LegacyPollen 1.0: A taxonomically harmonized global Late Quaternary pollen dataset of 2831 records with standardized chronologies
- 1Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems, Telegrafenberg A45, 14473 Potsdam, Germany
- 2Institute of Environmental Science and Geography, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
- 3Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
- 4Alpine Paleoecology and Human Adaptation Group (ALPHA), State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, and Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101 Beijing, China
- 5College of Chemistry and Life Sciences, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang 321004, China
- 6Jinhua Mountain Observation and Research Station for Subtropical Forest Ecosystems, Jinhua, Zhejiang 321004, China
- 1Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems, Telegrafenberg A45, 14473 Potsdam, Germany
- 2Institute of Environmental Science and Geography, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
- 3Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
- 4Alpine Paleoecology and Human Adaptation Group (ALPHA), State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, and Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101 Beijing, China
- 5College of Chemistry and Life Sciences, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang 321004, China
- 6Jinhua Mountain Observation and Research Station for Subtropical Forest Ecosystems, Jinhua, Zhejiang 321004, China
Abstract. Here we describe the LegacyPollen 1.0, a dataset of 2831 fossil pollen records with metadata, harmonized taxonomy, and standardized chronologies. A total of 1032 records originate from North America, 1075 from Europe, 488 from Asia, 150 from Latin America, 54 from Africa, and 32 from the Indo-Pacific. The pollen data cover the Late Quaternary (mostly the Holocene). The original 10,110 pollen taxa names (including variations in the notations) were harmonized to 1002 taxa, with woody taxa and major herbaceous taxa to genus level and other herbaceous taxa to family level. The dataset is valuable for synthesis studies such as taxa areal changes, vegetation dynamics, human impact (e.g., deforestation), and climate change at global or continental scales. The harmonized pollen and metadata as well as the harmonization table are available from PANGAEA (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.929773; Herzschuh et al., 2021a). R code for the harmonization is provided at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5910972; Herzschuh et al., 2022) so that datasets at a customized harmonization level can be easily established.
Ulrike Herzschuh et al.
Status: final response (author comments only)
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2022-37', Anonymous Referee #1, 04 Apr 2022
This dataset has valuable contribution to synthesize pollen data from all over the world, and it will benefits the further studies on changes of vegetation ecology and its driving forces, the climate change and/or human impacts at large spatial scales. It has done lot of work on harmonizing the taxa name into one tenth of its original taxa, and the authors have corrected some wrong taxa names and calibrated the chronology with a standard method. Considering its potential contribution and careful descriptions on the dataset, I recommend it for publication as the present form.
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RC2: 'Comment on essd-2022-37', Ignacio Jara, 21 Apr 2022
Herzschuh and collaborators present a pollen dataset of almost three thousand records from nearly all major terrestrial regions of the world. The dataset includes newly-developed chronologies for all sites, an harmonisation of taxa nomenclature, and open data and code availability. Hence, this compilation represents an immense work effort by the authors.
The LegacyPollen 1.0 dataset will undoubtedly be a great contribution to the palaeoecological and palaeoclimatological community, with enormous potential for paleo-environmental and climate change studies. In addition, the methodology used to harmonise the pollen taxonomy can be used as a guide for similar compilations in the future.
The manuscript is simple, informative, and well written; and therefore I strongly recommend its publication in Earth System Science Data.
Below are some minor corrections to the manuscript. These are very slight suggestions from my personal point of view, so no mandatory amendments are needed.
All the best,
Ignacio A. Jara
Minor suggestions
Line 34. Perhaps introducing the article with a more broader sentence regarding the importance of harmonized datasets. In my opinion the relevance of this type of global repositories goes beyond the validation of earth system models, including applications for climate change, biodiversity, and land use reconstructions to give a few examples
Line 84: “…nomenclature. We set…”. I suggest connecting both sentences with “….nomenclature. For doing so, we set..”
Line 90. How did you harmonize Gymnosperm taxa? Gymnosperm, especially conifers, are important elements of many records from mid and high latitude sites.
Line 96. I suggest to replace “in the following named” by “hereafter”
Lines 99-100: “Alternatively, the back-calculation of the pollen sum could be based on more elaborated methods…”. It is not clear to me if the authors are using these other methods, please clarify.
Line 107: “The LegacyPollen 1.0 metadata of 2831 records are provided for each pollen samples”. This sentence is hard to understand. Could you be more specific. Was the information of the 2831 sites assigned to each sample or site?
Line 138. I suggest adding two commas between “among them”, so that “…cover part of the Holocene, among them,…”
Line 173. I suggest replace “included” by “integrated” or other similar term, as “included” has already been used previously in the same sentence
Line 238. “Holocene” is not a timescale. I suggest changing this sentence, using “millennial timescales” or “Deforestation during the Holocene period is…”
Ulrike Herzschuh et al.
Data sets
Global taxonomically harmonized pollen data collection with revised chronologies Herzschuh, Ulrike; Böhmer, Thomas; Li, Chenzhi; Cao, Xianyong; Heim, Birgit; Wieczorek, Mareike https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.929773
Model code and software
LegacyPollen 1.0: A taxonomically harmonized global Late Quaternary pollen dataset of 2831 records with standardized chronologies Herzschuh, Ulrike; Li, Chenzhi; Böhmer, Thomas; Postl, Alexander K.; Heim, Birgit; Andreev, Andrei A.; Cao, Xianyong; Wieczorek, Mareike https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5910972
Ulrike Herzschuh et al.
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