Despite Germany is probably the one country in the world where the largest number of vegetation plots (phytosociological relevés) have been sampled, their mobilisation in large vegetation-plot databases is lagging far behind other European countries. This relatively poor electronic data coverage from Germany impedes European studies, e.g. on diversity patterns and their drivers, niches of plant species and assembly rules of plant communities as well as broad-scale consisten vegetation classification, which otherwise are now well possible through the 1.3 million plots stored in the European Vegetation Archive (EVA).
GrassVeg.DE is a new collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by German members of the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and has just joined the EVA consortium. GrassVeg.DE aims at making grassland relevés from Germany available for fundamental and applied research, both within Germany and internationally, while ensuring that data providers get proper credit and benefit. We collect relevés of grasslands and herblands in the widest sense, i.e. everything except forest, shrubland, segetal and aquatic communities. Phytosociologically, the scope mainly refers to the classes Festuco-Brometea, Koelerio-Corynephoretea (including Sedo-Scleranthetea), Violetea calaminariae, Molinio-Arrhenatheretea, Juncetea maritimi (including Saginetea maritimae), Juncetea trifidi, Elyno-Seslerietea, Carici-Kobresietea, Calluno-Ulicetea (including Nardetea strictae), Loiseleurio-Vaccinetea, Salicetea herbaceae, Trifolio-Geranietea (including Melampyro-Holcetea), Artemisietea vulgaris (incl. Galio-Urticetea) and Mulgedio-Aconitetea from the territory of Germany. Plot observations from other vegetation classes can be included as well if they form a minor part of a certain contribution.
Contributing data to GrassVeg.DE (and thus to the European and global megadatabases "EVA" and "sPlot"), ensures that your valuable plot data are permanently safeguarded for science, that you will get invitations for co-authorship and citations, while at the same time you become entitled to propose own research projects using the whole GrassVeg.DE and EVA database (and in the future also the sPlot database). That way you can get more out of your data, whether published or unpublished.
The rights and obligations of data contributors and data users of GrassVeg.DE are regulated by Bylaws that ensure a fair balance between both groups. Anyway, data use is restricted to data contributors. GrassVeg.DE is governed by a Custodian and a Deputy Custodian and a Governing Board, elected by the Consortium members (those who contributed the data). You find more information about GrassVeg.DE at our homepage: http://www.bayceer.uni-bayreuth.de/ecoinformatics/en/forschung/gru/html.php?id_obj=139259
If you are interested to join with your data, please contact me ([email protected]),
Jürgen Dengler
(GrassVeg.DE Custodian)
http://www.bayceer.uni-bayreuth.de/ecoinformatics/en/forschung/gru/html.php?id_obj=139259
You want pictures exclusively from Germany?
I have some great pictures with meadows from Romania.
Dear Iuliana,
Thanks for your feedback and the nice photos. Unfortunately, this is a misunderstanding! I did not ask for photos but for vegetation-plot observations (also called phytosociological relevés). And yes, the grasslands in Romania are fantastic as I know from my own work, but in GrassVeg.DE, we exclusively collect data from Germany. If you have relevés (not photos) from Romania, our partner project RGD (Romanian Grassland Database) would be more than happy to receive them (more information at: https://www.bayceer.uni-bayreuth.de/ecoinformatics/en/forschung/gru/html.php?id_obj=140287).
Best regards, Jürgen
SILAM (Finland) - data for all Europe including Germany аrom various stations and data of satellite remote sensing of the Earth (grass cover)
for example: http://silam.fmi.fi/pollen.html?parameter=birch®ion=Europe&height=0
Contact: http://pollen.fmi.fi/contact.htm
I cooperate with them