The European Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) project

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

The influence of atmospheric circulation on the mid-Holocene climate of Europe: a data–model comparison

“…Our climate reconstruction is based on an updated fossil and modern pollen data set compiled from the European Pollen Database (EPD) (Fyfe et al, 2009;Davis et al, 2013), the PANGAEA data archive, and digitized and raw count data from other sources (Collins et al, 2012). European MH climate was reconstructed at each site using a PFT-based Modern Analogue Technique following Davis et al (2003) based on a training set of 4174 modern pollen samples and 4287 mid-Holocene samples from 756 sites.…”

“…In addition to existing data quality checks on the surface sample training set we also undertook a further check on the geo-referencing using a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) (Jarvis et al, 2008). Uncertainty in the geo-referencing was identified as unacceptable where the altitude for the site given in the metadata differed by greater than 250 m from that suggested by the latitude and longitude, leading to the exclusion of 440 sites from the Davis et al (2013) data set.…”

Altitudinal training sets of pollen rain – vegetation cover and modelled climate as a tool for the interpretation of paleoecological records

“…Modern pollen rain and associated climate data from the transect were integrated into the EMPD (European Modern Pollen Database; Davis et al 2013) and used for Holocene climate reconstructions based on the fossil paleoecological record from the Rutor Glacier area. A pollen-inferred temperature record is produced (Badino et al in prep.…”

A meta-database of Holocene sediment cores for England

“…The European Pollen Database (EPD, Fyfe et al 2009), and more recently the European Modern Pollen Database (Davis et al 2013), both represent invaluable resources for researchers working at the European level, while a catalogue of pollen diagrams has recently been compiled for Ireland (Mitchell et al 2013). However, a search of the EPD for English records (1st Aug 2014 edition) found just 118 core sites available for analysis, for the whole of Britain.…”