking) since 1914. Large, fairly homogenous patches of short- and tall-grass vegetation, which originate from different historical management and grazing regimes, cover the park’s subalpine grasslands entirely. Short-grass vegetation developed in areas where cattle used to rest (nutrient input) prior to the park’s foundation (14th century to 1914) (Schütz and others 2003, 2006) and is dominated by lawn grass species such as Festuca rubra L., Briza media L. and Agrostis capillaris L. (Schütz and others 2003, 2006). Today, this vegetation type is intensively grazed by diverse vertebrate and invertebrate communities that inhabit the park and consume up to 60% of the available biomass (Risch and others 2013). Tall-grass vegetation developed where cattle formerly grazed, but did not rest, and is dominated by rather nutrient-poor tussocks of Carex sempervirens Vill. and Nardus stricta L. (Schütz and others 2003, 2006). This vegetation type receives considerably less grazing, with only roughly 20% of the biomass consumed (Risch and others 2013). Consequently, the two vegetation types together represent a long-term trajectory of changes in grazing regimes. Underlying bedrock of all grasslands is dolomite, which renders these grasslands rather poor in nutrients regardless of former and current land-use regimes.
Experimental design
To progressively exclude aboveground vertebrate and invertebrate animals, we established 18 size-selective exclosure setups (nine in short-grass, nine in tall-grass vegetation) distributed over six subalpine grasslands across the SNP (Risch and others 2013, 2015). Elevation differences of exclosure locations did not exceed 350 m (between 1975 and 2300 m a.s.l.). The exclosures were established immediately after snowmelt in spring 2009 and were left in place for five consecutive growing seasons (until end of 2013). They were, however, temporarily dismantled every fall (late October after first snowfall) to protect them from avalanches. They were re-established in the same location every spring immediately after snowmelt. Each size-selective exclosure setup consisted of five plots (2 x 3 m) that progressively excluded aboveground vertebrates and invertebrates from large to small. The plots are labelled according to the guilds that had access to them “L/M/S/I”, “M/S/I”, “S/I”, “I”, “None”; L = large mammals, M = medium mammals, S = small mammals, I = invertebrates, None = no animals had access. As we only had permission to have the experimental setup in place for five consecutive growing seasons, the experiment had to be completely dismantled in the late fall of 2013 and all material removed from the SNP.
Our exclosure design was aimed at excluding mammalian herbivores, but naturally also excluded the few medium and small mammalian predators, as well as the entire aboveground invertebrate food web. A total of 26 large to small mammal species can be found in the SNP, but large apex predators are missing (wolf, bear, lynx) . Reptiles, amphibians and birds are scarce to absent in the subalpine grasslands under study. Only two reptile species occur in the park and they are confined to rocky areas that warm up enough for them to survive. One frog species spawns in an isolated pond far from our grasslands. Only three bird species occasionally feed on the subalpine grasslands. Using game cameras (Moultrie 6MP Game Spy I-60 Infrared Digital Game Camera, Moultrie Feeders, Alabaster, AL, USA), we did observe that the medium- and small-sized mammals (marmot/hares and mice) were not afraid to enter the fences and feed on their designated plots. We never spotted reptiles, amphibians or birds on camera. We distinguished between 59 higher aboveground-dwelling invertebrate taxa that our size-selective exclosures excluded (see also methods for aboveground-dwelling invertebrates below).
The “L/M/S/I” plot (not fenced) was located at least 5 m from the 2.1 m tall and 7 x 9 m large main electrical fence that enclosed the other four plots. The bottom wire of this fence was mounted at 0.5 m height and was not electrified to enable safe access for medium and small mammals, while fencing out the large ones. Within each main fence, we randomly established four 2 x 3 m plots separated by 1-m wide walkways from one another and from the main fence line: 1) the “M/S/I” plots were unfenced, allowing access to all but the large mammals; 2) the “S/I” plots (10 x 10 cm electrical mesh fence) excluded all medium-sized mammals. Note that the bottom 10 cm of this fence remained non-electrified to enable safe access for small mammals; 3) the “I” plots (2 x 2 cm metal mesh fence) excluded all mammals. We double-folded the mesh at the bottom 50 cm to reduce the mesh size to smaller than 1 x 1 cm openings; and 4) the “None” plots were surrounded by a 1 m tall mosquito net (1.5 x 2 mm) to exclude all animals. The top of the plot was covered with a mosquito-meshed wooden frame mounted to the corner posts (roof). We treated these plots a few times with biocompatible insecticide (Clean kill original, Eco Belle GmbH, Waldshut-Tiengen, Germany) to remove insects that might have entered during data collection or that hatched from the soil, but amounts were negligible and did not impact soil moisture conditions within these plots.
