Toward A Multifunctional European Phenology Network

Abstract

Phenology as a scientific discipline has a very long history. Many local, regional, and national networks exist (see Chapters 2.1–2.6), and the number of disciplines that deal with phenological processes in their own profession is large and diverse (see, for example, the diversity of topics in this book). The phenological community, however, faces a number of problems:

• — There is insufficient cooperation and communication between the existing regional and national phenological monitoring networks in Europe.

• — There is a lack of access to and integration of data. This is partly caused by the lack of information on what datasets are available, the different definitions and techniques used, and the quality of the data.

• — There is inefficient use and exchange of existing knowledge within and between the different scientific disciplines on tools and techniques already available for monitoring, data storage, and data analysis.