Post Provided by Andrew C. Martin

The Global Pollen Project is an online, freely available tool and data source developed to help people identify and disseminate palynological resources. Palynology – the study of pollen grains and other spores – is used across many fields of study including modern and fossil vegetation dynamics, forensic sciences, pollination, and beekeeping. To help make pollen identification quicker and more transparent, we developed the Global Pollen Project (GPP) – an open, peer-reviewed database of global pollen morphology, where content and expertise is crowdsourced from across the world. Our approach to developing this tool was open: open code, open data, open access. It connects to other data services, including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and Neotoma Palaeoecology Database, to provide occurrence data for each taxon, alongside pollen images and metadata. Continue reading →