INQUA-COMMISSION FOR THE STUDY OF THE HOLOCENE Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 13 January 1995 NOTE FROM THE COORDINATOR In the newsletter this time John Smol and William Last announce a new section to the Journal of Paleolimnology called "Computer applications to paleolimnology." John Keltner describes Mappad, his marvelous new Windows program which allows you to keep track of all your geographically-based data; you will not want to be without this one. The INQUA File Boutique is now on the World Wide Web with its own home page. INQUA calls for your papers. Peter Schweitzer describes his program Analog which allows you to compare your fossil pollen data to a database of modern surface samples to find the closest analog. Peter Wolfe discusses rarefaction analysis and microfossil count size. Malcolm Clark continues with neat new ways of depth-matching data from different cores using PCSlot. Adam Walanus reminds us that the people who actually produce pollen data have needs not being met by the global databases, and he describes STV, his space-time visualization tool. David Green and Robert Stocker stress the benefits of SIN and suggest the formation of SINQUA. Alwynne Beaudoin did a list survey of statistics texts, and she shares the results. Dana Naldrett concludes his survey of Internet library resources--this time looking at the Pacific Rim. John Birks provides another useful Bookshelf. There is an anonymous report dealing with editing PostScript files. Another mentions the new PaleoVu browser and visualization program to be released by the World Data Center-A. Glen MacDonald sent in a note on reading really large data files. Roger Sweets announces his Paleolimnology/Diatom home page on the Web. Tom Whitmore and Mark Brenner invite you to join their Paleolimnology Listserver. John Keltner discusses new Webware that await you at the World Data Center-A. And I emphasize the usefulness of synthetic pollen slides. At the XIIth INQUA meeting in Ottawa, 1987, Dr. Brigitta Ammann, President-elect of the Holocene Commission, established a working group on data handling. The aims of the group as stated in Newsletter 1 were (1) To assemble a mailing list of colleagues who were interested both in receiving and contributing to a flow of useful information on developments in computer and other technology that help us to handle, exchange, analyze and otherwise deal with our data more effectively. (2) We attempt to tap as broad a group of sub-disciplines as possible, to include both physical and biological data categories. (3) We act by producing a simple newsletter once or twice per year that provides a mechanism of communication among all with an interest, including up-to-date bibliographies on literature on data handling, quantitative methods, etc., as well as an inventory of colleagues with particular expertise and willingness to provide information, programmes, etc. (4) We will attempt to keep abreast of new modes of communication, so that our mailing list can include and perhaps eventually make use of such mechanisms as the Bitnet, etc. A small group of colleagues initially agreed to serve as a nucleus of the working group (J.C. Ritchie, John Birks, Louis J. Maher, Rick Battarbee, and Owen K. Davis), and many others have helped over the years. J.C. Ritchie served as coordinator of the newsletter from June, 1988 until January, 1990, at which time Louis Maher assumed that duty. We will keep the INQUA File Boutique operational at geology.wisc.edu so that it will continue to be available by [*p. 1 / p. 2*] anonymous ftp. I will add a file of all the existing e-mail addresses, and there will also be a file with the current mailing list. If you change your e-mail or mail address, send me an e-mail note, and I will up-date the lists. Then they will be current in case the newsletter starts up in another form. And if you have data or programs you want to put in the File Boutique, let me know by e-mail, and we can arrange it. Louis J. Maher, Jr. Department of Geology & Geophysics University of Wisconsin 1215 W. Dayton Street Madison, WI 53706 USA Phone: (608) 262-9595 FAX: (608) 262-0693 E-mail: maher@geology.wisc.edu -------- COMPUTER APPLICATIONS TO PALEOLIMNOLOGY John P. Smol Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL) Dept. Biology, Queen's University Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6 Canada Tel: (613) 545-6147 Fax: (613) 545-6617 E-mail: smolj@qucdn.queensu.ca William M. Last Dept. Geological Sciences University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 2N2 Canada Tel: (204) 474-8361 Fax: (204) 261-7581. E-mail: mlast@ccm.umanitoba.ca [Dear Colleagues: The Journal of Paleolimnology is starting a new section entitled "Computer Applications to Paleolimnology". Bill and I have an editorial (partially reproduced below, Ed.) describing this new feature in the journal. The editorial will be published in vol 13(1), which has now gone to press. We would like to take this opportunity to invite the readers of the INQUA Commission for the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter to contribute to this new section. In doing this, we also do not want to compete for the very useful function the INQUA Newsletter provides. We think the two should be complementary. Best Wishes, John and Bill] Computer Applications to Paleolimnology: Getting Ready for the Next Century As the Journal of Paleolimnology publishes its thirteenth volume, we continue to be buoyed by the large numbers of good papers that are being submitted to our offices. Last year was certainly, by far, the busiest year for the journal, and all indications are that this interest will continue to grow (and likely accelerate) indefinitely. These are exciting times to be doing paleolimnology. There is no doubt that paleolimnology, as an integrated discipline, is moving fast. Some of this progress has been related to the increased integration of computers and associated technologies into our science. In an attempt to keep our readers abreast of these advances and developments, we are initiating a new section in the journal called "Computer Applications to Paleolimnology". We anticipate this section will appear in several issues each year, as submissions warrant. We hope this new section will provide a forum for the discussion of new computer applications, a platform for the review of new technologies and software, and also introduce our readers to any other information that may be relevant to our science. We also hope this new feature will provide a forum for discussion. Our goal is to make this section as user-friendly as possible, as many of us are still uncomfortable with some of these new advances. For example, as an introduction to this series, we will have a description of some of the electronic listservers that are especially relevant to paleolimnology. As many of you know, the journal has already been making use of some of these listservers. For example, the Table of Contents (including authors, their affiliations and, if known, their e-mail addresses) of all J. Paleolimnology issues is now distributed via e-mail to all the subscribers of the Paleolimnology Listserver. As you will see in our modified "Guide for the Preparation of Manuscripts", we are now encouraging authors to include their electronic mail addresses on their manuscripts. The inclusion of one's e-mail to the address is optional, but it is our hope that by including e-mail addresses on our papers we will facilitate the more rapid exchange of ideas and discussions between paleolimnologists. It also serves a secondary function as a directory of relevant e-mail addresses. We would like to take this opportunity to solicit any potential contri- butions to the new "Computer Applications to Paleolimnology" section of the journal. In general, all contributions will be reviewed, as regular submissions. As with the overall philosophy of the journal, our hope is to attract diverse contributions. We look forward to receiving [*p.2 / p. 3*] your submissions to this exciting new area. Another related feature is our World Wide Web (WWW or W3) service that will be starting in 1995. Internet tools and services such as Gopher, WAIS, FTP, and the various Listservers described in our "Computer Applications to Paleolimnology" section have grown at a great rate in the past 24 months. But the World Wide Web is growing at an even faster rate. There are now over 8000 WWW servers worldwide with another 70-90 added daily! WWW provides a single consistent user interface to the virtually thousands of sites on the Internet today. Because of this interlinking ability and the fact that WWW documents can contain not just text but also images, sounds, animation, and movies, it is much more powerful and flexible than Gopher. The Journal of Paleolimnology WWW home page will provide readers with information about past and current issues of the journal (including indices, titles, keywords, abstracts), future papers to appear in the journal, announcements, editorial and manuscript preparation/submission details, and, of course, links to other useful WWW sites. The Journal of Paleolimnology WWW home page can be accessed (using any WWW compatible software such as NCSA's Mosaic, SPRY's Air, or NetScape) at the following address: http://www.umanitoba.ca/geosci/PALEOLIM/jopl.html Paleolimnology is moving quickly, and we hope to capture this research and excitement. We invite all readers to consider the Journal of Paleolimnology as a vehicle for their publications, and remind potential authors that we publish regular papers, notes, as well as review articles, in addition to the new feature discussed in this editorial. We also anticipate that special dedicated issues will continue to be a regular part of the journal, and so we encourage potential guest editors to discuss their ideas with us as early as possible in the planning phase. -------- MapPad: A WINDOWS NOTEPAD FOR MAP-BASED INFORMATION John Keltner NOAA Paleoclimatology Program 325 Broadway E/GCx3 Boulder, Colorado 80303 E-mail: jkeltner@ngdc.noaa.gov Have you ever wanted to file notes by assigning them a latitude and longitude and then retrieve that same information later by just clicking a point on a map? Then have we got the deal for you! For the small cost of a