North American Pollen Database: readme file
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               World Data Center A for Paleoclimatology
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NOTE: PLEASE CITE ORIGINAL REFERENCES WHEN USING THIS DATA!!!!!

CONTRIBUTORS:   NAPD Contributors and COHMAP members
NAME OF DATA SET:  North American Pollen Database
UPDATE HISTORY:  Users should download most recent version of all files.
11/93 - Original receipt by NOAA Paleo.  293 sites, most from COHMAP.
4/94 - addition of 130 sites, plus substitution of .F70 for .T50 files, 
expanding ASCII files to include 70 taxa.  423 total sites in NAPD.
5/94 - addition of 41 new sites and minor corrections.. 464 sites in NAPD.
6/94 - addition of 35 sites and minor corrections.  499 sites in NAPD.
GEOGRAPHIC REGION: North America
PERIOD OF RECORD: 0 - 18,000 YBP

LIST OF FILES:  Counts and percentages of either the 15, 50, or 70 
most abundant taxa at each site, including surface (modern) samples.
File naming scheme and directory structure is as follows:

The NAPD archive is maintained in the Paradox relational database for 
DOS computers.  ASCII text files are also included.  The available 
PKZIPPED files and ASCII equivalents include:

FOS_P15*.zip	Percentages of top 15 taxa (ASCII files named *.P15) 
FOS_F70*.zip 	Counts of top 70 taxa  (ASCII files named *.F70)
MOD_ALL.zip	Counts of top 50 taxa for modern samples, one file
		(ASCII file named modern.m50)
MOD_BYST.zip	Counts of top 50 taxa for modern samples, arranged 
		by state or province.  (Modern samples ASCII files 
		are designated *.M50)
PDB*.zip	Paradox Database Format files
Pollen.Doc	Documentation file, North American Pollen Database

DESCRIPTION:
This directory contains files of the North American Pollen Database
(NAPD).  The database is compiled by Eric Grimm and John Keltner at 
the Illinois State Museum, starting with data originally assembled 
for the COHMAP project by Thompson Webb III.  Numerous additional 
sites not included in the COHMAP project have been contributed to 
and included in the NAPD.  Documentation of the scope and methods 
of the database is in the file pollen.doc.  The database available 
at NGDC includes ASCII summary tables of counts and percentages, 
and Paradox relational database files.  The database contains counts
and percentages from 499 sites, totaling approximately 15 megabytes 
in ASCII format.  Data from both fossil and modern sample counts 
are included.  The Paradox database files, as well as the ASCII 
tables, have been compressed using the DOS compression utility PKZIP.
Users can obtain whichever version of the database is more convenient.

Original References:

Climatic Changes of the past 18,000 Years: Observations and model 
simulations, COHMAP members, Science 241, pp 1043-1052, 1988.

North American Pollen Database, Illinois State Museum, Springfield, 
Illinois, USA, and National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder, Colorado, USA.