Welcome to the official website of the IPG program of the HU Berlin.

If you want to participate in the IPG program, please contact us by mail. Then, you will receive an access to the IPG database. As a registered member, you can manage your IPG station, add site information and edit your observations online.

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The International Phenological Gardens of Europe

The International Phenological Gadens (IPG) are a European and individual network within the Phenology Study Group of the International Society of Biometeorology (ISB). The network was founded in 1957 by F. Schnelle and E. Volkert. It works on an honorary basis.

The idea of the International Phenological Gardens was to do large-scale and standardized phenological observations. Therefore all IPGs are situated in similar surroundings (mainly plain surface with meadows and some trees), they have a detailed observation-guide and they are professionally looked after by the staff of the institutes, botanical gardens etc. In order to eliminate the hereditary variability, cloned species of all trees and shrubs have been planted in the IPGs. Therefore it was necessary to establish a parent garden doing the vegetative propagation, breeding, and dispatch. In the vicinity of a phenological garden an official met station should be placed.

Aim: The international observation programme is focused on possible impacts of climate change on forest-ecosystems. Scientific aims are:

Monitoring of environmental changes,
Climate-impact studies,
Development of phenological models,
Calibration of remotely sensed data,
Calculation of phenological maps.

The current network ranges across 28 latitudes from Scandinavia to Macedonia and across 37 longitudes from Ireland to Finland in the north and from Portugal to Macedonia in the south. It consists of 61 active gardens in 18 European countries (state 2010).

Download: IPG Observation sheet

IPG Stationmap

Since 2000, the observation programme includes 21 plant species (kernel programme). These plants are labeled with * in the plant list.

The history and development of the IPG network is described in:

Renner SS, Chmielewski FM ( 2022 ): The International Phenological Garden network (1959 to 2021): its 131 gardens, cloned study species, data archiving, and future. International Journal of Biometeorology 66:3543. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-021-02185-y

Coordination:
Humboldt-University of Berlin
Faculty of Life Sciences
Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences
Division Crop Production
Professorship of Agricultural Climatology
Albrecht-Thaer Weg 5
D-14195 Berlin
Phone.: +49 30 2093 46395
Fax.: +49 30 2093 46488

HPage: https://hu.berlin/agrarmet