Czech Quaternary Palynological Database – PALYCZ: review and basic statistics of the data

Petr Kuneš 1 2 , Vojtěch Abraham 1 , Oleg Kovářík 3 , Martin Kopecký 1 4 & PALYCZ contributors

Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Benátská 2, CZ-128 01 Praha 2, Czech Republic
  2. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Aarhus, C. F. Møllers Allé 4, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
  3. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Karlovo náměstí 13, CZ-121 35 Prague 2, Czech Republic
  4. Department of Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Poříčí 3b, CZ-603 00, Brno, Czech Republic

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Abstract

This paper reviews the data on quaternary palynological sequences collected in the Czech Republic, attempts to store them in the Czech Quaternary Palynological Database (PALYCZ) and outlines a possible use for regional syntheses. Work on pollen stratigraphies done over the last hundred years has yielded a very large amount of data for this region. These data can be used globally for various types of environmental reconstructions and are of local importance, especially when combined with local databases. For data to be included in PALYCZ it has to meet certain criteria, the determination of the pollen of herbaceous plants must be well resolved and radiocarbon dated. As of 31 December 2008, we had reviewed 177 pollen profiles. Data from 152 sequences are already stored in PostgreSQL® in relational tables, which allow a broad range of queries to be addressed using the html protocol. The data collected since 1959 by 15 authors contain raw pollen counts together with 14C dates and various metadata on locality. All the pollen samples were ordered using non-metric multidimensional scaling. Display of the ordination diagram incorporating the appropriate millennial time slices revealed a common pattern in all data. The quality of data is also discussed in the context of the history of the research and methods used. Database access can be found at http://botany.natur.cuni.cz/palycz.

Keywords

data archive, Czech Republic, Holocene, multivariate analysis, pollen analysis, Pleistocene

How to cite

Kuneš P., Abraham V., Kovářík O., Kopecký M. & PALYCZ contributors (2009) Czech Quaternary Palynological Database – PALYCZ: review and basic statistics of the data. – Preslia 81: 209238