To assess whether the design of the “None” exclosure (mesh and roof) affected the response variables within the plots and, therefore, influenced the results, we established an additional six “micro-climate control” exclosures (one in each of the six grasslands) (Risch and others 2013, 2015). These exclosures were built as the “None” exclosures but were open at the bottom (20 cm) of the 3-m side of the fence facing away from the prevailing wind direction to allow invertebrates to enter. A 20-cm high and 3-m long strip of metal mesh was used to block access to small mammals. Thus, this construction allowed a comparable micro-climate to the “None” plots, but also a comparable feeding pressure by invertebrates to the “I” plots. We compared various properties within these exclosures against one another to assess if our construction altered the conditions in the “None” plots. We showed that differences in plant (e.g., vegetation height, aboveground biomass) and soil properties (e.g., soil temperature, moisture) found between the “I” and the “None” treatments were not due to the construction of the “None” exclosure, but a function of animal exclusions, although the amount of UV light reaching the plant canopy was significantly reduced (Risch and others 2013).
Aboveground invertebrate sampling
Aboveground invertebrates were sampled with two different methods to capture both ground- and plant-dwelling organisms: 1) we randomly placed two pitfall traps (67 mm in diameter, covered with a roof) filled with 20% propylene glycol in one 1 x 1 m subplot of the 2 x 3 m treatment plots in spring 2013 (May) and emptied them every two weeks until late September 2013 (Vandegehuchte and others 2017b, 2018). A pitfall trap consisted of a plastic cylinder (13 cm depth, 6.75 cm diameter). Within each cylinder we placed a 100 ml plastic vial with outer diameter 6.70 cm and on top of the cylinder we placed a plastic funnel to guide the invertebrates into the vials. Each trap was cover with a cone-shaped and transparent plastic roof to protect the trap from rain (Vandegehuchte and others 2017b, 2018). Note that in the “None” plots only one trap was placed as control to check for effectiveness of the exclosure. 2) We vacuumed all invertebrates from a 60 x 60 cm area on another 1 x 1 m subplot with a suction sampler (Vortis, Burkhard manufacturing CO, Ltd., Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, UK) every month from June to September 2013 (Vandegehuchte and others 2017b, 2018). For this purpose, we quickly placed a square plastic frame (60 x 60 x 40 cm) with a closable mosquito mesh sleeve attached to the top edge into the plot from the outside. The suction sample was then inserted into through the sleeve and operated for 45 s to collect the invertebrates (Vandegehuchte and others 2017b, 2018).
We sorted the ≈100 000 individuals collected with both methods by hand and identified each individual morphologically to the lowest taxonomic level feasible (59 taxa, including orders, suborders, subfamilies, families; phylum for Mollusca). These taxa belonged to the following feeding types: 19 herbivores, 16 detritivores, 9 predators, 8 mixed feeders, 5 omnivores and 2 non-classified feeders (or not feeding as adults) (Vandegehuchte and others 2017b). We summed the numbers from the two pitfall traps and the suction sampling over the course of the 2013 season to represent the aboveground invertebrate abundance and community composition of a plot. Note: we did not specifically attempt to catch flying invertebrates with e.g., sticky traps, thus a few flying insects may have been missed with our vacuum sampling approach.
Sampling of plant properties
