The European Pollen Database (EPD) aims at storing and developing a relational database containing data and metadata of fossil and modern pollen records from natural archives (lacustrine sediments, peat bogs, marine sediments) collected on the Eurasian continent. The goal of the EPD is to develop an open platform to foster the scientific study of long-term palaeoecological records to address various themes such as biogeography, vegetation history, ecosystem conservation. In addition, the EPD community strives at delivering the knowledge gained to the wider public (schools, non-scientific public).
The main philosophy of the EPD is data sharing. Hence, all data analysts and software developers are strongly encouraged to make their end-products available to the reserach community.
The EPD is a collaborative non-profit structure made available free of charge to the scientific community. It is developed and managed on an entirely volunteer basis, and its activities are structured as working groups.
The database is hosted on a server in France at the IMBE laboratory (Mediterranean Institute of marine and terrastrial Biodiversity and Ecology) in Aix-en-Provence. The EPD has been financed by the Aix-Marseille University since 2007.
EPD activities, news, blog 