maintainer: Anita Risch

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

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).

#References

- Anderson J, Domsch K. 1978. A physiological method for the quantitative measurement of microbial biomass in soil. Soil Biol Biochem 10:215–21.
- Blackwood CB, Marsh T, Kim S-H, Paul EA. 2003. Terminal Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Data Analysis for Quantitative Comparison of Microbial Communities. Appl Environ Microbiol 69:926–32. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC143601/
- Bongers T. 1988. De nematoden von Nederland. Schoorl, The Netherlands: Pirola
- Byrnes JEK, Gamfeldt L, Isbell F, Lefcheck JS, Griffin JN, Hector A, Cardinale BJ, Hooper DU, Dee LE, Duffy JE. 2014. Investigating the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality: Challenges and solutions. Methods Ecol Evol 5:111–24.
- Crossley DAJ, Blair JM. 1991. A high-efficiency low-technology Tulgren-type extractor for soil microarthopods. Agric Ecosyst Environ 34:187–92.
- Dudley N. 2008. Guidelines for applying protected area managment categories. Gland: IUCN
- Frank DA, McNaughton SJ. 1990. Aboveground biomass estimation with the canopy intercept method: A plant growth form caveat. Oikos 57:57–60.
- Haynes AG, Schütz M, Buchmann N, Page-Dumroese DS, Busse MD, Risch AC. 2014. Linkages between grazing history and herbivore exclusion on decomposition rates in mineral soils of subalpine grasslands. Plant Soil 374.
- Hodel M, Schütz M, Vandegehuchte ML, Frey B, Albrecht M, Busse MD, Risch AC. 2014. Does the aboveground herbivore assemblage influence soil bacterial community composition and richness in subalpine grasslands? Microb Ecol 68:584–95.
- Liu WT, Marsh TL, Cheng H, Forney LJ. 1997. Characterization of microbial diversity by determining terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms of genes encoding 16S rRNA. Appl Environ Microbiol 63:4516–22. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC168770/
- Manning P, van der Plas F, Soliveres S, Allan E, Maestre FT, Mace G, Whittingham MJ, Fischer M. 2018. Redefining ecosystem multifunctionality. Nat Ecol Evol 2:427–36. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0461-7
- Meola M, Lazzaro A, Zeyer J. 2014. Diversity, resistance and resilience of the bacterial communities at two alpine glacier forefields after a reciprocal soil transplantation. Environ Microbiol 16:1918–34. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1462-2920.12435
- Meyer ST, Koch C, Weisser WW. 2015. Towards a standardized Rapid Ecosystem Function Assessment (REFA). Trends Ecol Evol 30:390–7. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534715000968
- Norman R., Stucki JW. 1981. The determination of nitrate and nitrite in soil extracts by ultraviolet spectrophotometry. Soil Sci Soc Am J 45:347–53.
- Ochoa-Hueso R. 2016. Non-linear disruption of ecological interactions in response to nitrogen deposition. Ecology 87:2802–2814.
- Oostenbrink M. 1960. Estimating nematode populations by some selected methods. In: Sasser NJ, Jenkins WR, editors. Nematology. Chapel Hill, NC, USA: University of North Carolina Press. pp 85–101.
- R Core Team. 2016. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing
- Risch AC, Haynes AG, Busse MD, Filli F, Schütz M. 2013. The response of soil CO2 fluxes to progressively excluding vertebrate and invertebrate herbivores depends on ecosystem type. Ecosystems 16:1192–202.
- Risch AC, Schütz M, Vandegehuchte ML, Van Der Putten WH, Duyts H, Raschein U, Gwiazdowicz DJ, Busse MD, Page-Dumroese DS, Zimmermann S. 2015. Aboveground vertebrate and invertebrate herbivore impact on net N mineralization in subalpine grasslands. Ecology 96:3312–22.
- Schütz M, Risch AC, Achermann G, Thiel-Egenter C, Page-Dumroese DS, Jurgensen MF, Edwards PJ. 2006. Phosphorus translocation by red deer on a subalpine grassland in the Central European Alps. Ecosystems 9:624–633.
- Schütz M, Risch AC, Leuzinger E, Krüsi BO, Achermann G. 2003. Impact of herbivory by red deer (Cervus elaphus L.) on patterns and processes in subalpine grasslands in the Swiss National Park. For Ecol Manage 181:177–88.
- Vandegehuchte ML, van der Putten WH, Duyts H, Schütz M, Risch AC. 2017a. Aboveground mammal and invertebrate exclusions cause consistent changes in soil food webs of two subalpine grassland types, but mechanisms are system-speciﬁc. Oikos 126:212–23.
- Vandegehuchte ML, Raschein U, Schütz M, Gwiazdowicz DJ, Risch AC. 2015. Indirect short- and long-term effects of aboveground invertebrate and vertebrate herbivores on soil microarthropod communities. PLoS One 10:e0118679.
- Vandegehuchte ML, Schütz M, de Schaetzen F, Risch AC. 2017b. Mammal-induced trophic cascades in invertebrate food webs are modulated by grazing intensity in subalpine grassland. J Anim Ecol 86:1434–46.
- Vandegehuchte ML, Trivellone V, Schütz M, Firn J, de Schaetzen F, Risch AC. 2018. Mammalian herbivores affect leafhoppers associated with specific plant functional types at different timescales. Funct Ecol 32:545–55.
- Wirthner S, Frey B, Busse MD, Schütz M, Risch AC. 2011. Effects of wild boar (Sus scrofa L.) rooting on the bacterial community structure in mixed-hardwood forest soils in Switzerland. Eur J Soil Biol 47:296–302. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejsobi.2011.07.003
- Zumsteg A, Luster J, Göransson H, Smittenberg RH, Brunner I, Bernasconi SM, Zeyer J, Frey B. 2012. Bacterial, Archaeal and Fungal Succession in the Forefield of a Receding Glacier. Microb Ecol 63:552–64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-011-9991-8

ecosystem-coupling

display_name: ecosystem-coupling

ecosystem-functions

display_name: ecosystem-functions

ecosystem-multifunctionality

display_name: ecosystem-multifunctionality

exclusion

display_name: exclusion

grassland

display_name: grassland

grazing

display_name: grazing

invertebrates

display_name: invertebrates

subalpine

display_name: subalpine

swiss-national-park

display_name: swiss-national-park

vertebrates

display_name: vertebrates

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: Ecosystem coupling and multifunctionality - exclosure experiment


en: cenococcum-geophilum ectomycorrhiza rhythmic-growth quercus-robur oak piloderma-croceum

