EAGER: Development of a Forensic Pollen Database and Climate Modeling Platform

Florida Institute Of Technology, Melbourne FL

Investigators

Abstract

This project uses funds, under the auspices of the EArly Concept Grant For Exploratory Research (EAGER) award concept, to assist in the development of a new biogeographic tool that uses pollen as a geo-locational marker for the probable origin of a suite of pollen in a sample. Such a tool would allow pollen analysts to generate paleoclimate data in a far easier and more consistent way than ever before and allow for expansion of basic research in pollen and climate analysis thereby enabling accurate, reproducible, and precise ecological and geographical information regarding the provenance of a pollen sample. The researcher aims to build a complete and advanced palynological database, called POLCLIM for pollen-climate, for Neotropical and subtropical pollen. The database would be publically available and enable the identification of important pollen taxa in a comprehensive geo-relational database of pollen types, distributional metadata, and probabilities of co-occurrence.