drive down the information superhighway (aka the Internet) this little gem of a program can be yours. It's small. It's simple. It's colorful. And best of all...well, more about that later. What You See Is What You Get What you see is what you get: A main window with an assortment of continental maps that you can zoom and zoom and zoom some more. Points to click. Menus to pick from. Buttons to push. And even some sample data (from an impeccable source) to get you started right. After that, pick the map of your choice and let the fun begin. At first glance (see Fig. 1), MapPad appears to be utter simplicity. It is!! A map, some menu choices, and three easy to use buttons. First, you click and drag the mouse to bring some sites into a little better perspective. Let's take a closer look at south- ern Australia and Tasmania (Fig. 2). So what's that site in southern Victoria you ask? Click on it and the red dot turns blue and its name appears on the [*p. 3 / p. 4*] long button above the map - Bullenmerri. Ah, isn't that one of John Dodson's sites? Click on that long button that now reads Bullenmerri to bring up the MapPad notepad and find out for sure (Fig. 3). Now what if you knew about a more recent publication or you had some other notes that you wanted to attach to this site? Just type them in and select Save from the Site menu. You can add, delete, or modify any of the information in the lower portion of the screen (bordered by the scroll bars). Using the Search menu you can Find and Replace. Using the Edit menu you can Cut, Paste, Copy, Delete, Select All, or copy the entire note pad to the Windows clipboard. So how much would you pay for a program of this caliber? $38.95? But wait, before you mail that check, there's more! What if you needed to correct the latitude or longitude for Bullenmerri? Back on the main MapPad window you can edit its site description by choosing Edit Site from the File menu (Fig 4). Then, in the Edit Site dialog box (Fig 5), just enter the new values for Latitude or Longitude or Descriptor and click Ok. It's simplicity itself. You can't go wrong! What about adding a new site? Easy. What about deleting an existing site? It's a snap! Wouldn't you just love to be able to pay $29.95 for a program that could do all this? Wait, there's more. [*p. 4 / p. 5*] Can you create new datafiles based on different maps? Of course! And can you change between these data files? Two clicks (maybe three) and it's done! An absolute steal at $19.95!! But don't reach for that credit card just yet; there's still more! You can search for a site, by name or by the contents of its notepad. You can press F1 and read the Help screens (but of course you won't need to--MapPad is just that easy to use). You can also change the language of menus, captions, and messages at the click of the mouse. And someday you will be able to view graphic images that are stored in addition to your data. So whether you need to keep track of the brewpubs or the cheese makers in your favorite parts of the world, or of your grandchildren's where- abouts and birthdays , or just possibly even the pollen sites you've been planning to check out -- MapPad 'em. Swap Data With Your Friends! And, as amazing as everything you've already read, is the fact that your data, all the information you enter and view with MapPad, are stored in simple (ANSI) text files. This means that, if you are so inclined, you can edit them directly yourself (with any text editor); you can write them out from your favorite wordprocessor, spreadsheet, or database manager. You can send them by e-mail to your friends (even if they're stuck using a Mac!!). No more messy binaries to fool with. (There are a few rules to adhere to, but they are quite trivial.) All At One Small, Introductory Price... If you act now, we will provide, in one small package, the set of specially prepared maps, the MapPad viewer and editor with all the features described above, an installation program, more-or-less complete instructions, our good wishes, and much, much, more. And what do you pay? Not $29.95. Not $19.95. You pay: Nada. That's right, nothing! Zero! Zip!! Zilch!!! Yes, it's unbelievable, but it's true. We are giving away the first 10,000 copies to our loyal customers -- absolutely free!! This is a limited time offer, so hurry. You may never see a deal this good again. Not Sold In Any Store! To get your copy of MapPad simply use your World Wide Web client (e.g. Mosaic) and come on down the Infobahn to NOAA Paleoclimatology's home page (the URL is http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html). Look for the signs announcing the MapPad deal (steal!) of a lifetime. (Alterna- tively you may come via anonymous ftp to Paleo's ftp server (ftp.ngdc.- noaa.gov) and cd to the /paleo/softlib directory and get mappad10.zip.) Of course, while you are visiting, feel free to look around at their other offerings -- data in many stripes and colors. And all free! Once you get the zipped MapPad file, unzip it to a temporary directory (e.g. c:\tmpdir) on your harddrive and then from the Windows' Program Manager select File and Run and then type: c:\tmpdir\setup.exe and follow the installation instructions. Then you are off to the races. MapPad was the brainchild of L.J. Maher, Jr. The execution of this idea fell to the hands of J. Keltner. The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, through their Paleocli- matology Program has provided the computer resources for its distribu- tion. MapPad is provided free of charge and may not be resold. MapPad is provided As-Is for the benefit of the world scientific community after applying all conceivable disclaimers on its use. Do not even think of complaining. Currently available are maps for Africa, Asia, Beringia, Europe, the Indo-Pacific, Latin America, and North America, as well as a North Polar projection. Requests for additional maps will be seriously considered, particularly if they are accompanied by kind words. -------- LIGA AND SLICE COLLEAGUES Louis Maher Those interested in Northern Hemisphere Last Interglacial sites can obtain by Anonymous ftp a MapPad datafile of the LIGA/SLICE sites showing site locations, content, and references. Ftp geology.wisc.edu and cd /pub/liga/ to get LIGA3.MPD. Set up your MapPad to use the north polar projection: npolar.mpm. This is an excellent example of the usefulness of John Keltner's MapPad. If you pick up a copy of SiteSeer at the World Data Center-A you will have the locations and schematic diagrams of 283 unrestricted sites of the European Pollen [*p.5 / p. 6*] Database. The Paradox tables are also available for the unrestricted sites. -------- INQUA FILE BOUTIQUE ON WORLD WIDE WEB Louis Maher I have been asking David Green to contribute articles on the World Wide Web for the past several years, even though I was not able to take advantage of it. I was using an older computer which simply did not have the memory and speed to use Web browsers like Mosaic. I now have a new computer with more of everything, so it seemed natural to cobble up a home page for the INQUA File Boutique. Its URL (with a tilde before maher) is: http://geology.wisc.edu/~maher/inqua.html The page will be refined over the coming months, but it is operational now. Mosaic will load ASCII files (truncating very long ones) for direct viewing. If you want to download a binary file (like all the self-extracting *.EXE files in the Boutique), click on 'Options' and select 'Load to File' to activate that option. You will be given the chance to stipulate where the file should be saved. When you finish downloading the file, click 'Load to File' again to deactivate that feature. The files are still available by anonymous ftp, of course: (ftp geology.wisc.edu (or ftp 144.92.137.14). Logon as anonymous, and give your e-mail address as the password. The path to the subdirectory is /pub/inqua). If you are using Mosaic try the URL: ftp://geology.wisc.edu/pub/inqua/ for a very serviceable listing of all the files. Or try: ftp://geology.wisc.edu/pub/inqua/inqua.htm (note inqua.htm rather than *.html), and you will see a prettier version. The home pages are written in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). After studying the examples of others, one can compose HTML with a simple text editor. But special HTML editors make the job a lot easier. A number of editors are available free on the Internet, and I picked up two that you might like to know about. Both require Microsoft Windows (as does the DOS version of Mosaic). HTML Assistant. Ftp to ftp.cs.dal.ca in the subdirectory: /htmlasst/ and pick up a copy of the file htmlasst.zip. (A commercial version, HTML Assistant Pro, is available for about US$75 from Howard Harawitz [harawitz@fox.nstn.ns.ca], 25 Doyle St., Bedford, Nova Scotia B4A 1K4, Canada, but try the free version first.) SoftQuad HotMetal.. Ftp to ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu and look in subdirectory /Web/html/hotmetal/Windows/ for the file hotmetal.exe . (A commercial version, HotMetal Pro) is available from SoftQuad, Inc. [hotmetal@sq.com], Suite 810, 56 Aberfoyle Crescent, Toronto M8X 2W4, Canada; try the free version first.) HTML Assistant is easier to use. HotMetal has a stricter syntax which may make the code more durable. Do it with HTML Assistant and then, if you wish, import it to HotMetal for further refinement. -------- CALL FOR PAPERS INTERNATIONAL UNION FOR QUATERNARY RESEARCH (INQUA), XIV INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany August 3-10, 1995 CONGRESS OUTLINE The motto of the congress is "From the Past through the Present to the Future". This will be discussed by four main symposia: 1) Tracing the Future Development of Climate on the Basis of Paleo- climatology. 2) The North Polar Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean as Driving Forces for the Global Oceanic Circulation during Various Time Windows of Stable or Transient Climates. 3) Groundwater Movement, Consumption, Recharge, Pollution and Self- Regenerating Capacities in Quaternary Soft Rocks. 