state: active

type: dataset

media_type: text/csv

en:
Contains phenotypic data assessed during the destructive sampling step of the experiment.
Columns:
- ID = Tree identifier.
- Treatment = Experimental treatment.
- nSF = Number of completed shoot flushes.
- Max_Stages_Reached = Total number of growth stages reached during the experiment.
- n_L_SF1 = Number of leaves of the second newest shoot flush at time of sampling.
- n_L_SF2 = Number of leaves of the newest shoot flush at time of sampling.
- Alive = Plant alive or not.
- Contamination = Plant contaminated or not.
- Exclude = Exclude plant or not.
- Shoot_Length_Init = Shoot length at start of the experiment.
- Shoot_Length = Shoot length at sampling.
- Delta_Length = Shoot length increase during experiment.
- FW_Plant = Fresh weight total plant.
- DW_Plant = Dry weight total plant.
- FW_Shoot = Fresh weight shoot.
- DW_Shoot = Dry weight shoot.
- FW_Stem = Fresh weight stem.
- DW_Stem = Dry weight stem.
- FW_L_SF1 = Fresh weight leaves second newest shoot flush.
- DW_L_SF1 = Dry weight leaves second newest shoot flush.
- FW_L_SF2 = Fresh weight leaves newest shoot flush.
- DW_L_SF2 = Dry weight leaves newest shoot flush.
- FW_L_Rest = Fresh weight remaining leaves.
- DW_L_Rest = Dry weight remaining leaves.
- FW_Bud = Fresh weight bud.
- DW_Bud = Dry weight bud.
- FW_Roots_Total = Fresh weight total roots.
- DW_Roots_Total = Dry weight total roots.
- FW_PR = Fresh weight principal roots.
- DW_PR = Dry weight principal roots.
- FW_LR = Fresh weight lateral roots.
- DW_LR = Dry weight lateral roots.
- A_L_SF1 = Leave area second newest shoot flush.
- A_L_SF2 = Leave area newest shoot flush.
- N_Ceno = Number of root tips mycorrhized by *Cenococcum geophilum*.
- N_Pilo = Number of root tips mycorrhized by *Piloderma croceum*.
- N_Other = Number of root tips mycorrhized by other species.
- N_No = Number of not mycorrhized root tips.
- Length_Tot = Total root length.
- Area_Tot = Total root surface area.
- Diameter_Avg = Average root diameter.
- Root_Vol = Total root volume.
- Tips = Total number root tips.
- Forks = Total number root forks.
- Crossings = Total number root crossings.
- Length_Fine = Root length fine roots (diameter < 1mm).
- SA_Fine = Surface area fine roots (diameter < 1mm).
- Vol_Fine = Volume fine roots (diameter < 1mm).

format: CSV

en:
Contains growth stage data assessed over the experimental period.
Columns:
- ID = Tree identifier.
- Set = Date of plant preparation.
- Treatment = Experimental treatment.
- Date = Date of growth stage assessment,
- Days = Number of past days since start of experiment.
- Stage = Growth stage (XY = Groth cycle & development stage).
- Week = Experimental week.

en:
In this experiment, we investigated the inoculation-effects of two ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) species with contrasting evolutionary histories, ecological properties, host-preferences, and habitat-ranges on phenotypic responses and growth dynamics of pedunculate oak (*Quercus robur*), an ecologically and economically important temperate forest tree species.

We set up the mycorrhization experiment using 96 plants of a genetically uniform *Q. robur* clone (DF159) and applied four treatments: A control treatment; an inoculation-treatment with the cosmopolitan Ascomycete *Cenococcum geophilum*, which is commonly found in oak forests; an inoculation-treatment with the Basidiomycete *Piloderma croceum*, which has not yet been found in natural oak forests but has been shown in previous experiments to support oak growth; and a co-inoculation treatment. We then assessed growth stage development of the trees over eight experimental weeks and measured various phenotypic traits during a destructive sampling.

cenococcum-geophilum

display_name: cenococcum-geophilum

ectomycorrhiza

display_name: ectomycorrhiza

oak

display_name: oak

piloderma-croceum

display_name: piloderma-croceum

quercus-robur

display_name: quercus-robur

rhythmic-growth

display_name: rhythmic-growth

educ

fr: Éducation, culture et sport

de: Bildung, Kultur und Sport

en: Education, culture and sport

it: Istruzione, cultura e sport

fr: EnviDat: le portail de données environnementales

de: EnviDat: das Umwelt-Datenportal

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.

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

en: Phenotypic and Growth Stage Development Data of a Quercus robur Mycorrhization Experiment


data-konzeptionelles-systemmodell

maintainer: Matthias Bürgi

title_for_slug: data-konzeptionelles-systemmodell

en: policy-action qualitative-research landscape-change climate-change scenarios

media_type: application/pdf

format: PDF

format: XLS

en:
This folder contains documents relevant to the project step Konzeptionelles Systemmodell. It specifically contains the following documents:

1. 0201_Konzeptionelles Systemmodell_20221027: This document is the final version of the Konzeptionelles Systemmodell. The underlying structure of the Konzeptionelles Systemmodell is explained in chapter 4.4 of the document 0202_Masterarbeit Elena Siegrist_UniBern_Herbstsemester 2022 also deposited in this folder. The document contains 3 sheets. The sheet "Bausteine" shows the different possible options for table columns of the type Bausteine (see chapter 4.4 of Masterarbeit), the sheet "Direkte Effekte" contains identified direct impact pathways and the sheet "Indirekte Effekte" contains identified indirect impact pathways.

2. 0202_Masterarbeit Elena Siegrist_UniBern_Herbstsemester 2022: This document is the Master Thesis of Elena Grace Siegrist submitted to and accepted by the University of Bern in the Autumn Semester 2022. Chapter 4.4 of the document explains the underlying structure of the Konzeptionelles Systemmodell.

3. 0203_Literaturverzeichnis_konzeptionelles Systemmodell_20221026: This document lists all literature and documents cited in the Konzeptionelle Systemmodell.

climate-change

display_name: climate-change

landscape-change

display_name: landscape-change

policy-action

display_name: policy-action

qualitative-research

display_name: qualitative-research

scenarios

display_name: scenarios

en: Data Konzeptionelles Systemmodell


maintainer: James W. Kirchner

en: diurnal-cycle snowmelt groundwater sap-flow ecohydrology diel-cycle streamflow evapotranspiration

en: MODIS NDSI script

media_type: text/plain

en: Google Earth Engine script for computing MODIS normalized difference snow index (NDSI) values and averaging them over subcatchment areas.

format: TXT

mimetype: text/plain

en: Subcatchment polygons

en: Subcatchment polygons for use in the Google Earth Engine scripts.

en: Daily time series

en: Daily hydrometeorological and ecohydrological time series

en: 30-minute time series

en: 30-minute hydrometeorological and ecohydrological time series.

en: Metadata

en: Column descriptions for both data files, and map coordinates for all measurement locations.

mimetype: application/pdf

en: MODIS EVI2 script

en: Google Earth Engine script for computing MODIS two-band enhanced vegetation index (EVI2) values and averaging them over subcatchments.

en:
Hydrometerological and ecohydrological time series from Sagehen Creek and Independence Creek, Sierra Nevada, USA, illustrating hydrological responses to daily cycles in snowmelt and evapotranspiration forcing.

Data include 30-minute time series of

- weather variables,

- sap flow fluxes,

- groundwater levels (in two riparian transects of shallow groundwater wells),

- and stream stages (at 12 sites spanning a 500-meter elevation gradient),

and daily time series of

- temperature, precipitation, and snow water equivalent at three nearby snow telemetry stations

- diel cycle index values for groundwater levels and stream stages,

- and MODIS normalized difference snow index (NDSI) and enhanced vegetation index (EVI2) values averaged over selected subcatchments.

