Abstract: Within the framework of the European Phenology Network EPN a metadatabase on phenological networks has been developed to store basic information about active and historical monitoring networks on phenology. In parallel two frontends to this database were made accessible to the scientific community and the general public at the Internet: A digital questionnaire ... (http://epn.pik-potsdam.de/cgi-bin/epn/readepn.py) to gather information on phenological networks and a corresponding retrieval tool to browse this information ( http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~rachimow/epn/html/frameok.html ).

The overall aim of EPN is to improve monitoring, assessment, and prediction of climate induced phenological changes and their effects in Europe. One of the objectives of EPN is to improve integration of, and access to phenological data in a systematic, structured and user-friendly way and to exchange knowledge and information between phenologists of different scientific disciplines.

In the past there has been a lack of well structured and online accessible information on phenology network data in Europe and the whole world. This situation has hampered research as well as exploitation and application of data by potential users. The EPN metadatabase is a first step to fill this gap.