4) Regional and Worldwide Stratigraphic Correlations. Furthermore, 53 additional symposia and workshops will be held during the congress. [*p. 6 / p. 7*] 44 one-day field excursions in the greater area of Berlin during the congress and 21 pre- and post-congress field excursions through Europe will be offered. ******************************************** Important Dates: February 15, 1995: Final date for receipt of abstracts Final date for receipt of requests for travel grants April 30, 1995: Final date for registration for excursions Final date for congress registration with reduced fees ******************************************** Information for participation will be found in the Second Circular, which can be obtained by the INQUA 95-WWW server: http://www.uni-hohenheim.de/~pkdb/inqua/ The paper version can be ordered by e-mail: inqua@pkdb.botanik.uni-hohenheim.de *********************************** As time is running short, we would ask all interested persons to contact the above-mentioned addresses and to forward this mail to all colleagues concerned! *********************************** President of the Organizing Committee: Prof. Dr. Dr.h.c. Burkhard Frenzel Institut fuer Botanik Universitaet Hohenheim (210) D-70593 Stuttgart Tel.: (49)711-2194 Fax: (49)711-3355 -------- ANALOG: A PROGRAM FOR ESTIMATING PALEOCLIMATE PARAMETERS USING THE METHOD OF MODERN ANALOGS Peter N. Schweitzer Mail Stop 955, National Center U.S. Geological Survey Reston, VA 22092 Tel: (703) 648-6533 FAX: (703) 648-6647 E-mail: peter@limulus.er.usgs.gov Beginning in the 1970s with CLIMAP, paleoclimatologists have been trying to derive quantitative estimates of climatic parameters from the sedimentary record. In general the procedure is to observe the modern distribution of some component of surface sediment that depends on climate, find an empirical relationship between climate and the charac- ter of sediments, then extrapolate past climate by studying older sediments in the same way. Initially the empirical relationship between climate and components of the sediment was determined using a multiple regression technique (Imbrie and Kipp, 1971). In these studies sea-floor sediments were examined to determine the percentage of various species of planktonic foraminifera present in them. Supposing that the distribution of foraminiferal assemblages depended strongly on the extremes of annual sea-surface temperature (SST), the foraminiferal assemblages (refined through use of varimax factor analysis) were regressed against the average SST during the coolest and warmest months of the year. The result was a set of transfer functions, equations that could be used to estimate cool and warm SST from the faunal composition of a sediment sample. Assuming that the ecological preference of the species had remained constant throughout the last several hundred thousand years, these transfer functions could be used to estimate SSTs during much of the late Pleistocene. Hutson (1980) and Overpeck, Webb, and Prentice (1985) proposed an alternative approach to estimating paleoclimatic parameters. Their "method of modern analogs" revolved not around the existence of a few climatically-sensitive faunal assemblages but rather on the expectation that similar climatic regimes should foster similar faunal and floral assemblages. From a large pool of modern samples, those few are selected whose faunal compositions are most similar to a given fossil sample. Paleoclimate estimates are derived using the climatic character of only the most similar modern samples, the modern analogs of the fossil sample. Although this technique is attractive to paleoclimatologists, and is not in principle difficult for present-day computers to carry out, it is problematic in practice because it is not a computational task to which commercial software packages are easily adapted. Customized software available to date has required input data to be formatted in a manner unlikely to be ordinarily used by researchers for acquiring or archiving the basic observations, and rearranging data files is an opportunity for introducing errors that most researchers would rather pass up. I have developed a program for estimating paleoclimate parameters using the method of modern analogs to meet [*p. 7 / p. 8*] the needs of USGS researchers. The program, in source and executable formats, with documentation and accompanying modern data sets, is available to the public as well. ANALOG was designed to meet the following goals: 1. Portability: The users employ UNIX, MS-DOS, and Macintosh computers, so the program must function properly on all three platforms. 2. Flexibility: Users should be able to determine as many aspects of the program's behavior as is practical, specifically (a) Input format: The program should permit a variety of input file formats, including those that are compatible with common commercial software. (b) Similarity measure: The program should offer a variety of metrics by which samples may be quantitatively compared. (c) Taxa to be compared: The program should acknowledge the incompati- bility of modern and fossil data sets, allowing users to choose compara- ble taxa, combine similar taxa into larger categories, and ignore those that cannot be easily related. (d) Missing values: The program should accommodate missing values without distorting the comparisons among samples. (e) Environmental data accompanying modern samples must be preserved and presented on output to ease the interpretation of the analogs. Environmental data are likely to be more diverse than the (primarily numerical) faunal census data; the program should accommodate categori- cal and textual as well as numerical environmental data. (f) Output format: The user should be able to determine how many analogs are presented, and what environmental variables are presented. The layout of the output file should be customizable. 3. Ease of use: The customers are primarily scientists, not computer programmers. Operation of the program should center on the decisions needed to carry out a proper analysis rather than on coding and book- keeping. Documentation and instructions should be in the language of quantitative paleoclimatologists. 4. Extensibility: It should not be too difficult to modify the program to enhance its flexibility. Overview of operation ANALOG is a non-interactive program in the sense that the important decisions about how it should carry out an analysis are made before the program is executed. Its output is entirely textual, therefore it neither requires not takes advantage of graphical user interface environments. Three concepts are needed to carry out an analysis using the method of modern analogs: (1) an array of modern samples taken from a wider range of environments than are represented by the fossil samples, (2) a set of fossil samples whose environmental parameters are to be estimated, and (3) a set of taxa that are present both in the modern and in the fossil samples. To run ANALOG, you have to specify these three things in a way that a computer can understand. ANALOG is controlled by a user-supplied run description file whose name is given as the argument on the command line. The run description file, which is composed of ASCII text, indicates which data files are used as the basis of modern samples from which analogs will be selected, which data files describe the fossil samples whose paleoclimate parameters are to be estimated, the distance measure used to decide which modern samples are analogs of the fossil samples, and information about how to report the results. For each input data file, the user will generally need to provide a data transformation file indicating which taxa to ignore, which to combine, and how to transform the resulting numerical data. After applying these transformations to the data file, the resulting taxa should be compara- ble one-for-one with taxa from other samples. An example is shown in figure 1. [*p. 8 / p. 9*] In the example illustrated by figure 1, the user has already decided that the person who picked and counted samples A1, A2, and A3 split the taxon E into subtaxa A and B. Similarly, the person who picked and counted samples B1, B2, and B3 recognized and kept separate the two varieties Da and Db of taxon D. The user's job is to communicate these ideas to ANALOG. That is accomplished by creating transformation files that tell ANALOG to ignore the subtaxa and combine their counts to form the comparable taxa C, D, and E. Note that ANALOG does not alter the contents of the original data files, nor does the user. The analysis is carried out with as little manipulation of the original data files as possible. Similarity measures ANALOG can employ the following metrics to compare samples quantitative- ly: Manhattan distance Euclidean distance Squared Euclidean distance Canberra distance Squared Chord distance Squared Chi-squared distance dot product Correlation coefficient (similarity) Jaccard's similarity System requirements MS-DOS systems: 80386 or compatible 32-bit CPU 2 or more mgb of extended memory Macintosh systems: Macintosh System 7.0 or later 2 or more megabytes of memory beyond what the system uses UNIX systems: ANSI-conformant C language compiler How to get ANALOG The data set is available using anonymous ftp from geochange.er.usgs.gov in the directory pub/tools/analog. Users of world-wide web browsers (such as Mosaic) can access the data set and its documentation online by opening the URL: http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/pub/tools/analog/doc/analog.html The data set and its accompanying documentation can be downloaded whole from the archives subdirectory in the following archive files: Name Size System Format -------------------------------------------- analog.tar.Z 963k UNIX compressed tar analog.zip 732k MS-DOS PKZIP ver 2.04g analog.sea.hqx 937k Mac self-extracting StuffIt archive Technical contact: See address at head of article. References. Hutson, W.H., 1980, The Agulhas current during the late Pleistocene: Analysis of modern faunal analogs: Science, v. 207, p. 64-66. Imbrie, J., and Kipp, N., 1971, A new micropaleontological method for quantitative paleoclimatology: Application to a late Pleistocene Caribbean core: in Turekian, K.K., (ed.), The late Cenozoic Glacial Ages, Yale University Press, pp. 71-181. Overpeck, J.T., Webb, T. III, and Prentice, I.C., 1985, Quantitative interpretation of fossil pollen spectra: Dissimilarity coeffi- cients and the method of modern analogs for pollen data: Quaterna- ry