Google Earth Engine scripts for extracting the MODIS data are also provided.

diel-cycle

display_name: diel-cycle

diurnal-cycle

display_name: diurnal-cycle

ecohydrology

display_name: ecohydrology

evapotranspiration

display_name: evapotranspiration

groundwater

display_name: groundwater

sap-flow

display_name: sap-flow

snowmelt

display_name: snowmelt

streamflow

display_name: streamflow

en: Daily cycles in solar flux, snowmelt, transpiration, groundwater, and streamflow at Sagehen and Independence Creeks, Sierra Nevada, USA


mountain-permafrost-hydrology

maintainer: Jeannette Noetzli

title_for_slug: mountain-permafrost-hydrology

en: mountain-permafrost-hydrology ice-rich-permafrost climate-change-impacts mass-movements monitoring-techniques permafrost-degradation

en: Synthesis report chapter of the Hydro-CH2018 project of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN)

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). In earlier reports such as the CH2014-IMPACTS report (CH-Impacts 2014), the topic of mountain permafrost hydrology was not addressed. Here, we provide a baseline of the available knowledge of mountain permafrost in the Swiss Alps for future reference. We compile an overview of the current understanding of mountain permafrost in the Swiss Alps, its distribution and characteristics, observed and projected changes, and expected impacts on slope stability, infrastructure and hydrological aspects. We also briefly describe the measurement techniques and modelling approaches applied. The chapter closes with a summary of the most important open research questions. The literature cited mainly includes studies on mountain permafrost published in scientific journals and assessments of long-term observation data. We focus on permafrost hydrology interactions wherever information is available. However, systematic studies on permafrost hydrology in mountain areas are still limited.

climate-change-impacts

display_name: climate-change-impacts

ice-rich-permafrost

display_name: ice-rich-permafrost

mass-movements

display_name: mass-movements

monitoring-techniques

display_name: monitoring-techniques

mountain-permafrost-hydrology

display_name: mountain-permafrost-hydrology

permafrost-degradation

display_name: permafrost-degradation

educ

en: Education, culture and sport

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: Mountain Permafrost Hydrology


maintainer: EnviDat Support

en: wind precipitation radiation temperature-profiles atmospheric-conditions

en: README

en: This description is outdated and has been replaced with an updated version (see description).

en: Site photo 2

en: This site photo is outdated and has been replaced with an updated version (see description).

format: SERVICE

en: DATA ACCESS

en: This data access is outdated and has been replaced with an updated version (see description).

en: Site photo 1

en: Site photo 3

en: Latest data from Stillberg climate station

en: This dataset is outdated and has been replaced with an updated version (see description).

en: STB2 CSV

mimetype: text/csv

en: Overview plot

media_type: image/png

en: This overview plot is outdated and has been replaced with an updated version (see description).

format: PNG

en:
 Important
This EnviDat entry is outdated. The most recent, usable version of the data can be found under the new EnviDat entry "Long-term meteorological station Stillberg, Davos, Switzerland at 2090 m a.s.l.." The entry can be found under this link <https://www.envidat.ch/#/metadata/meteo-stillberg> and with this DOI <https://doi.org/10.16904/envidat.396>.

atmospheric-conditions

display_name: atmospheric-conditions

precipitation

display_name: precipitation

radiation

display_name: radiation

temperature-profiles

display_name: temperature-profiles

wind

display_name: wind

en: Long-term meteorological and snow station at 2090 m a.s.l., Stillberg, Davos, Switzerland (1975 - present)


en: biodiversity disturbance grassland-management land-use-abandonment vascular-plant

en: Boch et al. - Vegetation records Alpengarten Schynige Platte 2010-2015.xlsx

en: Vegetation records (species lists, percentage cover of species) of a six-year experiment to test whether different land-use treatments affect species diversity and composition in alpine to subalpine graslands.

en: This dataset was used for the publication "Boch, Blaser, Föhr, Küchler, Fischer (2024) Haymaking complemented by moderate disturbances can sustain and restore species-rich alpine to subalpine grasslands" in Alpine Botany. It contains vegetation records (species lists, percentage cover of species) of six grassland sites with each five 2x2 m treatment plots established in the Schynige Platte Alpine Botanical Garden. In a six-year experiment, we tested the response of plant species richness and mean ecological indicator values that we calculated from this dataset, to management treatments ranging from combined haymaking and scraping, to haymaking or scraping alone, to complete abandonment. We further tested whether the treatments led to changes in species composition, i.e. shifts to different vegetation types.

biodiversity

display_name: biodiversity

disturbance

display_name: disturbance

grassland-management

display_name: grassland-management

land-use-abandonment

display_name: land-use-abandonment

vascular-plant

display_name: vascular-plant

educ

en: Education, culture and sport

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: Schynige Platte Alpine Botanical Garden land-use experiment


maintainer: Mathias Bavay

en: soil-temperature wind-speed air-pressure stillberg precipitation-sum treeline wind-direction snow-depth dew-point-temperature air-temperature shortwave-radiation relative-humidity

media_type: application/zip

en: The Davos Stillberg meteorological data (Stillberg_meteo_v1.1.zip) consists of timeseries from five meteorological stations operated at the Stillberg treeline ecological research site. Metadata are provided in the folder 'Stillberg_meteo_metadata' and the data in the folder 'Stillberg_meteo_data' with subfolders for the three quality levels 'raw_standardized', ‘raw_edited’, and ‘filtered’.

format: ZIP

en: The Davos Stillberg meteorological data (Stillberg_meteo_v1.zip) consists of timeseries from five meteorological stations operated at the Stillberg treeline ecological research site. Metadata are provided in the folder 'Stillberg_meteo_metadata' and the data in the folder 'Stillberg_meteo_data' with subfolders for the three quality levels 'raw_standardized', ‘raw_edited’, and ‘filtered’.

en: The Davos Stillberg meteorological data (Stillberg_meteo_v2.0.zip) consists of timeseries from five meteorological stations operated at the Stillberg treeline ecological resea...

en:
 Background information
The Stillberg ecological treeline research site is located in the transition zone between the relatively humid climate of the Northern Alps and the continental climate of the Central Alps. In 1975, 92,000 seedlings of the high-elevation conifer species *Larix decidua* Mill. (European larch), *Pinus cembra* L. (Cembran pine), and *Pinus mugo* ssp. *uncinata* (DC.) Domin (mountain pine) were systematically planted across an area of 5 hectares along an elevation gradient of about 150 metres, with the aim to develop ecologically, technically, and economically sustainable afforestation techniques at the treeline to reduce the risk of snow avalanches. In the course of time, additional research aspects gained importance, such as the ecology of the treeline ecotone under global change. Alongside the ecological long-term monitoring of the afforestation, several meteorological stations have recorded local meteorological conditions at the Stillberg research site. Here, we provide the Davos Stillberg meteorological timeseries of five stations from 1975 (01-01-1975), the year of the afforestation establishment, until the end of the year 2022 (31-12-2022).

