This repository contains the data of the Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD), published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0).
The data in this repository may be subject to changes. The last stable release can be found in the Releases tab.
Contents
When using this data, please consider citing the corresponding publication:
Davis, B.A.S., Zanon, M., Collins, P. et al., The European Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) project, Veget Hist Archaeobot (2013) 22: 521. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-012-0388-5
New publications for version 2 are in progress and will be listed here upon acceptance.
If you want to contribute to the EMPD – That's great!! Please refer to our contributing guide for more information.
The latest version of this data can be downloaded and accessed through the interactive viewer at EMPD2.github.io (see EMPD2.github.io/data for more information on this). The data is then the same as in the raw format mentioned below.
Otherwise you can access the EMPD data through this repository.
We provide the following formats
Raw tab-delimited format: meta.tsv
- The meta data is stored as tab-delimited format in the meta.tsv file. See the Column names below for further information
- The sample data is stored in the samples directory, one tab-delimited file per row in meta.tsv. The filename is determined by the corresponding SampleName in the meta data.
Postgres dump: EMPD2.sql
We provide a relational postgres dump for the EMPD2 in the postgres/EMPD2.sql file. If you are familiar with Postgres and have a postgres server running on your machine, you can import this data via:
createdb EMPD2 psql EMPD2 -f EMPD2.sql
Note that you can directly pipe from the raw github file into the database via curl:
createdb EMPD2 curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/EMPD2/EMPD-data/master/postgres/EMPD2.sql | psql EMPD2
or, if you want to use a specific version, e.g. v1.0, use:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/EMPD2/EMPD-data/v1.0/postgres/EMPD2.sql | psql EMPD2
Tab-delimited database
A tab-delimited version of the postgres dump is also available in the tab-delimited folder.
Column names in meta.tsv
- SampleName
- Unique identifier of the sample in the EMPD.
- OriginalSampleName
- Original sample name as given by the author
- SiteName
- Site or area name (given by author or else assigned) from where the sample/samples were taken.
- Country
- EMPD country name (see worksheet 'Country' for list of countries)
- Longitude
- Longitude (Decimal)
- Latitude
- Latitude (Decimal)
- Elevation
- Elevation (metres)
- LocationReliability
EMPD code assigned for location relaibility A, B, C , D, X
- A
- Good for high resolution remote sensing (<100m), <100m
- B
- Good for lower resolution remote sensing (<1km), <1km
- C
- Ok for climate reconstruction or regional scale mapping, <5km
- D
- Ok for mapping at continental scale, <20km
- X
- Do not use!
- LocationNotes
- Free text information about location
- AreaOfSite
- Area of site (Hectares)
- SampleContext
- EMPD code assigigned to describe environment from where the sample was taken
- SiteDescription
- Free text description of the sample site
- VegDescription
- Free text description of local or regional vegetation
- SampleType
- EMPD code for the type of sample
- SampleMethod
- EMPD code for the method used to collect the sample
- AgeBP
- Age BP (before present) in years before (+) or after (-) AD 1950
- AgeUncertainty
EMPD code assigned for dating reliability A, B, C
- A
- Modern sample, 0BP to Present
- B
- Within last 100 years, 0-50BP
- C
- Within last 250 years, 50-200BP
- Notes
- Free text for any further information
- Publication1
- Publication relevant to the site/sample
- Publication2
- Publication relevant to the site/sample
- Publication3
- Publication relevant to the site/sample
- Publication4
- Publication relevant to the site/sample
- Publication5
- Publication relevant to the site/sample
- Worker1_Role
EMPD code that describes the workers role
- R
- Responsible Person
- R/A
- Both Responsible Person and Analyst
- A
- Analyst
- A/D
- Analyst (Deceased)
- A/I
- Analysis (Inactive)
- A/U
- Analyst (Unknown)
- Worker1_LastName
- Last name or surname
- Worker1_Initials
- Initials
- Worker1_FirstName
- First name
- Worker1_Address1
- Main postal address
- Worker1_Address2
- Secondary postal address
- Worker1_Email1
- Main email
- Worker1_Email2
- Secondary email
- Worker1_Phone1
- Main phone number
- Worker1_Phone2
- Secondary phone number
- Worker2_Role
- As above
- Worker2_LastName
- As above
- Worker2_Initials
- As above
- Worker2_FirstName
- As above
- Worker2_Address1
- As above
- Worker2_Address2
- As above
- Worker2_Email1
- As above
- Worker2_Email2
- As above
- Worker2_Phone1
- As above
- Worker2_Phone2
- As above
- Worker3_Role
- As above
- Worker3_LastName
- As above
- Worker3_Initials
- As above
- Worker3_FirstName
- As above
- Worker3_Address1
- As above
- Worker3_Address2
- As above
- Worker3_Email1
- As above
- Worker3_Email2
- As above
- Worker3_Phone1
- As above
- Worker3_Phone2
- As above
- Worker4_Role
- As above
- Worker4_LastName
- As above
- Worker4_Initials
- As above
- Worker4_FirstName
- As above
- Worker4_Address1
- As above
- Worker4_Address2
- As above
- Worker4_Email1
- As above
- Worker4_Email2
- As above
- Worker4_Phone1
- As above
- Worker4_Phone2
- As above
- okexcept
Comma-delimited combination of the above fields. The EMPD tests failed on these columns for the given sample. Possible values in here are
- Country
- The Country of the Latitude and Longitude does not match with the NaturalEarth data (probably because it is close to a border)
- Latitude
- The latitudinal information is invalid
- Longitude
- The longitudinal information is invalid
- Temperature
- No temperature has been extracted for the given sample
- Precipitation
- No precipitation has been extracted for the given sample
- Elevation
- The sample has no elevation data