Research, v. 23, p. 87-108. -------- RAREFACTION ANALYSIS AND MICROFOSSIL COUNT SIZE Alexander P. Wolfe Laboratoire Jacques-Rousseau D‚partement de g‚ographie Universit‚ de Montr‚al C.P. 6128 Centre Ville Montr‚al H3C 3J7 E-mail: wolfea@ere.umontreal.ca Paleoecologists usually target a standard count size when enumerating microfossils. Examples of typical and widely used sums include 300 pollen grains or 500 diatom valves per sample. Although the practice of noting each taxon's first appearance in the course of a count is undertaken in some laboratories, this doubtfully applies to most of us during routine analyses. Clearly, it is advantageous to have some knowledge of the taxonomic structure of assemblages, particularly if count size is to be modified for specific purposes (for example: Renberg, 1990). [*p. 9 / p. 10*] Rarefaction analysis (for applications to pollen data, see Birks & Line, 1992; Birks et al., 1988) produces distribution-free measures of species richness (number of taxa, t), that are standardised to a specified sample size n, where nóN, n being a random sample drawn without replace- ment from N specimens of T total species. In other terms, rarefaction analysis provides a simple to interpret yet robust diversity index that predicts species richness for a standardized sample size (i.e. count) throughout the data set (e.g. the core). This number (n) is usually designated as the smallest sample size (count) in the data set. This provides richness estimates, unbiased by sample size, that allow for direct comparisons between samples over a given sequence. Additional statistical and ecological characteristics of rarefaction analysis are given by Birks & Line (1992). Another application of this technique, using Birks & Line's FORTRAN program RAREPOLL (available from the INQUA file boutique), is the calcula- tion of rarefaction-estimated species richness (E(Tn)) for a series of samples using progressively smaller values of n. From the underlying structure of the assemblage, this models a posteriori how rapidly taxa were encountered in the enumeration of samples. During high resolution diatom analyses on 60 continuous samples 2.5 mm thick, I used this approach to establish what degree of taxonomic richness would be lost by reducing the count size (Wolfe, 1994a). Counts >500 valves on samples representing the different diatom zones in the same core (from Wolfe, 1994b) were used for the exercise. For comparative purposes, I show the diatom results alongside those from four pollen assemblages (Holocene) in a core from Lac bron, Gasp‚sie, Qu‚bec (counts from N. Morasse & P.J.H Richard, Universit‚ de Montr‚al). The asymptotic shape of curves on Figure 1 is well known to paleoecolog- ists. What should be sought is a count size for which these curves begin to level off, as this indicates an appropriate count size to account for the presence of infrequent, but often important, taxa (although not necessarily their stabilized frequencies). Another option is to consider the percentage of taxa that are retained in samples of reduced size relative to the estimated richness for n=500 (Table 1). Together, these simple exercises are useful ways to ponder retrospec- tively questions such as "did I count enough?" or "did I need to count so many?" In some instances, the rates at which new taxa are accounted for may seem surprising, indicating that, often, smaller counts can be sufficient for the detection of even subtle paleoecological changes. If this is the case, equal counting effort can be spread over a larger number of samples. In my own investigation, I settled on counting 200 diatom valves, knowing that, despite cutting my normal count size by more than 60%, I only lost about 20% of the taxonomic richness of each sample, which was clearly offset by the larger number of total samples counted, as well as their greater stratigraphic resolution. Table 1. Percentages of the rarefaction-estimated richness for n=500 (E(T\/500)) accounted for by counts (n) of smaller size. Amarok L. diatoms Lac bron pollen n min max mean min max mean 50 49.7 64.9 54.9 41.5 48.4 44.9 100 62.9 79.0 68.8 55.2 64.4 59.2 200 75.7 90.4 82.1 72.4 80.4 75.4 300 85.0 95.3 89.8 83.1 89.4 85.8 400 92.8 98.1 95.4 92.0 95.4 93.6 [*p. 10 / p. 11*] References. Birks, H.J.B. & J.M. Line, 1992. The use of rarefaction analysis for estimating palynological richness from Quaternary pollen-analyti- cal data. The Holocene 2: 1-10. Birks, H.J.B., Line, J.M. & T. Persson, 1988. Quantitative estimation of human impact on cultural landscape development. In: H.H. Birks, H.J.B. Birks, P.E. Kaland & D. Moe (eds.), The Cultural Landscape Past, Present and Future. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 229-240. Renberg, I., 1990. A 12 600 year perspective of the acidification of Lilla ™resj”n. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B 327: 357-361. Wolfe, A.P., 1994a. A paleolimnological assessment of late Quaternary environmental change on southwestern Cumberland Peninsula, Baffin Island, N.W.T. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Geography, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, 161 pp. Wolfe, A.P., 1994b. Late Wisconsinan and Holocene diatom stratigraphy from Amarok Lake, Baffin Island, N.W.T. Journal of Paleolimnology 10: 129-139. Remember, if you want to keep your e-mail and regular mail addresses current at the INQUA File Boutique, e-mail any changes to: maher @geology.wisc.edu -------- DEPTH-MATCHING USING PCSLOT VERSION 1.6 Malcolm Clark Department of Mathematics Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia, 3168. E-mail: Malcolm.Clark@maths.monash.edu.au Sequence-slotting is a technique for combining, in an optimal fashion, two sequences of data (such as pollen cores) into a single consolidated sequence. Often the aim of such an exercise is not just to see how the cores match, but also to relate the depth scale of one core to the depth scale of the other. Version 1.6 of my PC-based sequence-slotting program PCSLOT automatically does such matching of depth scales, using a technique known as "Partial Path Length Interpolation". How this works may be illustrated by the test data included with the program (in self-extracting file PCSLT16Z.EXE, available via anonymous ftp from the INQUA file boutique). In this example, the two sequences are the first 40 levels from well-l- ogs at Bartasovsky No. 1 well (Sequence A) and Kisling No. 5 well (Sequence B) in Kansas. In this article, we ask: how can we relate the depth scale of Sequence B to that of Sequence A? In this case, the optimal slotting starts off as A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 B1 A6 A7 .....A14 B3 B4 B5 B6 B7 A15... Clearly, element B1, the first element in Sequence B, is slotted between A5 and A6, and must therefore be located somewhere between levels 5 and 6 of Sequence A. But where exactly? It is tempting to put B1 at position 5.5, "halfway" between A5 and A6, but we can do better than this. It turns out that the "distance" from A5 to B1 is 2.491, while the total "distance" from A5 to B1 and on to A6 is 4.635. Since the ratio 2.491/4.635 equals 0.537, B1 ought to be located 0.537 of the way between A5 and A6, that is, at position 5.537 on the "A scale". This is the essence of the interpolation technique. The same argument can be applied for any B, or a sequence of B's, lying between consecutive A's in the combined slotting. For example, there are 5 B's between A14 and A15; applying the same sort of interpolation as for B1, we see that these 5 B's are NOT equally spaced between A14 and A15. The first four are closer to A14 than A15. PCSLOT Version 1.6 does this interpolation for all B's located in the combined sequence between the first and last element of Sequence A. The output in this case starts off as follows. ESTIMATED POSITION OF SEQUENCE B RELATIVE TO SEQUENCE A (based on Interpolation of Partial Path Length (PPL)) Seq./Level A B as A PPL A1 1.0 0.000 A2 2.0 4.180 A3 3.0 6.368 A4 4.0 9.263 A5 5.0 15.134 B1 5.537 17.625 A6 6.0 19.769 A7 7.0 21.536 [*p. 11 / p. 12*] B2 7.758 27.053 A8 8.0 28.814 A9 9.0 29.678 A10 10.0 31.779 A11 11.0 33.962 A12 12.0 36.125 A13 13.0 41.661 A14 14.0 45.890 B3 14.118 48.629 B4 14.189 50.269 B5 14.290 52.622 B6 14.415 55.528 B7 14.638 60.710 A15 15.0 69.114 ...... Lines omitted here ...... A39 39.0 351.510 B39 39.212 352.306 B40 39.313 352.682 A40 40.0 ** 355.261 ** CPL for optimal slotting The "B as A" entry of 5.537 for B1 means that B1 should be located at position 5.537 on the A scale. Similarly, B3 is located at position 14.118 on the A scale, that is, 0.118 of the distance between A14 and A15. Hence, if the depths down Sequence A are known, the corresponding depths down Sequence B can be readily computed. Alternatively, if the time scale down Sequence A is known, then the corresponding time scale for Sequence B can also be reconstructed, as well as the resulting sedimen- tation rates. The "Partial Path Length" (PPL) is defined as the total "distance" along the optimal combined sequence from the start of that sequence up to and including the current element of the combined sequence. The PPL has the properties that: * it is defined for every element of the combined sequence, * it starts at zero, and steadily increases, * the PPL for the last element is the CPL (Combined Path Length) for corresponding to the optimal slotting, * the difference between successive PPL values is the "distance" from that element in the combined sequence to the next. For example, in the above output, the PPL up to A5 is 15.134, while the PPL to the next point B1 is 17.625, hence the distance from A5 to B1 must be 2.491, as stated. Where there is a single B or a block of B's between successive A's, the location of those B's relative to the numbering of elements of sequence A is obtained by linear interpolation of the between-element distances as given by the PPL values. In this way we can distinguish between those B's which happen to be very close to an A and those which are more distant, as judged by the distance measure being used. Even if the depth scale for neither sequence is known, the PPL can be used to provide a useful visual representation of the relationship between the two sequences. This is done by plotting the Partial Path Length (PPL) versus the "Combined Path Position" (CPP), using different symbols for A's and B's. The CPP gives the position, from 1 to (M+N), of each element in the combined sequence. In regions where this graph is fairly steep, the slotting is well determined or tightly controlled. This is because the PPL is increasing rapidly, which means the successive points in the combined sequence are relatively distant from one another. Conversely, flat spots in this graph indicate regions where the points are close to one another, and where any changes to the slotting would have a minimal effect. Figure 1 shows the corresponding "CPP Plot" for these sequences, with elements of Sequence A shown as open circles, and Sequence B as filled circles. This plot clearly shows the blocking or bunching of the A's and B's, as well as the different slopes in different parts of the com- bined sequence. These slopes indicate that slotting is "loose" up to about position 35 in the combined sequence, then gets much tighter (as shown by the steeper slope) up to position 65, and then is loose again towards the end. Version 1.6 of PCSLOT automatically produces an output file listing the PPL and CPP for the entire combined sequence, in a form readily adapted to most graph-plotting [*p. 12 / p. 13*] programs. Further details are given in the READ.ME file as part of PCSLT16Z.EXE. References. Clark, R. M. 1992. Sequence comparisons and sequence-slotting. