Making a long continental pollen record, a fabulous and bizarre enterprise: a 50-year retrospective.

Pollen analysis is still a manual task and an experienced pollen analyst may analyse two to four samples per day when a regular pollen sum of 300 pollen grains is used. Long continental pollen records (LCPRs) form a remarkable aspect of palynological research. The pollen analytical work Since 1988, efforts to analyse pollen grains automatically have been published regularly (Konert et al. [22]; Witte [34]; France et al. [9]; Marcos et al. [25]; Olsson et al. [28]) however, pollen analysis still is a manual procedure. [Extracted from the article]