The vascular plant species composition was assessed at peak biomass every summer (July) by estimating the frequency of occurrence of each species with the pin count method in each plot (Frank and McNaughton 1990). A total of 172 taxa occurred within our 90 plots and we calculated plant species richness for each plot separately. We used the 2013 data in this study. Plant quality was assessed every year in July and September; here we use plant quality at the end of the experiment (September 2013). Two 10 x 100 cm wide strips of vegetation per plot were clipped, combined, dried at 65°C, and ground (Pulverisette 16, Fritsch, Idar-Oberstein, Germany) to pass through a 0.5 mm sieve. Twenty randomly selected samples across all treatments were analysed for N (Leco TruSpec Analyser, Leco, St. Joseph, Michigan, USA) (Vandegehuchte and others 2015). Nitrogen concentrations of the other samples were then estimated from models established for the experiment and the entire SNP relating Fourier transform-near infrared reflectance (FT-NIR) spectra to the measured values of N using a multi-purpose FT-NIR spectrometer (Bruker Optics, Fällanden, Switzerland) (Vandegehuchte and others 2015). Root biomass was sampled every fall by collecting five 2.2 cm diameter x 10 cm deep soil samples (Giddings Machine Company, Windsor, CO, USA) per plot (450 samples year-1). The samples were dried at 30 °C and roots were sorted from the sample by hand. We sorted each sample for 1 h which allowed to retrieve over 90% of all roots present in the samples (Risch and others 2013). The roots were then dried at 65 °C for 48 and weighed to the nearest mg. We averaged the values per plot and used the 2013 data only in this study.
Sampling of edaphic communities
In 2009, 2010, and 2011 we collected three composited soil samples (5 cm diameter x 10 cm depth; AMS Samplers, American Falls, ID, USA) and assessed bacterial community structure using T-RFLP profiling (Liu and others 1997; Blackwood and others 2003; Hodel and others 2014). We detected a total of 89 operational taxonomic units (OTUs). These values are in accordance with other studies reporting OTU richness (Wirthner and others 2011; Zumsteg and others 2012; Meola and others 2014) using T-RFLP profiling, a method that detects the most abundant, and thus likely, the most relevant, taxa. We averaged the data over the three years of collections for our calculations. Microbial biomass carbon (MBC) was determined with the substrate-induced method (Anderson and Domsch 1978) every fall (September) between 2009 and 2013 by collecting three mineral soil samples (5 cm diameter × 10 cm mineral soil core, AMS Samplers, American Falls, ID, USA). The three samples were combined (90 samples for each sampling year), immediately put on ice, taken to the laboratory, passed through a 2-mm sieve and stored at 4°C. Again, we only used the 2013 data in this study.
Soil samples (5 cm diameter x 10 cm depth) to extract soil arthropods were collected in June, July, and August 2011 with a soil corer lined with a plastic sleeve to ensure an undisturbed sample (total of 270 samples). The plastic line core was immediately sealed on both ends using cling film and put into a cooler. All plots were sampled within three days and the extraction of arthropods started the evening of the sampling day using a high-gradient Tullgren funnel apparatus (Crossley and Blair 1991; Vandegehuchte and others 2015). Samples were kept in the extractor for four days and the soil arthropods were collected in 95% ethanol. All individuals were counted and each individual was identified morphologically to the lowest level feasible [76 taxa, including orders, suborders, subfamilies, families (Protura, Thysanoptera, Aphidina, Psylina, Coleoptera, Brachycera, Nematocera, Auchenorryncha, Heteroptera, Formicidae); sub-phylum for Myriapoda, for Acari and Collembola also including morpho-species). Note that we also included larval stages (nine of the 76 taxa) (Vandegehuchte and others 2015). All data were summed over the season. A detailed species list for mites and collembolans is published (Vandegehuchte and others 2017a) [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118679.s001]. Earthworms are rare in the SNP and therefore were not included. We collected eight random 2.2 cm diameter x 10 cm deep soil cores from each plot in September 2013 to determine the soil nematode community composition. The samples were mixed and the nematodes were extracted from 100 ml of fresh soil using Oostenbrink elutriators (Oostenbrink 1960). All nematodes in a 1 ml of the 10 ml extract were counted, a minimum of 150 individuals sample-1 were identified to genus or family level using (Bongers 1988), the numbers of all nematodes were extrapolated to the entire sample and expressed for a 100 g dry sample. In total we identified 63 genus or family levels (Vandegehuchte and others 2015). The list of all the nematodes found is published (Vandegehuchte and others 2015) [http://www.oikosjournal.org/appendix/oik-03341] or DOI: [doi: 10.1111/oik.03341].