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data- Handling Methods Newsletter 8:3-6. Clark, R. M. 1993. Assessment of sequence-slotting. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 9:5-10. Clark, R. M. 1993. A new version of PCSLOT. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 10:21-22. Clark, R. M. 1994. Corrections and extensions to PCSLOT. INQUA - Commis- sion for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 12:21. -------- POLLEN DATA IN SPACE AND TIME - LOCAL APPROACH Adam Walanus Institute of Physics Silesian Technical University Krzywoustego 2 PL-44-100 Gliwice, POLAND E-mail: adam.walanus@zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl The continental and global inspection of pollen diagrams is interesting for the data consumers who produce general syntheses (Keltner and Grimm, 1994). However, the data producer, who has created a few diagrams from a small geographical region, should also gain some benefits from the computerized database. In a medium-sized country on a small conti- nent--in Poland for example--a palynologist commonly has to compare 5 to 10 diagrams from the vicinity of a particular lake, or examine sites from a 50 km-long mountain, or something on that scale. As the visualization tool for the POLPAL database (Ralska-Jasiewiczowa and Walanus, 1991; Walanus, 1994), I have produced STV, a Space-Time Visualization program. Figure 1 shows an example of an STV screen, reduced in size, and output in black and white to a laser printer. The circles on the map are divided into slices which represent taxa percentages. All the circles are changing through time. The animation is not very smooth because the number of steps is rather low--on the order of 10 if the author is realistic about the precision with which individual profiles can be synchronized. In order to use the program, the data owner must simply prepare an additional file with numbers identifying the chronozones to which a given sample belongs. Of course the data author need not be limited to showing chronozones; it may be pollen assemblage zones or anything else one chooses. But the names of the zones must be displayed on the screen for clarity. One sample may belong to two zones; if doubtful, it will be included in the average percentage calculation for both zones. Taxa to be displayed are chosen after program execution. Any combination of groups of taxa or individual taxa are possible. Of course if too many taxa are shown at once, the cyclograms will be unreadable. One can also display fragments of all diagrams for a given zone and given taxon. [*p. 13 / p. 14*] Although the pollen data to be visualized are already in the database, the specific map must be added. That is no problem for the global databases: one has to make 6 (or at most 7) maps, and that is all. However, in principle, there are infinitely many local or regional maps. One way to resolve the problem might be to create a program to capture maps using scanners or other devices; this would enable the data author to include the map in the database. But this brings up the other aspect of a database's local nature that I want to emphasize. A few colleagues in Poland have ordered STV, and in the future I expect, perhaps, five more orders. On the basis of simple economy, I have decided to produce maps by myself. Maps already produced are of raster-type, vector-type, and mixed. If color on the original map is essential, summing up black and white images obtained with different gray levels sometimes helps. My point, of course, is that techniques developed for handling global databases often ignore the needs of the individuals whose work makes them possible. References. Keltner, J. and Grimm, E. 1994. SiteSeer & ShowTime: pollen database visualization tools. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods 12, 2-5. Ralska-Jasiewiczowa, M. and Walanus, A. 1991. Polish palynological database (POLPAL) in course of building. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods 5, 1-2. Walanus, A. 1994. Optimizing taxon codes in pollen counting. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data- Handling Methods 11, 6. -------- A SPECIAL INTEREST NETWORK FOR QUATERNARY RESEARCH--SINQUA David G. Green and Robert C. Stocker Department of Information Technology School of Environmental and Information Sciences, Charles Sturt University PO Box 789 Albury NSW 2640 AUSTRALIA E-mail: david.green@csu.edu.au E-mail: rstocker@csu.edu.au Introduction Poor communication has always been one of the great barriers to scien- tific research. With traditional paper publication, only a fraction of the potential audience ever sees any given publication. The time delays involved in conventional publication exacerbate the problem. Therefore important results often fail to reach those who most need to see them. Likewise, sharing useful software is slow if disks have to be mailed out one at a time. The data that underlie scientific publications are also extremely valuable. There are enormous benefits to be gained from sharing raw data, as has been demonstrated by several major projects in recent years. However sharing data is difficult without some mechanism to publish that data in a suitable (electronic) form. Even reaching agreement on standards for data collection and exchange is difficult in the absence of reliable, rapid communications. Recent advances in the technology of computing networks make it possible to overcome many of the above communication problems. Moreover they make it possible to create entirely new kinds of organizations that promote collaboration on a truly world-wide scale. There is a growing trend in many areas of research towards large scale, network based projects and studies that involve contributions from many sources (Green, 1993). Here we argue that the time is ripe to create a special interest network for Quaternary Research and outline the nature of such an organization. What is a Special Interest Network? A Special Interest Network (SIN) is a group of sites on the Internet network that collaborate to provide a complete information "environment" for a particular subject. SINS have emerged as an important new paradigm for large scale collabo- ration on the Internet. Their main functions are discussed below. Coordination is achieved through logical design, automation, mirroring, standards, and quality control. To be successful, SINs should strive to provide reliable, authoritative information services, to encourage participation, and to accommodate growth. We anticipate that in the future SINs will become the modern equivalent of learned societies (or become the medium of communication for such societies). [*p. 14 / p. 15*] There are already several examples of SINs operating on the Internet. Examples include EMBNET (the European Molecular Biology Network), BIN21 (the Biodiversity Information Network), and Complex Systems. The activities of a SIN fall into four distinct functional categories: Communication A SIN helps people with similar interests to keep in touch with col- leagues, with current news and ideas. Possible mechanisms include mailing lists, newsgroups, bulletin boards, newsletters, and registers of participating people and institutions, and developing projects. Publishing Normally each node "publishes" information on the network. Here "publication" not only includes electronic books, articles and reports, but also software, databases, images and many other types of informa- tion. The information may be outputs of the institution concerned, or else compiled from public submissions. A good example is the develop- ment of international, public domain databases. This process is most advanced in molecular biology, with projects such as Genbank (Bilofsky & Burks, 1988) and EMBL (Cameron, 1988). These public compilations, consisting of contributions from thousands of scientists, are a logical activity of SINs. Expansion of this practice into other areas of science, such as biodiversity (e.g. Burdet, 1992; Canhos et al., 1992) is occurring rapidly. Virtual Library A virtual library is an organized set of "pointers" to relevant informa- tion on the network. Relevant information might include plant taxonomic databases, climate change data, geographic information, ecological information and statistical software. The database of pointers can be compiled from user contributions. The great value of a virtual library is that it overcomes the problem of how to find relevant information on the network. Special Services Special services range from "startup kits" for users to on-line informa- tion processing. Examples of special services that a SIN could provide include on-line analysis of data sets, such as preparing chronologies, pollen diagrams, or zonation patterns. The Technical Setting International cooperation in information exchange, which is implied by a SIN, is made