 Station description
The five meteorological stations were all installed at the same location (46°46′25.015″N 9°52′01.792″E) at 2090 m a.s.l., in the lower part of the afforestation area. In general, the five stations were operated sequentially (Stillberg_meteo_metadata_stations_v1.csv). However, there are some overlapping time periods when more than one station was operated in parallel. The stations have recorded environmental parameters, such as air and soil temperature, dew point temperature, air pressure, relative humidity, wind direction and velocity, radiation, precipitation, and snow depth (Stillberg_meteo_metadata_parameters_v1.csv). The meteorological measurements were recorded hourly from 1975 until 1996 and have been recorded in 10-minute intervals since 1997.

 Data description
We processed the Davos Stillberg meteorological timeseries with the MeteoIO meteorological data pre-processing library (Bavay & Egger, 2014). Data files are provided for each station and quality level separately and named according to the station (see ‘Stillberg_meteo_metadata_stations_v1.csv’). From the raw data in their original formats, we generated three data quality levels: raw standardized (folder ‘raw_standardized’), edited (folder ‘raw_edited’) and filtered (folder ‘filtered’). The processing level is indicated in the headers of the data files. The whole processing protocol is described in a set of human-readable configuration files that are used by MeteoIO to generate the required data quality levels. This improves long-term reproducibility (Bavay et al., 2022), as the data could be regenerated in the future, even using a completely different software, to account for additional data points or to introduce new data corrections. The first quality level (raw standardized) is generated by parsing the original data files and interpreting them in order to convert all data points to a common format and meteorological parameter naming scheme, while excluding unreadable or duplicated data lines. The generated data files are derivatives of CSV files, with a standardised header that contains the metadata that are necessary to interpret and use the data (use metadata) and to populate a data index (search metadata). The latter is a textual implementation of the Attribute Convention for Data Discovery (ACDD) metadata standard (Attribute Convention for Data Discovery 1-3, 2022). The second quality level (edited) builds on the raw data by performing low-level data editing, such as removing some data periods that are known to be unusable (often based on maintenance records or anecdotal evidence) or applying undocumented calibration factors (for example, when there seems to be an obvious offset on a measured parameter for a period between two documented maintenance operations). The third quality level is generated by applying statistical filters on the data (per station and per meteorological parameter) to exclude presumably wrong values. We did not perform gap filling, as no single strategy could be relied upon that would work best for all possible data usage scenarios.

air-pressure

display_name: air-pressure

air-temperature

display_name: air-temperature

dew-point-temperature

display_name: dew-point-temperature

precipitation-sum

display_name: precipitation-sum

relative-humidity

display_name: relative-humidity

shortwave-radiation

display_name: shortwave-radiation

snow-depth

display_name: snow-depth

soil-temperature

display_name: soil-temperature

stillberg

display_name: stillberg

treeline

display_name: treeline

wind-direction

display_name: wind-direction

wind-speed

display_name: wind-speed

en: Long-term meteorological station Stillberg, Davos, Switzerland at 2090 m a.s.l.


maintainer: Aline Frossard

en: microbial-biodiversity beta-diversity ecosystem-functions soil-respiration microbial-respiration

en: Bacterial amplicon sequencing

en: Bacterial ASVs and taxonomic tables

en: Microbial functions and metadata

en: Extracellular enzyme activities, respiration and sites metadata

en: Fungal amplicon sequencing

en: Fungal ASVs and taxonomic tables

en: Structural and functional changes of microbial communities in ephemeral stream sediments and adjacent soils between was assessed in an artificial newly created catchment at 3 and 13 years after catchment construction. Bacterial and fungal communities, respiration and extracellular enzyme activities were assessed.

beta-diversity

display_name: beta-diversity

ecosystem-functions

display_name: ecosystem-functions

microbial-biodiversity

display_name: microbial-biodiversity

microbial-respiration

display_name: microbial-respiration

soil-respiration

display_name: soil-respiration

en: Chicken Creek 10 years


en: avalanche snow snow-stability-evaluation snowpack avalanche-forecast

en: README

en: README file explaining data structure and content

en: Stability tests

en: Stability tests including csv-files with CT, ECT and PST experiments for each year and each field site.

mimetype: application/zip

en: SNOWPACK simulations

en: This dataset contains all SNOWPACK simulations, including input files, setup and output files.

en: Extracted data

en: Extracted data contain validation and results published in Richter et al. (2019).

en: Manually observed snow profiles

en: Manually observed snow profiles as csv-files containing depth [cm], thickness [cm], density [kg m-3], hand hardness, first grain type, second grain type, first grain size [mm], and second grain size [mm] of each layer.

en:
To validate the critical crack length as implemented in the snow cover model SNOWPACK, PST experiments were conducted for three winter seasons (2015-2017) at two field site above Davos, Switzerland. This dataset contains manually observed snow profiles and stability tests. Furthermore, corresponding SNOWPACK simulations are included.
These data were analyzed and results were published in Richter et al. (2019).

Please refer to the Readme file for further details on the data.

These data are the basis of the following publication:
Richter, B., Schweizer, J., Rotach, M. W., and van Herwijnen, A.: Validating modeled critical crack length for crack propagation in the snow cover model SNOWPACK, The Cryosphere, 13, 3353–3366, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-3353-2019, 2019.

avalanche

display_name: avalanche

avalanche-forecast

display_name: avalanche-forecast

snow

display_name: snow

snow-stability-evaluation

display_name: snow-stability-evaluation

snowpack

display_name: snowpack

educ

en: Education, culture and sport

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: Validating and improving the critical crack length in SNOWPACK


maintainer: Océane Hames

en: antarctica arctic-sea-ice snow-transport openfoam mosaic snow-deposition

en: Paper Draft

en: This is the initial draft of the paper where the snowBedFoam 1.0. results are tested against Terrestrial Laser Scan (TLS) measurements of snow dynamics on Arctic sea ice (MOSAiC expedition). It highlights the numerical limitations of our model as well as the measurement uncertainties, which may occur in such extreme environments.

en:
OpenFOAM-2.3.0. scripts containing the implemented Eulerian-Lagrangian snow transport model.

The code file provided here is not updated. The most recent version of the script can be found on the WSL/SLF GitLab repository: https://gitlabext.wsl.ch/atmospheric-models/snowbedfoam-v1-0.git

en: MOSAiC Met City preliminary (Level 2) wind data

en:
Extract from the preliminary MOSAiC atmospheric data (Level 2) for the time period 6th to 13th of November, 2019.
This data was used to set up the fluid forcing parameters in the snowBedFoam simulations on MOSAiC sea ice. It is being published in this repository with the kind permission from Matthew Shupe and his team.
The final processed and quality controlled version of this dataset (Level 3) has not been published yet. A complete reference will be added in this description once it is released.

en:
OpenFOAM-5.0 scripts containing the implemented Eulerian-Lagrangian snow transport model.
The code file provided here is not updated. The most recent version of the script can be found on the WSL/SLF GitLab repository: https://gitlabext.wsl.ch/atmospheric-models/snowbedfoam-v1-0.git

en: Neumayer III simulations

en:
Snow distribution results around Neumayer Station III obtained for the sensitivity analysis and comparison to measurements. The file contains several sub-folders, namely:
-COMP: simulation output for the comparison to measurements;
-FLOW: simulation output for the study of wind forcing impact;
-simulation_exampleCase: example case of a snowBedFoam simulation with the reference Neumayer Station mesh;
-SNOW: simulation output for the study of snow properties impact;
-STRUCT: simulation output for the study of structure properties impact.

