The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research is concerned with the use, development and protection of natural and urban spaces. The focus of our research is on solving problems to do with the responsible use of landscapes and forests and a prudent approach to natural hazards, especially those common in mountainous countries. WSL occupies a leading position internationally in these research areas. We also provide groundwork for sustainable environmental policies in Switzerland.

More information: https://www.wsl.ch/

406 datasets found

  • High resolution land use forecasts for Switzerland in the 21st century

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    We present forecasts of land-use/land-cover (LULC) change for Switzerland for three time-steps in the 21st century under the representative concentration pathways 4.5 and 8.5, and...

    Last updated: March 27, 2024

    • ZIP
    • landscape-change
    • landscape
    • land-use
    • machine-learning
    • land-cover
    • modelling
  • Present and future multifaceted plant diversity, uniqueness and conservation in the European Alps

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This repository contains extensive data for the European Alps:

    • Observations of ~3,500 plant species
    • Climate (1-km), soil (100-m) and land cover predictors (1km); current...

    Last updated: March 25, 2024

    • GeoTIFF
    • zonation
    • global-change
    • conservation
    • taxonomic-diversity
    • species-distribution-models
    • land-use-change
    • functional-diversity
    • european-alps
    • plants
    • beta-diversity
    • migclim
    • phylogenetic-diversity
  • Data on Douglas fir seedlings from the DOCH-WO experiment

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This data is related to the publication "Non-native Douglas fir seedlings outcompete native Norway spruce, silver fir and Scots pine under dry and nutrient-poor conditions". It...

    Last updated: March 6, 2025

    • XLS
    • european-beech
    • norway-spruce
    • climate-change
    • douglas-fir
    • drought
  • Beetle communities reared from beech branches and associated forest and environmental variables

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    The data was generated during a landscape experiment performed on 69 plots in Sihlwald forest between 2016 and 2019. Branch bundles of different sizes consisting of beech branches...

    Last updated: November 17, 2023

    • XLS
    • biodiversity
    • dead-wood
    • forest-management
    • habitat-heterogeneity
    • colonisation
    • sloss
    • saproxylic-beetles
    • conservation
    • habitat-availability
  • Data for the publication "Secondary ice production processes in wintertime alpine mixed-phase clouds"

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This repository contains all WRF model outputs and observational data sets used for the paper: Georgakaki, P., Sotiropoulou, G., Vignon, É., Billault-Roux, A.-C., Berne, A., and...

    Last updated: December 10, 2024

    • SERVICE
    • jungfraujoch
    • swiss-alps
    • liquid-water-content
    • wrf
    • blowing-snow
    • ice-water-content
    • ice-crystal-number-concentration
    • secondary-ice-production
  • Urban bird predation on artificial caterpillars

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    We established our study sites in the cities of Basel, Lugano and Zurich, and their peri-urban forests. We characterised urban tree cover of each city using a rectangular grid with...

    Last updated: April 9, 2025

    • XLS
    • birds
    • urban
    • pest-invasion
    • urban-ecology
    • periurban
    • urban-biodiversity
    • insect-herbivores
    • biodiversity-experiment
    • biodiversity
  • Spatially explicit data to evaluate spatial planning outcomes in a coastal region in São Paulo State, Brazil

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    The present dataset is part of the published scientific paper entitled “The role of spatial planning in land change: An assessment of urban planning and nature conservation...

    Last updated: January 6, 2022

    • SERVICE
    • SHP
    • GeoTIFF
    • PDF
    • urban-morphology
    • built-up-classification
    • forest-gain
    • spatial-modelling
    • land-use-and-cover-change
    • nature-conservation
    • urban-compactness
    • basic-services
    • forest-persistence
    • planning-outcome
    • topography
    • urban-sprawl
  • CHELSA-TraCE21k: Downscaled transient temperature and precipitation data since the last glacial maximum

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    High resolution, downscaled climate model data are used in a wide variety of applications in environmental sciences. Here we present the CHELSA-TraCE21k downscaling algorithm to...

    Last updated: September 19, 2024

    • PDF
    • GeoTIFF
    • air-temperature
    • precipitation
    • glaciers
    • orography
    • paleo-climate
    • last-glacial-maximum
  • Impact of non-native tree species in Europe on soil properties and biodiversity: a review

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    Compiled data on the impacts of seven important NNTs (Acacia dealbata, Ailanthus altissima, Eucalyptus globulus, Prunus serotina, Pseudotsuga menziesii, Quercus rubra, Robinia...