We are aware that sampling soil microbes from 2009 to 2011 and soil arthropods in 2011 was not ideal, but we are positive that this does not bias the results. Most of the parameters measured in our experiment either already showed a treatment response after the first growing season (e.g., plant biomass) or did not respond over the entire time experiment (e.g., microbial biomass C). The microbial community composition (2009 – 2011) was highly influenced by inter-annual differences in temperature and precipitation, but did not differ between treatments or vegetation types (Hodel and others 2014). We therefore felt comfortable using the 2009 through 2011 data for describing the soil microbial community in our experimental treatments. Similarly, we are positive that our soil arthropod data are representative. We did assess soil arthropods in August 2012 and found no differences to the August 2011 data. However, we did not feel comfortable combining the 2011 June, July, August data with only August data for 2012 for our analyses.
Sampling of soil properties
We collected three soil samples (5 cm diameter x 10 cm depth) in each plot in September 2013 after removing the vegetation. First, we collected the top layer of mineral soil rich in organic matter, the surface organic layer or rhizosphere, typically 1 to 3 cm in depth with a soil corer (AMS Samples, American Falls, Idaho, USA). Second, we collected a 10 cm mineral soil core beneath this surface layer. The cores for each layer were composited, dried at 65 °C for 48 h and fine-ground to pass a 0.5 mm screen. We then analysed all samples for total C using a Leco TruSpec Analyser (Leco, St. Joseph, Michigan, USA). Mineral soil pH was measured potentiometrically in 1:2 soil:CaCl2 solution with an equilibration time of 30 min.
Soil net N mineralisation was assessed during the 2013 growing season (Risch and others 2015). For this purpose, we randomly collected a 5 cm diameter x10 cm deep soil sample with a soil corer (AMS Samples, American Falls, Idaho, USA) after clipping the vegetation in June 2013. After weighing and sieving (4 mm mesh) the soil, we extracted a 20 g subsample in 1 mol l-1 KCl for 1.5 h on an end-over-end shaker and thereafter filtered it through ashless folded filter paper (DF 5895 150, ALBET LabScience, Hahnenmühle FineArt GmbH, Dassel, Germany). From these filtrates NO3- concentrations were measured colorimetrically (Norman and Stucki 1981) and NH4+with flow injection analysis (FIAS 300, Perkin Elmer, Waltham Massachusetts, USA) (Risch and others 2015). We dried the rest of the sample 105 °C to constant mass to determine fine,fraction bulk density. A second soil sample was collected within each plot in June 2013 with a corer lined with a 5 x 13 cm aluminium cylinder. The corer was driven 11.5 cm deep into the soil so that the top 1.5 cm of the cylinder remained empty. Into this space we placed a polyester bag (250 µm) filled an ion-exchanger resin to capture the incoming N. The bag was filled with a 1:1 mixture of acidic and alkaline exchanger resin (ion-exchanger I KA/ion exchanger IIIAA, Merck AG, Darmstadt, Germany). We then removed 1.5 cm soil at the bottom of the cylinder and placed a second resin exchanger bag into this space to capture the N leached from the soil column. To assure that the exchange resin was saturated with H+ and Cl- prior to filling the bags, the mixture was stirred with 1.2 ml l-1 HCl for 1 h and then rinsed with demineralized water until the electrical conductivity of the water reached 5 µm cm-1. The cylinder with the resin bags in place was reinserted into the soil with the top flush to the soil surface and incubated for three months. We recollected the cylinders in September 2013. Each resin bag and 20 g of sieved soil (4 mm mesh) from each cylinder were then separately extracted with KCl and NO3- and NH4+ concentrations were measured. Nitrate and NH4+ concentrations of all samples were then converted to a content basis by multiplying their values with fine fraction bulk density. Net N mineralisation was thereafter calculated as the difference between the N content of the samples collected at the end of the three-month incubation (including the N extracted from the bottom resin bag) and the N content at the beginning of the incubation (Risch and others 2015).
Soil CO2 emissions were measured every two weeks between 0900 and 1700 hrs from early May through late September 2013 with a PP-Systems SRC-1 soil respiration chamber (15 cm high, 10 cm diameter; closed circuit) attached to a PP-Systems EGM-4 infrared gas analyser (PP-Systems, Amesbury, MA, USA) on two locations per plot (Risch and others 2013). The chamber was placed on randomly placed, permanently installed PVC collars (10 cm diameter) driven 5 cm into the soil at the beginning of the study (Risch and others 2013). Freshly germinated plants growing within the collars were removed prior to each measurement to avoid measuring plant respiration or photosynthesis. The two measurements collected per plot and sampling date were averaged.
