Abstract. Process-based vegetation models are widely used to predict local and global ecosystem dynamics and climate change impacts. Due to their complexity, they require careful parameterization and evaluation to ensure that projections are accurate and reliable. The PROFOUND Database (PROFOUND DB) provides a wide range of empirical data on European forests to calibrate and evaluate vegetation models that simulate climate impacts at the forest stand scale. A particular advantage of this database is its wide coverage of multiple data sources at different hierarchical and temporal scales, together with environmental driving data as well as the latest climate scenarios. Specifically, the PROFOUND DB provides general site descriptions, soil, climate, CO2, nitrogen deposition, tree and forest stand level, and remote sensing data for nine contrasting forest stands distributed across Europe. Moreover, for a subset of five sites, time series of carbon fluxes, atmospheric heat conduction and soil water are also available. The climate and nitrogen deposition data contain several datasets for the historic period and a wide range of future climate change scenarios following the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, RCP8.5). 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 DB is available freely as a “SQLite” relational database or “ASCII” flat file version (at https://doi.org/10.5880/PIK.2020.006/; Reyer et al., 2020). The data policies of the individual contributing datasets are provided in the metadata of each data file. The PROFOUND DB can also be accessed via the ProfoundData R package (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ProfoundData; Silveyra Gonzalez et al., 2020), which provides basic functions to explore, plot and extract the data for model set-up, calibration and evaluation.

Abstract. Process-based vegetation models are widely used to predict local and global ecosystem dynamics and climate change impacts. Due to their complexity, they require careful parameterization and evaluation to ensure that projections are accurate and reliable. The PROFOUND Database (PROFOUND DB) provides a wide range of empirical data to calibrate and evaluate vegetation models that simulate climate impacts at the forest stand scale. A particular advantage of this database is its wide coverage of multiple data sources at different hierarchical and temporal scales, together with environmental driving data as well as the latest climate scenarios. Specifically, the PROFOUND DB provides general site descriptions, soil, climate, CO2, nitrogen deposition, tree and forest stand-level, as well as remote sensing data for nine contrasting forest stands distributed across Europe. Moreover, for a subset of five sites, time series of carbon fluxes, atmospheric heat conduction, and soil water are also available. The climate and nitrogen deposition data contain several datasets for the historic period and a wide range of future climate change scenarios following the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, RCP8.5). 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 DB is available freely as a SQLite relational database or ASCII flat file version (at https://doi.org/10.5880/PIK.2019.008). The data policies of the individual, contributing datasets are provided in the metadata of each data file. The PROFOUND DB can also be accessed via the ProfoundData R-package (https://github.com/COST-FP1304-PROFOUND/ProfoundData), which provides basic functions to explore, plot, and extract the data for model set-up, calibration and evaluation.

No abstract

SUMMARY We use measurements at 35 GPS stations in northern Central America and 25 seismometers at teleseismic distances to estimate the distribution of slip, source time function and Coulomb stress changes of the Mw = 7.3 2009 May 28, Swan Islands fault earthquake. This event, the largest in the region for several decades, ruptured the offshore continuation of the seismically hazardous Motagua fault of Guatemala, the site of the destructive Ms = 7.5 earthquake in 1976. Measured GPS offsets range from 308 millimetres at a campaign site in northern Honduras to 6 millimetres at five continuous sites in El Salvador. Separate inversions of geodetic and seismic data both indicate that up to ∼1 m of coseismic slip occurred along a ∼250‐km‐long rupture zone between the island of Roatan and the eastern limit of the 1976 M = 7.5 Motagua fault earthquake in Guatemala. Evidence for slip ∼250 km west of the epicentre is corroborated independently by aftershocks recorded by a local seismic network and by the high concentration of damage to structures in areas of northern Honduras adjacent to the western limit of the rupture zone. Coulomb stresses determined from the coseismic slip distribution resolve a maximum of 1 bar of stress transferred to the seismically hazardous Motagua fault and further indicate unclamping of normal faults along the northern shore of Honduras, where two M > 5 normal‐faulting earthquakes and numerous small earthquakes were triggered by the main shock.

REFERENCE: S. Ripka, H. Lind, M. Wangenheim, J. Wallaschek, K. Wiese, and B. Wies “Investigation of Friction Mechanisms of Siped Tire Tread Blocks on Snowy and Icy Surfaces,” Tire Science and Technology, TSTCA, Vol. 40, No. 1, January–March 2012, pp. 1–24. ABSTRACT: Due to general safety reasons and an increasing individual demand on more traffic safety, winter tires have become more and more important. This evolution results in a rising requirement of the customers concerning the tire performance on the one hand, and the effort of the tire industry to improve the tire traction performance on snow and ice on the other hand. To engineer winter tires in an effective way, the friction influencing factors as well as the contact mechanics should be well known. Normally the design and development of tires is strongly based on vehicle tests, but in modern tire development processes the simulation as well as the experimental investigation of tires and tire components in the lab have become more popular. This strategy plays an especially important role for reducing the time of development cycles but also the development costs. With simulation and experiments in lab, new challenges come up which have to be solved. Lab experiments compete with totally different problems: First of all, the environmental influences like temperature and humidity have to be controlled. Furthermore, the test tracks used inside must be comparable to the proving ground outside, hence the properties of snow and ice have to be investigated in detail. Therefore not only is it very important to understand the formation of snow and ice, but also to find characteristics of both materials which can be identified and measured with mobile measurement devices outside on the test track and inside in the lab. Within this publication a general overview of the tire tread block test method as well as the test rig, which are used for identifying relevant tread block friction mechanisms on snow and ice, will be given. The results of the measurement will be shown and the acting friction phenomena will be explained.