Simulated and observed timings of leaf senescence for <em>Fagus sylvatica</em> (L.) at selected European sites

Together with my co-authors, I have formulated a process-oriented model of leaf senescence according to the leaf development process, the DP3 model. This model clearly stands out from previous models and allows new hypotheses to be made, e.g. about ageing or stress-induced senescence. The DP3 model was as accurate as the previously published models. A comparison with the constant simulation of the average timing of leaf senescence also showed that the models are forced to fall back on this average due to the noisy leaf senescence data, which complicates model evaluation. All these analyses were based on the simulated and observed leaf senescence data, which are made available here.