Soil moisture (with time domain reflectometry; Field-Scout TDR-100, Spectrum Technologies, Plainfield, Illionois, USA) and temperature (with a waterproof digital pocket thermometer; Barnstead International, Dubuque, Iowa, USA) were measured at five random locations per plot every two weeks during the growing seasons during the experiment for the 0 to 10 cm depth (Risch and others 2013, 2015). As soil moisture and soil temperature were highly negatively correlated (Risch and others 2013), we only used soil moisture for this study. We used plot-level averages of all values available to capture soil moisture variability during the five years of the experiment. The results remained unchanged when we only used soil moisture from the 2013 growing season.
Numeral calculations and statistical analyses
Ecosystem coupling. We conducted principal component analyses (PCAs; unscaled) at the complete dataset level using the abundances of each taxonomical entity to describe each of the five different communities used in this study: aboveground-dwelling invertebrates, vascular plants, soil microorganisms, soil arthropods and soil nematodes. We retained the first two components (PCA axis 1 and PCA axis 2) of each analysis as we found them to adequately represent the temporal and spatial variability of our 90 treatment plots in previous studies55,67. Together they explained a total of 71.70% of the variation for aboveground invertebrates, 44.36% for plants, 44.85% for soil microorganisms, 61.85% for soil arthropods and 77.19% for soil nematodes. In addition, we used soil pH and soil organic C content as a proxy for soil chemical properties, soil bulk density as a proxy for soil physical properties and soil moisture (negatively correlated with soil temperature) as a proxy for soil micro-climatic conditions for an overall total of fourteen constituents.
We calculated ecosystem coupling9 for each exclosure treatment within each vegetation type (i.e., 2  5 treatment combinations in total) as an integrated measure of pairwise ecological interactions between ecosystem constituents representing ecological communities and the soil abiotic environment. These ecological interactions are defined by non-parametric Spearman rank correlation analyses between two constituents, excluding interactions involving two abiotic constituents (e.g., soil pH vs. soil moisture) and interactions between the first (PC1) and second (PC2) component of each community type, as these are orthogonal by definition. Interactions between abiotic constituents were excluded from the analyses because the focus of our study was on communities and how they interact with one another and their surrounding environment; therefore, including abiotic-abiotic interactions was not of interest here. Given that the effectiveness of our experimental design resulted in that no community composition data of aboveground-dwelling invertebrates was available for the “None” plots (all animals excluded), only thirteen instead of fourteen constituents were included in the ecosystem coupling calculations for this treatment. The complete absence of aboveground invertebrates represents the most extreme case of disturbance between aboveground animal communities and the rest of the ecosystem constituents. This may have resulted in a slight overestimation of ecosystem coupling for these plots.
	Average ecosystem coupling was calculated as follows:
Ecosystem coupling=
where Xi is the absolute Coupling was calculated value of the Spearman’s rho coefficient of the ith correlation for each treatment within each vegetation type (i.e., based on nine replicates each), considering and n is the number of pairwise comparisons considered (n = a total of 80; interactions (56 in the case of the “None” treatment). We considered a total of 40 biotic-biotic interactions (i.e., concerning two community-level principal components such as plants and microbes; 24 in the case of the “None” treatment) and 40 abiotic-biotic (i.e., concerning one community-level principal component and one abiotic factor, e.g., plant community and soil properties; 32 in the case of the “None” treatment).	Coupling was calculated for each treatment within each vegetation type (i.e., based on nine replicates each), considering a total of 80 interactions (56 in the case of the “None” treatment). We considered a total of 40 biotic-biotic interactions (i.e., concerning two community-level principal components such as plants and microbes; 24 in the case of the “None” treatment) and 40 abiotic-biotic (i.e., concerning one community-level principal component and one abiotic factor, e.g., plant community and soil properties; 32 in the case of the “None” treatment).
To establish whether constituents were significantly and positively coupled within treatments (i.e., the average of their correlation coefficients were greater than in a null model where correlation only happens by chance), we calculated one-tailed p-values based on permutation tests with 999 permutations.

