The described dataset resulted from a joint multidisciplinary measurement campaign in an agroforestry system in the Western Cape region in South Africa. Five participating institutions measured a range of environmental variables to characterise the influence of windbreak trees onto water fluxes, nutrient distribution and microclimate in the adjacent blackberry field. The dataset contains spatially collected soil characteristics, a soil profile description, time series of meteorological measurements as well as soil moisture and matric potential, information on soil hydraulic properties of the soil determined in the laboratory and windbreak characteristics and shape from a point cloud derived from terrestrial LiDAR scanning.
The Regional Research Network „Water in Central Asia“ (CAWa) funded by the German Federal Foreign Office consists of 19 remotely operated multi-parameter stations (ROMPS) in Central Asia. These stations were installed by the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam, Germany in close cooperation with the Central-Asian Institute for Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, the national hydrometeorological services in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and the Kabul Polytechnic University, Afghanistan.
The primary objective of these stations is to support the establishment of a reliable data basis of meteorological and hydrological data especially in remote areas with extreme climate conditions in Central Asia for applications in climate and water monitoring. Up to now, ten years of data are provided for an area of scarce station distribution and with limited open access data which can be used for a wide range of scientific or engineering applications.
This dataset provides different types of raw hydrometeorological data such as air temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, wind speed and direction, precipitation, solar radiation, soil moisture and soil temperature as well as snow parameters and river discharge information for selected sites. The data has not undergone any quality control mechanism and should, therefore, be seen as raw data. A visual inspection of the data set has been made and some errors and quality degradation are listed in Zech et al. (2020) but does not claim to be complete. A quality control is strongly recommended by the authors before using the data.
Each station data has its own storage directory at the data dissemination server named with the abbreviation (4-letter code) of the station. The data is sampled with a 5-minute interval and stored in hourly files separated by the type of data. These files are then archived as monthly files named with the station abbreviation, type of data, year and month. After one year, these monthly files are further archived to a yearly file. A detailed description for the stations is provided by the Station Exposure Descriptions. Further information about the dataset can be found in Zech et al. (2020). All data is compiled as ASCII data in two different formats which are explained in the documents GITW-SSP-FMT-GFZ-003.pdf (for the stations ALAI, ALA6, and SARY) and CAWA-SSP-FMT-GFZ-006.pdf (for all other stations).
Monthly, the data will be dynamically extended as long as data can be acquired from the stations. Additionally, the near real-time data can be displayed and downloaded without any registration from the Sensor Data Storage System (SDSS) hosted at the Central-Asian Institute for Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
The Black Forest Observatory Data collection compiles digital data recorded at Black Forest Observatory (BFO) in Germany and provided through several international data centers. BFO aims to observe the entire geodynamic spectrum. It strives to ensure continuous, uninterrupted operation and is internationally recognized for high signal quality and sensitivity. Observed quantities cover three components of acceleration (including ground motion, gravity and tilt), strain, magnetic field, and others (see description of instruments below). The set of instruments and data recorders in operation provides a significant level of redundancy, which allows to distinguish natural phenomena from possible instrumental artefacts.
The Black Forest Observatory (BFO) is a joint research facility of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Stuttgart (Duffner et al., 2018; Gottschämmer et al. 2014). Since 1971 it is operated in cooperation of the geophysical and geodetic institutes of both universities (Zürn, 2014). BFO is staffed with two scientists and one technician. Main activities of the observatory fall into four categories, which are (1) observation and publication of a continuously recorded multi-parameter geodynamic data set, (2) research, (3) hosting of guest-experiments, and (4) teaching.
The location of the observatory (48.3301 °N, 8.3296 °E) in the middle of the Black Forest was carefully selected at large distances to potential anthropogenic sources of noise. The instruments are deployed in a former silver mine in competent granite rock at a depth of up to 170 m below the surface and at up to 700 m distance from the entrance of the mine. This provides a thermally very stable environment. Two air-locks provide additional protection against air-pressure variations and ensure thermal stability. Because of these favorable conditions and the excellent high precision instruments operated at BFO the observatory is internationally well known as one of the most sensitive sites for long period observations, providing international standards for the scientific community, e.g. for recordings of Earth's free oscillations.
The Black Forest Observatory operates broad-band seismometers (STS-1 and STS-2), gravimeters (superconducting gravimeter SG056, LaCoste Romberg earth-tide gravimeter ET-19), tiltmeters (Askania borehole tiltmeter, Horsfall fluid tiltmeter), an array of three invar-wire strainmeters, magnetometers (a scalar GSM-90 Overhauser magnetometer and a three component Rasmussen fluxgate magnetometers) and a permanent GPS-station. These are supplemented by regularly repeated magnetic base-line measurements and observations of absolute gravity as well as the recording of several environmental parameters (air-pressure, infrasound, humidity, wind speed, precipitation and temperature). Some of the latter are used to correct geodynamic recordings for remaining disturbances.
The data are published in near-real-time through international data centers (IRIS DMC at Seattle, SZO at the BGR in Hannover, INTERMAGNET, GNSS Data Center at the BKG in Frankfurt, IGETS Database at GFZ Potsdam). Data are made available free of charge to scientific projects as well as to the general public with attribution as defined in the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).
An extended review of research at BFO is given by Zürn (2014) and Duffner et al. (2018, in German). Both provide references to published BFO research.