Abstract
Modern pollen samples provide an invaluable research tool for helping to interpret the quaternary fossil pollen record, allowing investigation of the relationship between pollen as the proxy and the environmental parameters such as vegetation, land-use, and climate that the pollen proxy represents. The European Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) is a new initiative within the European Pollen Database (EPD) to establish a publicly accessible repository of modern (surface sample) pollen data. This new database will complement the EPD, which at present holds only fossil sedimentary pollen data. The EMPD is freely available online to the scientific community and currently has information on almost 5,000 pollen samples from throughout the Euro-Siberian and Mediterranean regions, contributed by over 40 individuals and research groups. Here we describe how the EMPD was constructed, the various tables and their fields, problems and errors, quality controls, and continuing efforts to improve the available data.
Notes
The workshop participants were Marco Zanon, Pamella Collins, Achille Mauri, Anne E. Bjune, Simon E. Connor, Ralph Fyfe, Thomas Giesecke, Petr Kuneš, Jesse L. Morris, Filipa Naughton, Martin Theuerkauf, Pim (W. O.) van der Knaap, Jacqueline F. N. van Leeuwen, and Jed O. Kaplan.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank MarleenVermoere and Barbora Pelanková for contributing their data to the database. The EMPD workshop was funded by an International Workshop Grant to Basil Davis from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) (Grant No. IZ32Z0_137342/1), with further support from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the ARVE Group at EPFL.
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Davis, B.A.S., Zanon, M., Collins, P. et al. The European Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) project. Veget Hist Archaeobot 22, 521–530 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-012-0388-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-012-0388-5