Pollen analysis is a valuable tool for the reconstruction of past vegetation and environments. Its application in such areas as climate change studies, earth sciences, archaeology and forensic science is therefore widely known. Good environmental conditions are important for the preservation of fossil pollen grains. For microscopic examination of pollen careful preparation of a pollen slide is crucial.
We apply several pollen preparation methods as the preparation technique must be related to the different matrices in which the pollen may be embedded. Pollen and spores counts are based on fixed pollen sum. For absolute counting we therefore use the exotic marker grain method.
Our equipment for counting pollen, spores and plotting pollen diagrams consists of:
Zeiss Akloskop, Zeiss Axioscop 50 equipped with a Leica DFC 420 digital camera, Easy count (an electronic counting sheet), Research Assistant 5 professional (pollen database) and Tilia and Tilia.graph (plotting program).