We considered six ecosystem functions and process rates commonly used to assess ecosystem functioning (Meyer and others 2015; Manning and others 2018). Plant N content represents a measure of forage quality, while plant richness has been shown to stabilise biomass production, thus allowing the system to respond to changes in herbivory. Soil net N mineralisation, soil respiration, root biomass, and microbial biomass represent fluxes or stocks of energy. For all functions and processes higher values represent higher functioning (Manning and others 2018). All these variables were measured in the last year of the experiment (2013). We then quantified ecosystem multifunctionality using the multiple threshold approach (Byrnes and others 2014; Manning and others 2018), which considers the number of functions that are above a certain threshold, over a series of threshold values (typically 10-99%) that are defined based on the maximum value of each function. We weighted all our functions equally for these calculations (Manning and others 2018). The number of functions in a plot with values higher than a given threshold value for the respective function is summed up. The sum represents ecosystem multifunctionality for that plot. Given that choosing any particular threshold as a measure of ecosystem multifunctionality is arbitrary, we calculated the average of thresholds from 10-90% (in 10% intervals) as a more integrated representation of ecosystem multifunctionality.
We used Pearson correlations to explore the relationships between ecosystem coupling (all interactions, biotic-biotic interactions, abiotic-biotic interactions involving above- and belowground constituents, and all interactions, biotic-biotic interactions, abiotic-biotic interactions involving belowground constituents only) and ecosystem multifunctionality by calculating the slopes of all relationships between ecosystem coupling and multifunctionality for all thresholds between 10 and 99%. We also related ecosystem coupling with the average of multifunctionality at thresholds between 30-80% as explained before and considered this correlation as a robust indication of the type of association between these two variables. In addition, we explored the relationships between ecosystem coupling (all interactions, biotic-biotic interactions, abiotic-biotic interactions involving above- and belowground constituents, and all interactions, biotic-biotic interactions, abiotic-biotic interactions involving belowground constituents only) and individual ecosystem functions. The effects of exclosures and vegetation type on individual functions and multifunctionality were evaluated using linear mixed effects models ('lme' function of the nlme package), with exclosure and vegetation type as fixed effects and fence as a random factor. All statistical analyses and numerical calculations were done in R version 3.4.0 (R Core Team 2016).