en: Snowdrift measurements around Neumayer Station III

en: Files containing the topographical data barometrically measured in June 2009 around the German Antarctic Research station Neumayer III. Those measurements are compared to the snowBedFoam simulations to assess the ability of the model to reproduce real snow distribution observations.

en:
snowBedFoam 1.0. is a snow transport solver implemented in the computational fluid dynamics software OpenFOAM. It is adapted from the standard multi-phase flow solver DPMFoam for application in snow-influenced environments.
To simulate aeolian snow transport, snowBedFoam 1.0. handles coupled Eulerian–Lagrangian phases, which involve a finite number of particles (snow) spread in a continuous phase (air). The snow erosion and deposition are modelled through physics-based equations similar to the ones employed in the well-established LES-Lagrangian Stochastic Model (Comola and Lehning, 2017 ; Sharma et al., 2018 ; Melo et al., 2022). This modelling approach is computationally intensive and thus adapted to simulate snow movement and distribution on small scale terrain.
First, snowBedFoam 1.0. was applied to topographical data collected on Arctic sea ice during the MOSAiC expedition (Clemens-Sewall, 2021). Together with atmospheric data from the MOSAiC Met City (Shupe et al., 2021) used for the fluid forcing, the model was able to accurately simulate the zones of erosion and deposition of snow along a complex ice ridge structure (Hames et al., 2022).
Second, snowBedFoam 1.0. was used to simulate the snow distribution around the German Antarctic research station Neumayer Station III. The effect of snow properties, fluid forcing and aerodynamic structures on the snow accumulation were assessed.
snowBedFoam 1.0 was implemented in 2 different OpenFOAM versions, namely OpenFOAM-2.3.0 and OpenFOAM-5.0. The latter offers more options for turbulence models and boundary conditions. The fundamental model equations were not changed from one implementation to the other, thus both still correspond to snowBedFoam 1.0. The two branches are called snowBedFoam-v1-2.3.0 (OpenFOAM-2.3.0) and snowBedFoam-v1-5.0 (OpenFOAM-5.0). The core codes of snowBedFoam 1.0. are directly accessible on the WSL/SLF GitLab repository (more details in the Resources section).

antarctica

display_name: antarctica

arctic-sea-ice

display_name: arctic-sea-ice

mosaic

display_name: mosaic

openfoam

display_name: openfoam

snow-deposition

display_name: snow-deposition

snow-transport

display_name: snow-transport

en: snowBedFoam: an OpenFOAM Eulerian-Lagrangian solver for modelling snow transport


swiss-fluxnet-site-davos

title_for_slug: swiss-fluxnet-site-davos

en: forest swiss-fluxnet swiss-forest-lab greenhouse-gas meteorological-measurements eddy-covariance icos flux

en: Fluxnet2015 dataset

en: Processed flux and meteo data are also part of the Fluxnet2015 dataset.

en: Data access

en: The flux and meteo data of the Swiss FluxNet site Davos are openly available. Near real-time flux and meteo data are uploaded daily to the ICOS Carbon Portal.

en: Processed data

en: Processed flux and meteo data are available from the European Fluxes Database Cluster.

en: Site description

en:
The Swiss FluxNet Site Davos is a managed subalpine evergreen forest, located on the Seehorn mountain near Davos in the Swiss Alps. The site is dominated by Norway spruce. The tower is owned by the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN).
Ecosystem flux measurements of CO2, H2O (since 1997) as well as CH4 and N2O (since 2016) are performed with the eddy covariance method.
In addition to Swiss FluxNet, the site is part of the National Air Pollution Monitoring Network (NABEL), the Long term Forest Ecosystem Research (LWF), the biological drought and growth indicator network (TreeNet) and of ICOS Switzerland (Integrated Carbon Observation System). Since November 2019, the site is an ICOS Class 1 Ecosystem station.

Measurements

- Ecosystem flux measurements of CO2, H2O vapour (since 1997) as well a CH4 and N2O (since 2016) are performed with the eddy-covariance method. This method is based on measurements of trace gas mixing ratios, using infrared gas analyzers (for CO2, H2O vapor) and laser spectrometers (for CH4 and N2O), combined with wind speed and wind direction measurements, using 3D sonic anemometers. To resolve the short-term turbulent fluctuations in the atmosphere, very fast measurements are needed: we measure at 10-20 Hz, i.e., 10-20 times per second. To assess the energy budget of each ecosystem, also radiation sensors and soil climate profiles are installed at the site.
- Sub-canopy eddy fluxes (CO2, H2O, since 2023 also CH4).
- Continuous profile concentration and forest floor flux measurement of CO2, H2O, CH4, N2O.
- Auxiliary micrometeorology and soil climate measurements.

Data availability

Near real-time flux and meteo data uploaded daily to the ICOS Carbon Portal. Processed flux and meteo data are also available from the European Fluxes Database Cluster and part of Fluxnet2015 dataset.

Data policy

ICOS data license:
[https://www.icos-cp.eu/data-services/about-data-portal/data-license](https://www.icos-cp.eu/data-services/about-data-portal/data-license)

Detailed site info:
[https://www.swissfluxnet.ethz.ch/index.php/sites/ch-dav-davos/site-info-ch-dav/](https://www.swissfluxnet.ethz.ch/index.php/sites/ch-dav-davos/site-info-ch-dav/)

eddy-covariance

display_name: eddy-covariance

flux

display_name: flux

forest

display_name: forest

greenhouse-gas

display_name: greenhouse-gas

icos

display_name: icos

meteorological-measurements

display_name: meteorological-measurements

swiss-fluxnet

display_name: swiss-fluxnet

swiss-forest-lab

display_name: swiss-forest-lab

educ

en: Education, culture and sport

en: Swiss FluxNet Site Davos


maintainer: Yael Frischholz

en: preferential-deposition renewable-energy snow-transport alpine photovoltaic

en:
This file contains the snowBedFoam simulations carried out to produce the results presented in: _article not published yet_.
 Content
 1. /simulations
Groups all simulations folders organised by parameter (azimuth, groupsize, height, interspace) and by type of experiment (single_ref, group_ref).
 2. /simulations/[parameter]/
For each parameter multiple simulations were carried out. Each simulation folder follows the same naming systematic:
`helioplant_n#_h#_ARL#_BL#_az#_windDir#`
- n: number of Helioplant units
- h: height-above-surface
- sp: regular distance between the units
- ARL: additional refinement level
- BL: boundary layer first cell height
- windDir: wind direction
- stag: staggered arangement (suffix)
Here is an example of a folder content for a specific parameter
(simulations/azimuth/):
- `helioplant_n9_h07_sp10_ARL45_BL0015_az30_windDir5`: following the naming systematic this folder corresponds to a simulation with 9 aligned Helioplant units with 0.7m of height-above-surface, an inter-unit distance of 10m an azimuth of 30° and a wind direction of 5°.
 3. /simulations/[parameter]/[helioplant_n#_h#_ARL#_BL#_az#_windDir#]
Each simulation folder contains multiple sub-folders (0/, 100/, 300/, constant/ etc.) and files that define the experiment. For each simulation, the files used in the processing [scripts] are the following:
- 0/Cx: contains the x coordinates of sampling grid cells and of the Helioplants structures.
- 0/Cy: contains the y coordinates of sampling grid cells and of the Helioplants structures.
- 300/kinematicCloud-massCheckPatterns: contains the snow mass distribution values [kg/m2] for each grid cell.