    Last updated: October 21, 2022

    • SERVICE
    • CSV
    • XLS
    • forest-management
    • biodiversity
    • soil-impacts
    • pairwise-stand-comparisons
    • biogeography
  • Supporting information for case study on the application of spore sampling for the monitoring of macrofungi

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    Resources associated with the manuscript A case study on the application of spore sampling for the monitoring of macrofungi ([Schlegel et al....

    Last updated: September 10, 2024

    • ZIP
    • air-sampling
    • monitoring
    • metabarcoding
    • environmental-dna
    • spore-dispersal
  • Sample plot inventory data form the Parc Naturel du Jorat

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    The Jorat is one of the largest continously forested areas in the Swiss Plateau. On a forested area of 778 ha, the Parc Naturel du Jorat (PNJ), a periurban parc, has been...

    Last updated: March 4, 2025

    • XLS
    • PDF
    • swiss-plateau
    • forest-in
    • beech
    • temperate-forests
    • forest-reserves
  • Understanding snow saltation parameterizations - Reproducibility

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This dataset includes the necessary files to reproduce the results presented in Melo et al. (2024):

    • code version used in the simulations (also available at the institutional...

    Last updated: March 4, 2025

    • ZIP
    • saltation-parameterizations
    • drifting-snow
    • snow-saltation
    • aerodynamic-entrainment
    • splash
    • large-eddy-simulation
  • Drivers of the microbial metabolic quotient across global grasslands

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This dataset contains all data on which the following publication below is based.

    Paper Citation:

    Risch Anita C., Zimmermann, Stefan, Schütz, Martin, Borer, Elizabeth T.,...

    Last updated: February 21, 2023

    • SERVICE
    • nutrient-addition
    • microbial-biomass-carbon
    • anthropogenic-management
    • microbial-respiration
    • soil-properties
    • herbivore-exclusion
    • climate
  • Synchrony between spongy moth hatching and leaf phenology of temperate trees

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    The files correspond to the data and R-script used for the analyses of the following paper "Feasting on the ordinary or starving for the exceptional: phenological synchrony between...

    Last updated: July 11, 2023

    • ZIP
    • chilling
    • budburst
    • spongy-month
    • phenology
    • hatch
  • Nationalpark, Switzerland: Long-term forest meteorological data from the Long-term Forest Ecosystem Research Programme (LWF), from 1997 onwards

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    High quality meteorological data are needed for long-term forest ecosystem research, particularly in the light of global change. The long-term data series published here comprises...

    Last updated: December 3, 2019

    • SERVICE
    • PDF
    • CSV
    • par
    • meteorology
    • climate-change
    • meteo
    • relative-humidity
    • temperature
    • precipitation
    • long-term
    • swiss-forest-lab
    • wind-speed
  • Nanoplastics in forests: Exploring the effects of nanoplastics on forest soils and tree physiology (NanoPlast)

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    The fate of plastic in the environment is of global concern, because its production recently has increased strongly and it accumulates in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems....

    Last updated: June 14, 2023

    • XLS
    • uptake
    • forest-trees
    • polystyrene
    • 13c-labelling
    • nanoplastic
  • 3D_Snow_Models

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    The dataset contains several snow models in the Standard Tesselated Geometry File Format (stl) for 3D visualization, printing and additive manufacturing. Different snow types are...

    Last updated: January 5, 2023

    • ZIP
    • XLS
    • depth-hoar
    • rounded-snow
    • new-snow
    • 3d-model
    • weak-layer
    • snow-cast
    • snow
    • 3d-print
  • Tree measurements 2002-2016 from the long-term irrigation experiment Pfynwald, Switzerland

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    To study the performance of mature Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) under chronic drought conditions in comparison to their immediate physiological response to drought release, a...

    Last updated: February 13, 2025

    • SERVICE
    • XLS
    • HTML
    • crown-condition
    • drought
    • tree
    • lwf
    • swiss-forest-lab
    • forest
    • diameter-at-breast-height
    • irrigation
    • scots-pine
    • tree-species
    • dbh
  • Selected wet snow avalanche activity data Davos, Switzerland (2011-2014)

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    Polygons of wet snow avalanches in the Davos area, as documented by the Swiss avalanche warning service. The georeferenced outlines of the avalanches contain both the release as...

    Last updated: February 13, 2025

    • ZIP
    • shapefile
    • snow
    • observations
    • avalanches
    • alps
  • Simulated future discharge and climatological variables for medium-sized catchments in Switzerland

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    Daily discharge and the related hydro-meteorological variables precipitation, snowmelt, and soil moisture are provided for current (1981-2017) and for future climate conditions...

    Last updated: November 3, 2019

    • ZIP
    • hydrology
    • soil-moisture
    • snowmelt
    • precipitation
    • discharge
    • climate-change