possible by recent advances in computer networking. The range of protocols now available on the Internet (Krol, 1992) makes the concept of a SIN technically feasible (Green, 1993, 1994). These protocols include electronic mail, Usenet, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), Gopher (menu driven queries), and World Wide Web (WWW). In particular Gopher and WWW allow users to combine information from many different sources in seamless fashion. The hypermedia capability of "The Web" has had a profound effect on the academic community. SINQUA--a SIN for Quaternary Research Already there is much information on the Internet that is relevant to areas of Quaternary research, such as palaeoecology and palaeo- climatology. Examples include preprints (or even on-line journals), datasets, pollen keys and atlases, software, and bibliographies. To take just one example, if a number of sites were to provide the facility for palynologists to publish their datasets on-line (in some standard format), then vegetation histories for many parts of the world could become available on-line. Such information would not only be an invaluable resource for future palynological studies, it would also add value to a wide range of contemporary research. It would also make possible new kinds of studies, such as mapping palaeo-distributions of taxa (c.f. Davis, 1976; Webb, 1979). We propose the formation of a special interest network for Quaternary research. This SIN, which we tentatively call SINQUA, could be formed immediately by linking relevant projects and services on existing sites. Creating such links in no way inhibits those sites in their existing or future activities. On the contrary, linking to form a SIN conveys many advantages. It ensures, for example, that any relevant on-line project will receive adequate publicity amongst Quaternary researchers. It also ensures that those researchers will be able to find all relevant material quickly and easily. Implementation and Operation of SINs A SIN simply consists of a set of "nodes"--sites on the Internet--that coordinate their on-line services. "Coord- [*p. 15 / p. 16*] ination" means that each node carries a common set of basic documents and menus, for example, a World Wide Web "home page", (e.g. See the figure SINQUA--a home page for a Quaternary research SIN) and would normally also include directories and links for the SIN's communications, publications, virtual library and special services facilities. SINs provide a practi- cal way of linking together related projects at many different sites and can also run joint projects very effectively, such as the pollen databases mentioned above. SINS can be organized in many different ways. We recommend the follow- ing scheme which embodies mechanisms designed to distribute the work- load, encourage participation and to accommodate growth: One node acts as a secretariat for the network. Each node serves some special function, such as acting as coordinating centre for one or more SIN projects, or acting as a regional centre. Each node mirrors a set of basic documents and/or menus that define the basic services offered by the SIN. Maintenance of each project and/or document is supervised by a coordinating centre (not necessarily the same for every activity). Material for publication may be submitted to any node (or perhaps to some subset). The coordinating centre for a given project regularly harvests incoming items from other nodes, carries out quality control procedures, and prepares updates. Each node carries out a mirroring operation regularly (say once per day) to retrieve up-to-date, local copies of updates and other new information from coordinating centres. Many of the above steps can be automated. One approach to publishing that SINQUA can adopt is simply to register relevant existing activities on existing network servers. The figure suggests a basic format for a start-up home page for the Quaternary research special interest network. Conclusion The development of the Internet as a medium for the exchange of scien- tific information has only just begun. Already it is changing the way in which research is done. New paradigms and new institutions are emerging. The concept of a SIN for Quaternary research, as we have outlined it here, is a distillation and formalization of trends that are already emerging spontaneously. References. Bilofsky, H.S. and Burks, C. 1988. The GenBank genetic sequence data bank. Nucl. Acids Res. 16:1861-1863. Burdet, H.M. 1992. What is IOPI? Taxon 41, 390-392. Cameron, G. N. 1988. The EMBL data library. Nucl. Acids Res. 16:1865- 1867. Canhos, V., Lange, D., Kirsop, B.E., Nandi, S., Ross, E. (Eds) 1992. Needs and Specifications for a Biodiversity Information Network. United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi. Davis, M.B. 1976. Pleistocene biogeography of temperate deciduous forests. Geoscience and Man 13, 13-26. Green, D.G. 1993. Hypermedia and palaeoenvironmental research. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods 10, 11-14. Green, D.G. 1994. The year of the Web. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods 11, 20-21. Green, D.G. and Croft, J.R. 1994. Proposal for Implementing a Biodiversity Information Network. In Linking Mechanisms for Biodiversity Information. Proceedings of a Workshop for the Biodiversity Information Network, Base de Dados Tropical, Campinas, [*p. 16 / p. 17*] Sao Paulo, Brasil. Krol, E. 1992. The Whole Internet Guide and Catalog. O'Reilly and Associates. Webb, T. III 1979. The past 11,000 years of vegetational change in eastern North America. BioScience 31, 501-506. -------- A LIST SURVEY OF STATISTICS TEXTS Alwynne B. Beaudoin Palaeoenvironmental Research Officer Archaeological Survey Provincial Museum of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta E-mail: abeaudoi@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca I put a message on the QUATERNARY and the ARCH-L LISTSERVers last November asking for information and advice about multivariate statistics texts. The response was abundant and very helpful. When I posted a summary on both LISTSERVers, the Coordinator asked me to contribute a version to the Data-Handling Methods Newsletter as well. My thanks go to all those correspondents to offered their help and advice. In the following list I include all the recommended texts, a few suggestions of my own, and some other comments I received on computer programs. My own suggestions are for texts that I like or have found helpful in the past. The bias towards discriminant function analysis reflects my own interests. I have found that selecting a stats text is a very individual matter; explanations that seem clear to one person will be incomprehensible to another. It is good to have a variety to choose from for then, with luck, ONE of them will make sense! I hope others may find this compilation useful as well. Notes: Comments in square brackets are my own. Other comments are taken from the contributors' postings as indicated. Many of these texts were recommended by several people. Baxter, M. J. 1994. Exploratory Multivariate Analysis in Archaeology. Edinburgh University Press, 307 pp. ISBN 0 7486 0423 5 [--From the index, the main techniques discussed are PCA, correspondence analysis, cluster analysis, and DFA.] --David Carlson mentioned that a recent issue of the Journal of Archaeo- logical Science contained an article by M.J. Baxter on stepwise multi- variate discriminant analysis, and cited this new book. Cohen, L. and Holliday, M. 1982. Statistics for Social Scientists. Paul Chapman Publishing. ISBN 1 85396 1477 Davis, J. C. 1986. Statistics and Data Analysis in Geology. 2nd ed. John Wiley and Sons, New York. 646 pp. --S. K. Whiteman comments that s/he "prefer[s] the first edition of J.C. Davis. It has the source FORTRAN and I can see what he's doing. Not to mention the ability to modify or bend the programs to my will." --Peter Jaumann remarked that: It contains a chapter on matrix algebra with many easy to follow sample calculations plus a set of FORTRAN routines (for DOS) that let you do matrix manipulations. Some copies of this book do not contain the disk anymore. Dawson-Saunders, E., and Trapp. 1994. Basic and Clinical Biostatistics. Appleton and Lange, Norwalk, CT. Fletcher, M., and Lock, G. R. 1991. Digging for Numbers: Elementary Statistics for Archaeologists. Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph 33. Oxbow Books, Oxford, U.K. 188 pp. ISBN 0 947816 33 X Gauch, H. G. 1982. Multivariate Analysis in Community Ecology. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 28240 3 (paper). Gauch, H. G. 1992. Statistical Analysis of Regional Yield Trials. Elsevier. --Hugh Gauch comments that: This book is aimed at agricultural research- ers, but it also contains some interesting new results on the use of parsimonious multivariate models to partition a pattern-rich model from a discarded noise-rich residual, thereby gaining accuracy equivalent to having had several times as much data. This text focuses on a particu- lar form of principal components analysis in which row and column additive effects are removed before applying PCA. Gauch, H. G. 1993. Prediction, Parsimony and Noise. American Scientist 81: 468-478[*p. 17 / p. 18*] Greenacre, M. 1993. Correspondence Analysis in Practice. Academic Press, New York. --Kris Lockyear comments that this is: A specifically stats book but the best on correspondence analysis I have ever seen FOR NON-MATHEMATICIANS! Hodder, I., and Orton, C. 1976. Spatial Analysis in Archaeology. Cambridge University Press. 270 pp. Reprinted in 1987. ISBN 0 521 29738 9 [--As the title suggests, concentrates on spatial data, and thus links to the wide range of texts available on this subject in the geographical literature.] Jongman, R.G.H., ter Braak, C.J.F, and van Tongeren, O.F.R (eds.). 1987. Data analysis in community and landscape ecology. Centre for Agricultural Publishing and Documentation (Pudoc), Wageningen, The Netherlands. 299 p. ISBN 90-220-0908-4 --John Kingston provides the following details: The North American Supplier is Microcomputer Power, Ithaca, NY. The book is soft cover, and reasonable in price. Dr. Richard Furnas is the proprietor of the Ithaca company. His email is: Dr. Richard Furnas <76556.3444@compuserve.com> Krzanowski, W. J. 1988. Principles of multivariate analysis. Clarendon Press. Manley, Bryan F. J. 1986. Multivariate Statistical Methods: A Primer. Chapman and Hall Pielou, E. C. 1984. The Interpretation of Ecological Data: A Primer on Classification and Ordination. J. Wiley. 