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grazing

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en: Ecosystem coupling and multifunctionality - exclosure experiment


maintainer: Henning Löwe

en: granular-snow grain-shape angle-of-repose fast-sintering discrete-element-modelling

en: Angle of repose and 3D CT images

en:
5 Snow types were examined and glass beads as a cohesion-less reference, named as follows:

RG: rounded grains (sieved with 0.7 - 1.4 mm)

FC: faceted grains (1.4 - 2 mm)

FCS: small faceted grains (0.7 - 1.4 mm)

IB: ice beads (4 mm)

IBS: small ice beads (2 - 2.2 mm)

GB: glass beads(2 mm)

en:
Angle of repose experiments were performed with different snow types at temperatures between -2 and -40°C. They were used to examine granular snow dynamics on the grain-scale with focus on the role of grain shape and cohesion. The angle of repose was observed by sieving snow onto a round, freestanding base until a stationary heap was formed.

This dataset consists of 1) the images of the experimental heaps that were taken to determine the angle of repose, 2) one binary 3D micro computed tomography image of each snow type. The CT images were taken with the SLF micro-CT40 to characterize snow properties and grain shape.

The experiments with natural snow types (rounded and faceted grains) and spherical model snow allowed for an examination of the differences in granular properties between natural grain shapes and spherical particles in view of Discrete Element Modelling. With the chosen temperatures, the effect of sintering could be observed that increases the angle of repose with increasing temperature.

angle-of-repose

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en: Angle of repose experiments with natural and spherical snow


en: drought-2018 low-flow hydrological-simulations precipitation discharge soil-moisture prevah

en: Soil moisture

en: Simulated plant-available soil moisture for the 307 medium-sized catchments. The first column provides the date in the format YYYYMMDD. One column corresponds to one catchment. Unit: mm.

en: Shapefile of 307 catchments in Switzerland

en: Shapefile of 307 catchments for which simulations of precipitation, discharge, soil moisture, and low flow are provided. The OBJECTID entry corresponds to the data columns in the textfiles of the simulated data provided.

en: Discharge

en: Simulated discharge for the 307 medium-sized catchments. The first column provides the date in the format YYYYMMDD. One column corresponds to one catchment. Unit: mm/d.

en: Precipitation

en: Simulated precipitation for the 307 medium-sized catchments. The first column provides the date in the format YYYYMMDD. One column corresponds to one catchment. Unit: mm/d.

en: Low-flow storage

en: Simulated low-flow storage for the 307 medium-sized catchments. The first column provides the date in the format YYYYMMDD. One column corresponds to one catchment. Unit: mm.

en: The dataset provides simulated 1) precipitation, 2) discharge, 3) soil moisture, and 4) low-flow simulations for 307 medium-sized catchments in Switzerland for the period 1981-2018. The data were simulated using the hydrological model PREVAH in its gridded-version. The simulated time series are provided at daily resolution. A detailed description of the modeling approach can be found in Brunner et al. 2019 submitted to NHESS.

discharge

display_name: discharge

hydrological-simulations

display_name: hydrological-simulations

low-flow

display_name: low-flow

precipitation

display_name: precipitation

prevah

display_name: prevah

soil-moisture

display_name: soil-moisture

en: Hydro-meteorological simulations for the period 1981-2018 for Switzerland


maintainer: Lisa Hülsmann

en: forest-reserves tree-mortality tree-growth inventory-data empirical-mortality-models

en: Calibration data

media_type: text/csv

en:
A set of three consecutive inventories was used to generate records for the calibration of mortality models based on trees that were alive in the first and second inventory and either dead or alive in the third inventory.

