POSITIVE 'Phenological Observations and Satellite data (NDVI): Trends in the Vegetation cycle in Europe'

The POSITIVE objectives are: to develop and test autumn phenological models; to test springtime models found to be effective on a regional scale; to fit a new unified model for European temperate tree species; to develop a new pollen shedding model for the main allergenic tax in different European regions; to study phenological shifts and changed gradients in the Alps as well as to describe the geographical and temporal variability and trends of phenological phases in Europe (1951-1998); to analyse the temporal and spatial variability of the green wave in Europe; to quantify large-scale growing season duration for the northern hemisphere and to determine changes in the photosynthetic capacity. POSITIVE will create and integrate a common phenological data set of key species and phases, suitable to study the temporal and spatial variability of phenophases in Europe, comprising observations of the International Phenological Gardens, the national phenological networks of the German, Swiss, Austrian, Estonian weather services and other new phenological data from Post Soviet States as well as data out of the European pollen network. POSITIVE will produce a new 1981-2000 satellite data set for the entire level-1b 4km global data record from the AVHRR instruments flown on the NOAAA-7, NOAAA-9, NOAAA-11, and NOAAA-14 satellites, post-processing review of the data will be undertaken to insure the correction of different artefacts. Using these data POSITIVE will study, by statistical analyses, phenological shifts and gradients in the Alps, phenological trends of the last 4 decades in Europe, especially the duration of the growing season, describe the past and actual geographical variability with a GIS application and produce phenological maps for Europe.