[scripts]: https://github.com/frischwood/snowbed-helio.git

en: Browse simulation files

en:
This dataset groups numerical simulation outputs and validation measurement data produced in the context of the following [publication]: _not published yet_
The snow transport model [snowBedFoam] was used to analyse snow deposition around a specific type of Alpine PV structures named HELIOPLANT®.
The results of a sensitivity analysis of multiple key parameters that govern the spatial organisation of these structures are provided here. Measurements of snow distribution taken from the test-site of the [Gondosolar] project, are provided too.

To reproduce the results of the aforementioned publication, follow the instructions on this [repository].
[publication]: https://
[snowBedFoam]: https://www.doi.org/10.16904/envidat.223
[Gondosolar]: https://www.gondosolar.ch
[repository]: https://github.com/frischwood/snowbed-helio.git

alpine

display_name: alpine

photovoltaic

display_name: photovoltaic

preferential-deposition

display_name: preferential-deposition

renewable-energy

display_name: renewable-energy

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: Drifting and blowing snow distribution around structures for Alpine PV applications


maintainer: Frank Techel

en: snow avalanche-forecast european-alps danger-level warning-regions

en: Forecast avalanche danger level

en: contains the highest forecast danger level (dangerLevelMax) for each day and warning region

en: shape file warning regions Alps

en:
This dataset contains the data used in the publication by Techel et al., 2018 _Spatial consistency and bias in avalanche forecasts - a case study in the European Alps_ (Nat Haz Earth Syst Sci).
For details on the data please refer to this publication.
The dataset contains the following:
- shape files for the warning regions in the Alps
- highest forecast danger level for each warning region and day

avalanche-forecast

display_name: avalanche-forecast

danger-level

display_name: danger-level

european-alps

display_name: european-alps

snow

display_name: snow

warning-regions

display_name: warning-regions

en: Forecast avalanche danger level European Alps 2011 - 2015


en: COST European Snow Booklet (ESB) - DORA Link

media_type: text/html

en: DORA Link of the COST European Snow Booklet (ESB).

format: HTML

en: List of authors and list of the editorial board of the European Snow Booklet

en:
Here you can find the list of all lead authors of the different chapters of the European Snow Booklet (ESB).
In addition a list of the editorial board that reviewed the ESB is given.

en: COST European Snow Booklet (ESB)

en: Please find here the web version of the COST European Snow Booklet (ESB).

en: European Snow Booklet public metadata

en:
The core of the European Snow Booklet (ESB), the country reports of 38 European countries, are based on information and metadata on snow measurements collected through a comprehensive survey, the ESB Questionnaire, between August 2017 and March 2018. The station metadata (for example location, elevation, measurement start date) from each country was provided by one or several institutions responsible for snow observations. By answering the questionnaire the contacts agreed that the information and metadata provided could be presented in the ESB. For cases where institutions indicated that information on station locations could be made publicly available, the metadata for the variables snow depth (HS), depth of snowfall (HN) and water equivalent of the snow cover (SWE), is additionally provided here for download (METADATA.xlsx).
Please note that not all institutions gave permission to publish their station metadata. This metadata has to be requested from the non-personal institution contacts provided in the METADATA.xlsx file. In some cases, however, no institutional contact is available and thus the contact of the country representative who filled in the questionnaire is used.
For current, updated station metadata we refer to the (non-personal) institutional contacts provided in METADATA.xlsx and/or the institution webpages. Note, however, that we cannot guarantee for completeness of the dataset for all countries because operational networks are prone to changes.

en:
The European Snow Booklet (ESB) is a book of reference for snow measurements that has been produced through collaboration with many European snow practitioners and snow scientists in the framework of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action ES1404 “A European network for a harmonised monitoring of snow for the benefit of climate change scenarios, hydrology and numerical weather prediction (HarmoSnow)”. The ESB provides a unique collection of information about operational snow observations in the European countries and the methods used to perform basic measurements of snow on the ground: snow depth (HS), depth of snowfall (HN), water equivalent of the snow cover (SWE) and presence of snow on the ground (PSG). Information and station metadata (for example location, elevation) for these basic snow variables were collected through a comprehensive survey, the ESB questionnaire between August 2017 and March 2018. Numerous institutions of 38 European countries provided detailed information describing the status of the operational snow observations and the methods used at the time of the survey. Based on the information provided, a country report was written for each European country. Similarities and differences among the countries, that is, the choice of snow variables to be measured, the measurement principles applied, the number of stations, or the spatial and elevational station distribution are pointed out. Thus the collection of country reports demonstrates the relevance of snow measurements for each country. Thus, the intention of the ESB is to foster better knowledge transfer regarding snow measurements between the snow science and operational communities and to improve the communication of information to the general public.

For detailed information on the European countries, we refer to the ESB, which can be downloaded here (envidat.ch). Please note that the ESB is not a living document and information and station metadata are from August 2017 till March 2018, except for Latvia (metadata updated in December 2018).

depth-of-snowfall

display_name: depth-of-snowfall

harmonisation-of-snow-measurements

display_name: harmonisation-of-snow-measurements

snow-depth

display_name: snow-depth

snow-measurement-methods

display_name: snow-measurement-methods

water-equivalent-of-the-snow-cover

display_name: water-equivalent-of-the-snow-cover

en: European Snow Booklet – an Inventory of Snow Measurements in Europe


en: leaf-senescence fagus-sylvatica drought-2018 forests growth-reaction-to-drought-stress european-summer-drought

en: Drought and Beech: 1000 beeches data set

en: The data set comprises data from the Drought and Beech 1000 beeches project. The actual data file with monitoring data of 963 beech trees in northern Switzerland over four years (Drought_and_Beech_1000beeches_Data_v1.0.csv), a metadata file with column descriptions (Drought_and_Beech_1000beeches_Legend_v1.0.csv), and a file defining the different survey periods (Drought_and_Beech_1000beeches_Survey_periods_v1.0.csv).

en: This study investigated multi-year drought impacts on beech forests through a unique large-scale monitoring of 963 individual beech trees, which showed either premature leaf discoloration during the drought in summer 2018 or no visible damage. We conducted the study in two highly drought-affected regions in northern Switzerland and one less drought-affected region located further south. We quantified the development of crown dieback and tree mortality as well as secondary drought damage, i.e. the presence of bleeding cankers and bark beetle infestations, in these trees for three consecutive years. We also determined the impact of several potential climate- and stand-related (predisposing) factors on mortality and drought legacy processes.

european-summer-drought

display_name: european-summer-drought

fagus-sylvatica

display_name: fagus-sylvatica

forests

display_name: forests

growth-reaction-to-drought-stress

display_name: growth-reaction-to-drought-stress

leaf-senescence

display_name: leaf-senescence

educ

en: Education, culture and sport

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: Data on multi-year drought impacts on European beech in northern Switzerland


en: endemic-species lichen photobiont functional-taxonomic-groups bryophyte endemic bryophyte-life-strategy moss madeira-island elevational-gradient functional-taxonomic-group biodiversity liverwort climate-change-impact disturbance climate-change lichen-growth-form lichen-growthform

en: MadCrypto – Bryophyte and macrolichen diversity in laurel forests of Madeira

en:
This dataset includes species lists of bryophytes and macrolichens (presence/absence) sampled on the forest floor and on trees in disturbed and undisturbed plots along elevation gradients in the laurel forests of Madeira island. It also contains species specific information (bryophytes: red list status, endemic status, taxonomic group, life strategy; macrolichens: photobiont type, growth form) as well as plot information (Plot_ID, sampling date, coordinates, elevation a.s.l. (m), disturbance type, sampled host tree species).