 Meta data
Reserve: Name of the forest reserve

Plot: Permanent plot number

 Tree data
Species: Latin species name (or species group, cf. _Quercus_ spp.)

y: Status of the tree with 0 = alive and 1 = dead

dt: Length of the mortality period (years)

DBH: Diameter at breast height (mm) of the second inventory

relBAI: Annual relative basal area increment (-) calculated based on the first and the second DBH measurement as the compound annual growth rate of the trees basal area

 Stand data
_All stand variables were calculated for the second inventory._

mDBH: Mean diameter at breast height (mm)

iqrDBH: Interquartile range of diameter at breast height (mm)

BA: Basal area per hectare (m2 ha-1)

N: Number of trees per hectare (ha-1)

 Climate data
_Both climate variables were calculated for the period between the second and the third inventory._

P: Mean annual precipitation sum (mm)

mT: Mean annual air temperature (°C)

format: CSV

mimetype: text/csv

en:
The dataset comprises > 90 000 records from inventories in 54 strict forest reserves in [Switzerland](https://www.wsl.ch/de/wald/biodiversitaet-naturschutz-urwald/naturwaldreservate.html) and [Lower Saxony / Germany](http://naturwaelder.de/) along a considerable environmental gradient. It was used to develop parsimonious, species-specific mortality models for 18 European tree species based on tree size and growth as well as additional covariates on stand structure and climate.

 Inventory data
Measurements had been conducted repeatedly on up to 14 permanent plots per reserve for up to 60 years with re-measurement intervals of 4 - 27 years. The permanent plots vary in size between 0.03 and 3.47 ha. The inventories provide diameter measurements at breast height (DBH) and information on the species and status (alive or dead) of trees with DBH ≥ 4 cm for Switzerland and ≥ 7 cm for Germany.

 Data selection
We excluded three permanent plots where at least 80 % of the trees died during an interval of 10 years, and mortality could be clearly assigned to a disturbance agent. Mortality in the remaining stands was rather low, with a mean annual mortality rate of 1.5 % and strong variation between plots from 0 to 6.5 % (assessed for trees of all species with DBH ≥ 7 cm).
We only used data from permanent plots with at least 20 trees per species to obtain reliable plot-level mortality rates even for species with low mortality rates (about 5 % during 10 years), and selected tree species occurring on at least 10 plots to cover sufficient ecological gradients. This led to a dataset of 197 permanent plots and 18 tree or shrub species: _Abies alba_ Mill., _Acer campestre_ L., _Acer pseudoplatanus_ L., _Alnus incana_ Moench., _Betula pendula_ Roth, _Carpinus betulus_ L., _Cornus mas_ L., _Corylus avellana_ L., _Fagus sylvatica_ L., _Fraxinus excelsior_ L., _Picea abies_ (L.) Karst, _Pinus mugo_ Turra, _Pinus sylvestris_ L., _Quercus pubescens_ Willd., _Quercus_ spp. (_Q. petraea_ Liebl. and _Q. robur_ L.; not properly differentiated in the Swiss inventories), _Sorbus aria_ Crantz, _Tilia cordata_ Mill. and _Ulmus glabra_ Huds..

 Predictors of tree mortality
We considered tree size and growth as key indicators for mortality risk. Radial stem growth between the first and second inventory and DBH at the second inventory were used to predict tree status (alive or dead) at the third inventory. To this end, the annual relative basal area increment (relBAI) was calculated as the compound annual growth rate of the trees basal area. Additional covariates on stand structure and climate comprise mean annual precipitation sum (P), mean annual air temperature (mT), the mean and the interquartile range of DBH (mDBH, iqrDBH), basal area (BA) and the number of trees (N) per hectare.

 Further information
For further information, refer to Hülsmann _et al_. (in press) How to kill a tree – Empirical mortality models for eighteen species and their performance in a dynamic forest model. _Ecological Applications_.

empirical-mortality-models

display_name: empirical-mortality-models

forest-reserves

display_name: forest-reserves

inventory-data

display_name: inventory-data

tree-growth

display_name: tree-growth

tree-mortality

display_name: tree-mortality

education

en: Education and science

envidat

en: EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal

en: EnviDat is the WSL data portal providing unified and managed access to environmental monitoring and research data. The portal has the capability to host and publish data sets. Through the sharing of unique and high-value data sets worldwide, EnviDat fosters research and contributes to advancing environmental science.

en: Calibration data for empirical mortality models of 18 European tree species