263 pp. --Peter Jaumann commented that this text: contains many easy to follow sample calculations. Is very good on cluster analyses and ordinations. Press, W.H., Flannery, B.P., Teukolsky, S.A., Vetterling, W.T. 1986. Numerical Recipes. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. --S. K. Whiteman comments that: This reference is in FORTRAN but there is also a Pascal version. (There are also versions in BASIC and c, Ed.) In general if a program doesn't have source code I won't use it. Viruses. Rock, N. M. S. 1988. Numerical Geology. Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences 18. Springer-Verlag, Berlin. 427 pp. [--The nice feature of this book is that for each technique, Rock gives a bibliography, including references to some papers where the technique has been applied and statistical (computer) packages, both mainframe and micro, for computation.] --Jane Garratt comments that: Rock contains a very comprehensive glossary of statistical terms which is extremely useful for more advanced students (or lecturers looking for a concise description of a method!). Shennan, S. 1988. Quantifying Archaeology. Edinburgh University Press. 364 pp. ISBN 0 85224 473 8 [--An introduction to statistical methods from an archaeological perspec- tive. Concentrates on univariate and bivariate statistics. By far the most frequent recommendation. Anja Wolle mentioned that there may be a new 1993(?) edition available, although I could not find this.] Thomas, David Hurst. 1986. Refiguring Anthropology: First Principles of Probability and Statistics. 2nd ed. Waveland Press Inc., Prospect Heights, Illinois Some of my own suggestions: Klecka, W.R. 1980. Discriminant Analysis. Sage University Paper series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences 07-019. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, U.S.A. 70 pp. [--One of a series of monographs dealing with specific topics in statis- tics. These generally provide a good introduction to the subject. They are usually straightforward and clearly written. Well over 40 titles are available, and can be ordered from Sage Publications Inc., 275 South Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, Ca 90212. They are quite cheap and used to cost $4.50 (U.S.) each or $4.00 when 6 or more were ordered.] Lachenbruch, P. A. 1975. Discriminant Analysis. Hafner Press, New York. 128 pp. [--A detailed introduction to the technique.] Norusis, M. J. 1990. SPSS Advanced Statistics User's Guide. SPSS Inc., Chicago, Illinois. 285 pp. [--This is one of several SPSS guides. It includes discus- [*p. 18 / p. 19*] sion of the DISCRIMINANT and MANOVA procedures. The write-up is short but useful. Quite pricey for its length ($32.95 [paper] in November 1990).] Tabachnik, B. G., and L. S. Fidell. 1983. Using Multivariate Statistics. Harper and Row, New York. 509 pp. [--Now rather old but I like this text. This book focusses on SPSS and BMDP statistical packages. Good discussion of "cleaning up your data". It explains what the information in the output means, and gives detailed examples. It also includes examples written up for publication---a very useful feature not found in any similar text to my knowledge. The book is relatively cheap (my copy was $26.60 [hard] in 1983).] Tatsuoka, M.M. 1971. Multivariate Analysis. John Wiley, New York. 310 pp. [--Only for the really intrepid! This is the classic reference for discriminant function analysis. It reviews the theoretical background to the technique but is heavy going, dominantly mathematical with pages of matrix algebra. Cost $39.50 [hard] in 1983.] Other information: Beth Dawson offered: I suggest you contact Duxbury Press, the arm of Wadsworth that publishes all their statistical texts. The president is Mr. Alex Kugushev; the telephone number is 415/595-2350. Alternatively, you can send an email message to their review department and tell them what you are looking for....their address is review@wadsworth.com Konrad Gajewski recommended the CATMOG (Concepts and Techniques in Modern Geography) series, similar to the SAGE series of publications I men- tioned above. The series is produced by the Study Group in Quantitative Methods of the Institute of British Geographers. At least 49 titles are available as of 1987, which is the most recent title I could find my library. These are published by: Geo Books, Regency House, 34 Duke Street, Norwich, NR3 3AP, England, U.K. Richard Wright drew my attention to the following package: I have issued a package MV-NUTSHELL which runs under DOS. It has a manual on disk specifically designed for archaeological applications. The package includes principal components analysis, correspondence analysis, cluster analysis (for dendrograms and K-means), seriation, and a few other programs. Users enter data in their favourite spreadsheet program, import the table into MV-NUTSHELL for analysis, and export the results back to their spreadsheet program for drawing graphs, etc. The package does have its own basic graphing facilities as well. Cost is $US52.00, which includes overseas airmail postage. -------- AN INTERNET GUIDE TO QUATERNARY LIBRARY RESOURCES (3) -- THE PACIFIC RIM Dana L. Naldrett Environmental Earth Science Associates Inc. P.O. Box 157, St. Norbert Post Office Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada R3V 1L6 E-mail: naldret@cc.umanitoba.ca This last review in the series will look at countries of the Pacific Rim that are accessible by Internet. These include: Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and Taiwan. The major omission is the People's Republic of China, which is not accessible by normal Internet means. Countries of the Pacific Rim have by far the greatest variation in the quality and number of institutions, holdings, and the way in which the library system works. More so than any other area of the world, there are chronic problems with connectivity. Unlike the nordic countries, however, language is not a problem, and does not usually act as a limiting factor. Nearly all of the institutions offer all services in at least English and Chinese, and possibly other languages. Some libraries have truly unique and wonderful systems that I have never seen elsewhere. For example, the system at Hong Kong Polytechnic is interactive, and will suggest better search terms if the one used does not retrieve anything. "Limnology" was broken down into eutrophication, paleolimnology, freshwater biology and fisheries; "glacier" was supple- mented by glaciology; "permafrost" was replaced by frozen ground, cryopedology and frost heaving. This flexibility in search terms sometimes makes the difference between a successful search and one that fails. It is also very helpful to have search terms that are Library of Congress terms, which nearly all libraries classify books by. Some regional variations exist between the Pacific Rim countries and North American or western European and Scandinavian countries. Pacific Rim countries have many [*p. 19 / p. 20*] more references to tephra, possibly because of the "ring of fire" circling the Pacific. ANU MU NLA UA UW HKP HKU NZC NZO NZW VUW Arctic 4 5 5 4 4 2 4 5 4 4 4 Antarctic 5 5 4 5 5 2 4 5 5 5 5 beetle 4 2 4 2 1 1 3 2 4 3 1 diatom 4 2 5 1 1 0 3 3 2 1 1 fjord or fiord 5 2 3 1 1 0 2 3 2 1 1 foraminifera 5 4 4 3 5 0 3 4 4 3 3 glacier 4 4 4 3 3 2 3 3 3 3 2 glaci(o)[marine|lacustrine] 3 3 2 3 3 0 2 2 3 3 3 limnology 5 4 4 3 3 3 3 4 4 3 2 ostracoda 5 3 4 3 4 1 3 2 3 2 2 [periglacial|permafront] 3 4 4 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 2 pollen 5 4 5 4 3 2 4 4 3 4 3 radiocarbon 3 4 4 3 2 2 3 2 3 3 2 tephra 4 3 5 4 4 2 3 4 4 4 4 thermoluminescence 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 3 3 1 till 2 3 2 2 3 0 2 2 2 3 3 TOTAL SCORE ( /80) 65 55 62 46 47 21 47 50 52 47 39 Resources are listed below by country, with numerical evaluations given in Table 1, above. Unless stated otherwise, to exit you can use the telnet escape key (on my system this is control-] ). Australia By far the most largest number of institutions, and the best listings in those institutions. There are about 45 universities and other institu- tions of research and higher education, and each has a relatively good library system compared to other Pacific countries. Australian National University (ANU)--by far the best resource located. Very easy to use, and has excellent holdings. Telnet library.anu.edu.au or 150.203.84.4. Login as library and follow directions from there. Monash University (MU)--generally slightly above average, but some weak areas like specific biological groups. Telnet library.monash.edu.au or 130.194.1.151 National Library of Australia (NLA)--possibly even more comprehensive than ANU. Very easy search and display features, and excellent hold- ings. Telnet janus.nla.gov.au or 192.102.239.30. University of Adelaide (UA)--generally slightly above average, with some weak areas like fjords and tills. Telnet library.adelaide.edu.au or 129.127.48.1. Press [return] after connecting, then enter 'bslnet' for login id. Press [return] for password. University of Wollongong (UW)--generally slightly above average with some weakness in biological areas. Has nice display giving year of publica- tion, author, and lists up to 20 items per screen. Telnet library.uow.edu.au or 130.130.68.3 and follow directions on screen. Hong Kong Generally, the seven institutions available on Internet are of some use, but not very much. Holdings are not nearly as comprehensive as those in North American libraries, even modest ones. Geological subjects occur rarely, and the most useful institutions were the technical institutes. Hong Kong Polytechnic (HKP)--typical of the Hong Kong institutions, this one is not very comprehensive, and has few good geological holdings. Has a tedious display that doesn't show the total number of hits, and forces users to page through the entire list. One excellent feature is that the keyword search is intelligent--it will suggest very good alternate terms. Telnet library.hkp.hk or 