The dataset was used for the paper
Boch S, Martins A, Ruas S, Fontinha S, Carvalho P, Reis F, Bergamini A, Sim-Sim M (2019) Bryophyte and macrolichen diversity show contrasting elevation relationships and are negatively affected by disturbances in laurel forests of Madeira island. Journal of Vegetation Science.

en:
This dataset includes species lists of bryophytes and macrolichens (presence/absence) sampled on the forest floor and on trees in disturbed and undisturbed plots along elevation gradients in the laurel forests of Madeira island. It also contains species specific information (bryophytes: red list status, endemic status, taxonomic group, life strategy; macrolichens: photobiont type, growth form) as well as plot information (Plot_ID, sampling date, coordinates, elevation a.s.l. (m), disturbance type, sampled host tree species).

The dataset was used for the paper
Boch S, Martins A, Ruas S, Fontinha S, Carvalho P, Reis F, Bergamini A, Sim-Sim M (2019) Bryophyte and macrolichen diversity show contrasting elevation relationships and are negatively affected by disturbances in laurel forests of Madeira island. Journal of Vegetation Science 30: 1122–1133.

The excel file contains 5 sheets:
1) Plot information
2) Bryophyte data with species specific information, separated per substrate
3) Macrolichen data with species specific information, separated per substrate
4) Bryophyte data with species specific information (plot level data). Species lists of the two substrates were merged; if one substrate in a plot hosted a species identified only to genus level (genus spec.) but the second investigated substrate hosted an identified species of the same genus, we removed the genus spec. entry in the particular plot. The species list of sheet 2 and 4 might therefore differ slightly.
5) Macrolichen data with species specific information (plot level data). Species lists of the two substrates were merged; if one substrate in a plot hosted a species identified only to genus level (genus spec.) but the second investigated substrate hosted an identified species of the same genus, we removed the genus spec. entry in the particular plot. The species list of sheet 3 and 5 might therefore differ slightly.

biodiversity

display_name: biodiversity

bryophyte

display_name: bryophyte

bryophyte-life-strategy

display_name: bryophyte-life-strategy

climate-change

display_name: climate-change

climate-change-impact

display_name: climate-change-impact

disturbance

display_name: disturbance

elevational-gradient

display_name: elevational-gradient

endemic

display_name: endemic

endemic-species

display_name: endemic-species

functional-taxonomic-group

display_name: functional-taxonomic-group

functional-taxonomic-groups

display_name: functional-taxonomic-groups

lichen

display_name: lichen

lichen-growth-form

display_name: lichen-growth-form

lichen-growthform

display_name: lichen-growthform

liverwort

display_name: liverwort

madeira-island

display_name: madeira-island

moss

display_name: moss

photobiont

display_name: photobiont


snow-drift-station-flowcapt

maintainer: Benjamin Walter

title_for_slug: snow-drift-station-flowcapt

en: acoustic-mass-flux flowcapt snow-blowing raclets wind-speed snowdrift

en: minimum mass flux

en: The data file contains the minimum mass flux of 10 minute intervalls. The duration of one cycle was 1 min and contained 6s observations and 54 s stand-by. The time is given in UTC+1.

en: maximum mass flux

en: The data file contains the maximum mass flux of 10 minute intervalls. The duration of one cycle was 1 min and contained 6s observations and 54 s stand-by. The time is given in UTC+1.

en: average wind speed

en: The data file contains the average wind speed in 10 minute intervalls. The duration of one cycle was 1 min and contained 6s observations and 54 s stand-by. The time is given in UTC+1.

en: avergaged mass flux

en: Average mass flux of 10 min measurement interval. The Cycle duration is 1 min which includes 6 s observation and 54 s stand-by. The time is given in UTC+1.

en: maximum wind speed

en: The data file contains the maximum wind speed in 10 minute intervalls. The duration of one cycle was 1 min and contained 6 s observations and 54 s stand-by. The time is given in UTC+1.

en: minimum wind spees

en: The data file contains the minimum wind speed in 10 minute intervalls. The duration of one cycle was 1 min and contained 6s observations and 54 s stand-by. The time is given in UTC+1.

en: The FlowCapt is an ultra-robust instrument measuring solid particle acoustic mass - flux intensities (g m‾ ² s‾ ¹) and wind speeds (m s‾ ¹). It was deployed at Gotschnagrat (LON: 46.859 LAT: 9.849). The vertical tube with a length of 1 m monitors snowdrift and snow-blowing; and is mounted at a height between 0.1 an 1.1 m above snow surface. The time within each data set is given in UTC+1.

acoustic-mass-flux

display_name: acoustic-mass-flux

flowcapt

display_name: flowcapt

raclets

display_name: raclets

snow-blowing

display_name: snow-blowing

snowdrift

display_name: snowdrift

wind-speed

display_name: wind-speed

en: Snow Drift Station - Flowcapt


individual-detected-trees

title_for_slug: individual-detected-trees

en: forest-structure nfi mountain-forest itd forest-management development-stage

en: This dataset provides individual detected trees for selected Swiss Cantons (Appenzell Outer-Rhodes - AR, Grisons - GR, Nidwald - NW, Obwald - OW and St. Gall - SG), including the derived diameter at breast height and the derived NFI development stage. Data show the Individual detected trees (ITD) with the x- and y-positions of each detected tree based on a spike-free vegetation height model based on nationwide LiDAR data. The shapefile contains the following attributes: tree height [m] (Height), estimated diameter at breast height [cm] (BHD), and the NFI development stage (Ent; 1: young growth/thicket (< 12 cm); 2: pole timber (12-30 cm); 3: young timber (31-40 cm); 4: medium timber (41-50 cm); 5: old timber (> 50 cm).

development-stage

display_name: development-stage

forest-management

display_name: forest-management

forest-structure

display_name: forest-structure

itd

display_name: itd

mountain-forest

display_name: mountain-forest

nfi

display_name: nfi

educ

en: Education, culture and sport

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: Individual Detected Trees


disdrometer-data-gotschnagrat

title_for_slug: disdrometer-data-gotschnagrat

en: hydrometeors visibility disdrometer raclets precipitation

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

visibility

display_name: visibility


en: dry-snow-avalanche crack-propagation field-data crack-speed weak-layer numerical-simulations

format: OCTET

en: DEM data flat terrain

en: Video analyze data cross slope

en: Video analyze data up-slope

en: Field data PST >30deg

en: Field data PST <30deg

en: DAM data slope terrain

en: MPM data slope terrain

en: MPM data flat terrain

en:
Compilation of normalized crack-propagation speeds (expressed as a fraction of the slab shear-wave speed).

