The PROFOUND database for evaluating vegetation models and simulating climate impacts on European forests

Version History: 29 April 2020: Release of Version 0.3This is an updated version of Reyer et al., (2019, V. 0.1.12, http://doi.org/10.5880/PIK.2019.008). All changes and updates are documented in the changelog available via the data download section. Current process-based vegetation models are complex scientific tools that require proper evaluation of the different processes included in the models to prove that the models can be used to integrate our understanding of forest ecosystems and project climate change impacts on forests. The PROFOUND database (PROFOUND DB) described here aims to bring together data from a wide range of data sources to evaluate vegetation models and simulate climate impacts at the forest stand scale. It has been designed to fulfill two objectives:- Allow for a thorough evaluation of complex, process-based vegetation models using multiple data streams covering a range of processes at different temporal scales- Allow for climate impact assessments by providing the latest climate scenario data. Therefore, the PROFOUND DB provides general a site description as well as soil, climate, CO2, Nitrogen deposition, tree-level, forest stand-level and remote sensing data for 9 forest stands spread throughout Europe. Moreover, for a subset of 5 sites, also time series of carbon fluxes, energy balances and soil water are available. The climate and nitrogen deposition data contains several datasets for the historic period and a wide range of future climate change scenarios following the Representative Emission Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, RCP8.5). In addition, we also provide pre-industrial climate simulations that allow for model runs aimed at disentangling the contribution of climate change to observed forest productivity changes. The PROFOUND Database is available freely but we incite users to respect the data policies of the individual datasets as provided in the metadata of each data file. The database can also be accessed via the PROFOUND R-package, which provides basic functions to explore, plot and extract the data. The data (PROFOUND DB) are provided in two different versions (ProfoundData.sqlite download as ProfoundData.zip, ProfoundData_ASCII.zip) accompanied by a change-log to the previous published version (changelog_Profound-DB_v03.pdf), auxiliary data of reconstructed single tree data at the site Sorø (Soroe_DBH_H_AGE_20200428.zip) and documented by the three explanatory documents: (1) PROFOUNDdatabase.pdf: describes the structure, organisation and content of the PROFOUND DB.(2) PROFOUNDsites.pdf: displays the main data of the PROFOUND DB for each of the 9 forest sites in tables and plots.(3) ProfoundData.pdf: explains how to use the PROFOUND R-Package "ProfoundData" to access the PROFOUND DB and provides example scripts on how to apply it.