The dataset contains crack-propagation speeds from DEM simulations (79 flat and 6 tilted; Bobillier et al., 2024), MPM simulations (48 flat and 191 tilted; Trottet et al., 2022), and field measurements: PSTs (222 data points, including 192 from low-angle terrain < 30°; van Herwijnen et al., 2016) and avalanche-video analyses (6 cross-slope and 5 down-slope speeds; Trottet et al., 2022).

The dataset also includes Python scripts that generate the relative-frequency distribution of the compiled, normalized crack-propagation speeds.

Bobillier, G., Bergfeld, B., Dual, J., Gaume, J., van Herwijnen, A., 55 and Schweizer, J.: Numerical investigation of crack propagation regimes in snow fracture experiments, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10035-024-01423-5 2024

Trottet, B., Simenhois, R., Bobillier, G., Bergfeld, B., van Herwijnen, A., Jiang, C. F. F., and Gaume, J.: Transi- 55 tion from sub-Rayleigh anticrack to supershear crack propagation in snow avalanches, Nat. Phys., 18, 1094–1098, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01662-4, 2022.

van Herwijnen, A., Gaume, J., Bair, E. H., Reuter, B., Birkeland, K. W., and Schweizer, J.: Estimating the effective elastic modulus and specific fracture energy of snowpack layers from field experiments, J. Glaciol., 62, 997–1007, https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2016.90, 2016a.

crack-propagation

display_name: crack-propagation

crack-speed

display_name: crack-speed

dry-snow-avalanche

display_name: dry-snow-avalanche

field-data

display_name: field-data

numerical-simulations

display_name: numerical-simulations

weak-layer

display_name: weak-layer

en: Compilation of normalized  crack propagation speeds


maintainer: Athanasios Nenes

en: raclets weissfluhjoch ccn cloud-modeling dmt-ccn-chamber supersaturation cloud-droplets hygroscopicity sigma-w

en: Predicted cloud droplet number concentrations Weissfluhjoch

en:
In-situ measurements of aerosol size distributions along with updraft velocities collected from a wind Doppler Lidar are coupled with a state-of-the art droplet activation parameterization (Morales and Nenes, 2014) to determine the cloud droplet number and maximum in-cloud supersaturation that can potentially form over the Weissfluhjoch station between February 24 and March 8 2019. For this, a hygroscopicity parameter of 0.25 is assumed, according to the CCN-derived values. The data file contains:

* Date and time (DD/MM/YYYY hh:mm:ss) in UTC
* The wind-lidar derived standard deviation of updraft velocities (sigma-w) in m/s, used to apply the parameterization employing a single characteristic velocity (Morales and Nenes, 2010)
* The maximum predicted cloud parcel supersaturation (Smax%)
* The total in-situ aerosol number concentration (Naer) in cmˉ³, measured by the SMPS
* The predicted cloud droplet numbers (Nd) in cmˉ³
* The activation fraction (%)

en: Hygroscopicity parameter Weissfluhjoch

en:
The aerosol hygroscopicity parameter is derived combining the CCN and SMPS size distribution data collected between February 24 and March 8 2019 at Weissfluhjoch. The data file contains:

* Date and time (DD/MM/YYYY hh:mm:ss) in UTC
* The instrument supersaturation (SS%)
* The calculated hygroscopicity parameter (kappa)
* The calculated critical dry diameter of the particles (Dcr) in nm.

Missing values are indicated by "-999".

en: CCN data Weissfluhjoch

en:
In-situ CCN measurements were conducted between February 24 and March 8 2019 at Weissfluhjoch. The data file contains:

* Date and time (DD/MM/YYYY hh:mm:ss) in UTC
* Filtered CCN number concentrations (in cmˉ³) measured at 6 discrete supersaturations (SS) ranging from 0.09% to 0.74%. The name of each CCN column is indicative of the SS developed within the instrument.
* Instrument characteristics such as sample temperature (in °C) and pressure (in mbar)
* A code that refers to the reason of filtering.

Missing or filtered CCN values are indicated by "-999", while a declaration of each "Error_code" can be found in the following list:

_Error_code_:

0000: Measurements without error

1000: Period of transient operation after a supersaturation change

2000: Sharp change (decrease) in the room temperature housing the instrument, which induces a reset in column temperature

3000: Irregular values in the room temperature housing the instrument

9999: Missing data

en:
Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN) data: A Droplet Measurement Technologies (DMT) single-column continuous-flow streamwise thermal gradient chamber (CFSTGC; Roberts and Nenes, 2005) was deployed at the measurement site Weissfluhjoch (2700 m a.s.l., LON: 9.806475, LAT: 46.832964) to record the in-situ CCN number concentrations between February 24 and March 8 2019 for different supersaturations (SS). To account for the difference between the ambient (~735 mbar) and the calibration pressure (~800 mbar), the SS reported by the instrument is adjusted by a factor of 0.92. The CFSTGC was cycled between 6 discrete SS values ranging from 0.09% to 0.74%, producing a full CCN spectrum every hour. The raw CCN measurements are filtered to discount periods of transient operation and whenever the room temperature housing the instrument changed sufficiently to induce a reset in column temperature. Additional information can be found in Section 2.1.2 [here](https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2020-1036/).

Hygroscopicity data: The CCN number concentration measurements were directly related to the size distribution and total aerosol concentration data measured by the Scanning Mobility Particle Size Spectrometer (SMPS) instrument at the same station (https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/aerosol-data-weissfluhjoch) to infer the particles hygroscopicity parameter (kappa). For each SMPS scan, the particles critical dry diameter (Dcr) is estimated by integrating backward the SMPS size distribution, until the aerosol number matches the CCN concentration observed for the same time period as the SMPS scan. Assuming the particle chemical composition is internally mixed, the kappa is determined from Dcr and SS, applying Köhler theory. Additional information can be found in Section 2.2 [here](https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2020-1036/).

Predicted cloud droplet numbers: Droplet calculations are carried out with the physically based aerosol activation parameterization of Morales and Nenes (2014), employing the “characteristic velocity” approach of Morales and Nenes (2010). Aerosol size distribution observations required to predict the cloud droplet numbers and maximum in-cloud supersaturation are obtained from the SMPS instrument deployed at Weissfluhjoch. The required vertical velocity measurements are derived from the wind Doppler Lidar (https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/lidar-wind-profiler-data) deployed at Davos Wolfgang and are extracted for the altitude of interest, being 1100 m above ground level for Weissfluhjoch. Additional information can be found in Section 2.3 [here](https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2020-1036/).

ccn

display_name: ccn

cloud-droplets

display_name: cloud-droplets

cloud-modeling

display_name: cloud-modeling

dmt-ccn-chamber

display_name: dmt-ccn-chamber

hygroscopicity

display_name: hygroscopicity

raclets

display_name: raclets

sigma-w

display_name: sigma-w

supersaturation

display_name: supersaturation

weissfluhjoch

display_name: weissfluhjoch

educ

en: Education, culture and sport

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: CCN, hygroscopicity, predicted cloud droplet numbers Weissfluhjoch