158.132.6.15. Login with username = library. [*p. 20 / p. 21*] Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKU)--the best of the Hong Kong facilities. Very fast, and easy to get information, Displays are good, and the holdings are also good. Also makes suggestions for better search terms: eg coleoptera -> beetle; till -> drift; permafrost -> frozen ground. Telnet ustlib.ust.hk or 143.89.14.5. Japan Rather surprisingly, the Japanese libraries were not that useful. All three of the Internet-available institutions were tried, and all had problems. Consequently, individual institutions are not reviewed more than the following comments. Generally, the libraries were either unreachable, or they did not have a large selection of holdings. The University of Tokyo was impossible to get into the searching mode, and no instructions were available to find help. The University of Tsukuba was difficult to use, and has very few holdings in geology subjects. Waseda University computer system was out of service when I tested the systems. New Zealand New Zealand has seven sources available on the Internet, and ranks second only to Australia in the quality and number of institutions and their holdings. Most of the NZ libraries would rank equal to typical North American and western European libraries. University of Canterbury (NZC)--one of the more idiosyncratic systems. It can be quite useful, but it is awkward doing repetitive searches, and you can get stuck in listing the last search findings. Telnet cantva.canterbury.ac.nz or 132.181.30.3. At the connection message, type [return] to continue. At the username prompt, type 'opac'. One strange feature is that to go back to the main menu, just press [return], but do not enter a new search term. University of Otago (NZO)-- Telnet libcat.otago.ac.nz or 139.80.64.6. Login as libcat. To exit, type 12 on the main menu, then use the telnet escape key. University of Wellington (NZW)--generally good, but one annoying feature: display scrolls without stopping. Telnet library.waikato.ac.nz or 130.217.64.32. Logon as opac. To end, type 'stop'- this returns you to the first screen, then type 'log' to exit. Victoria University of Wellington (VUW)--much friendlier system than (say) Canterbury. Telnet library.vuw.ac.nz or 130.195.11.90. When connected, press [return], and at the login prompt, type 'opac'. Singapore The two Internet-available institutions in Singapore were generally no use at all. They were either impossible to get into, or they contained no titles in any relevant geological fields. Taiwan Taiwan is highly variable in the quality of institutions. Although there are 14 library sources available in the Internet, like many of the Pacific Rim countries, there are a significant number which will not connect. Unfortunately, it also appears that several of the sources will only work in Chinese. The Academia Sinica is probably one of the best, but is still weak by world standards (not reviewed below). -------- NEW BOOKSHELF 10 H.J.B. Birks E-mail: John.Birks@bot.uib.no The following recently published books and monographs may be of interest to readers of this Newsletter. Birkes, D. & Dodge, Y. 1993 Alternative Methods of Regression. J. Wiley & Sons, New York. 228 pp. Brown, D. & Rothery, P. 1993 Models in Biology: Mathematics, Statistics and Computing. J. Wiley & Sons, Chichester. [*p. 21 / p. 22*] Paperback. 688 pp. Brown, D. & Rothery, P. 1993 Computing Examples Supplement to Models in Biology: Mathematics, Statistics and Computing. J. Wiley & Sons, Chichester. Paperback. (with Diskette). Clarke, A.E. & Fujimura, J.H. (Eds.) 1992 The Right Tools for the Job. At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 365 pp. Cleveland, W.S. 1994 The Elements of Graphing Data (Revised Edition). AT & T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey and Hobart Press, Summit, New Jersey. 297 pp. Cox, T.F. and Cox, M.A.A. 1994 Multidimensional Scaling. Chapman and Hall, London. 213 pp. (with diskette). Cressie, N.A.C. 1993 Statistics for Spatial Data. J. Wiley & Sons, New York. 900 pp. Davis, J.C. & Herzfeld, U.C. (Eds.) 1993 Computers in Geology - 25 Years of Progress. Oxford University Press, New York. 298 pp. Eddy, J.A. & Oeschger, H. (Eds.) 1993 Global Changes in the Perspective of the Past. J. Wiley & Sons, Chichester. 383 pp. Edwards, P.J., May, R.M. & Webb, N.R. (Eds.) 1994 Large-scale Ecology and Conservation Biology. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford. 375 pp. Paperback. Fletcher, D.J. & Manly, B.F.J. (Eds). 1994 Statistics in Ecology and Environmental Monitoring. Otago Conference Series 2, University of Otago, Dunedin. 269 pp. Paperback. Frenzel, B. (Ed.) 1994 Climatic Trends and Anomalies in Europe 1675- 1715.High Resolution Spatio-Temporal Reconstructions from Direct Meteorological Observations and Proxy Data. Methods and Results. European Science Foundation Project European Palaeoclimate and Man 8, 479 pp. Paperback. Giller, P.S., Hildrew, A.G. & Raffaelli, D.G. (Eds.) 1994 Aquatic Ecology: Scale, Pattern and Process. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford. 649 pp. Goodchild, M.F., Parks, B.O. & Steyaert, L.T. 1993 Environmental Model- ling with GIS. Oxford University Press, New York. 488 pp. Greenacre, M.J. 1993 Correspondence Analysis in Practice. Academic Press. London, 195 pp. Paperback. Haines-Young, R., Green, D.R. & Cousins, S.H. (Eds.) 1993 Landscape Ecology and Geographic Information Systems. Taylor & Francis, London 288 pp. Hill, R.S. (Ed.) 1994 History of the Australian Vegetation Cretaceous to Recent. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 433 pp. Hjorth, J.S. Urban 1994 Computer Intensive Statistical Methods- Valida- tion model selection and bootstrap. Chapman and Hall, London. 263 pp. H„rdle, W. 1990 Applied Nonparametric Regression. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 333 pp. Paperback. Lang, G. 1994 Quart„re Vegetationsgeschichte Europas. Gustav Fischer, Jena. 462 pp. Montgomery, D.C. & Peck, E.A. 1992 Introduction to Linear Regression Analysis. (Second edition). J. Wiley & Sons, New York. 527 pp. Negendank, J.F.W. & Zolitschka, B. (Eds.) 1993 Paleolimnology of Europe- an Maar Lakes. Springer Verlag, Berlin. 513 pp. Paperback. Partil, G.P. & Rao, C.R. (Eds.) 1994 Handbook of Statistics 12. Environ- mental Statistics. North-Holland. 927 pp. (Includes extensive review chapters on ecological statistics, statistical methods in atmospheric science, statistical methods in biological monitoring, sampling, and analysis of spatial data). Traverse, A. (Ed.) 1994 Sedimentation of Organic Particles. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 544 pp. Whitney, G.G. 1994 From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain. A History of Environmental Change in temperate North America from 1500 to the Present. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 451 pp. [*p. 22 / p. 23*] -------- REQUIRED READING Louis J. Maher Now and again an article appears that every data-handling enthusiast should read at least once. Keith Bennett has done a superb job working through the vexing tangle of uncertainty in quantifying sediment deposition time in [14C yr] /cm (the inverse is sedimentation rate in cm / [14C yr]) in order to assign confidence limits to palynomorph deposition rates (grains cm-2 [14C yr]-1). I have worked at ways of putting confidence limits on palynomorph concentration (grains cm-3), but assigning limits to a sample's deposition time always remained conceptually beyond my reach. To a geologist, whose whole world is based on time, it is humbling to admit how elusive a thing time really is. Picture a core with dates at the top, middle, and base. How does one put limits on the time it took for a cm of sediment to accumulate in some arbitrary sample taken from the core? To deal with such questions we must always avoid cores whose lithologies suggest that chaotic changes in sedimentation rates have occurred between the dates; we further avoid cores whose carbon dates are obviously suspect owing to hard-water errors, etc. Carbon dates are determined on counts for which there is a statistical uncertainty. If the core's middle date actually is too young for its sediment, the inferred deposition time for the top half of the core will be too low; the inferred deposition time for the bottom half of the core will be too high. So how can we deal with this problem? How can we place limits on deposition time when we do not know which dates are correct? Keith observes that the errors reported for normal 14C dates are based on the uncertainties in measuring the decay rate between the sample of unknown age and that of a modern reference standard. Therefore we do not believe the reported age is exactly correct, but rather that the true age is likely to lie within some specified interval based on the reported standard error. If the probability distribution follows a normal distribution, we expect that in repeated measurements of the sample, about 95% will fall within an interval ń 2 standard errors of the mean. Keith establishes an age-depth relation for a real core's six carbon dates, and he fits a mathematical function (spline, linear, polynomial, etc.) to the plot. That provides an initial estimate of the deposition time for each depth in the core. Then for each date, the computer draws a random value from the date's implied probability function and fits a new time-depth function to the new series of plots. Again the estimate of deposition time is recorded at each depth. This is repeated a hundred times, and one gains a hundred estimates of the deposition time at each core depth. The uncertainty of a sample's deposition time is based on the distribution of the replicates. The whole point of these exercises is to examine the quality of our data. When we understand how good it is, we simultaneously learn how bad it is. That knowledge should help us frame questions that have a reasonable chance of being answered and verified. Reference. Bennett, K.D., 1994, Confidence intervals for age estimates and deposition times in late-Quaternary sediment sequences: The Holocene, v. 4, n. 4, p. 337-348. -------- Psimpoll POSTSCRIPT FILES AND ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR Anonymous Government Scientist Keith Bennett's psimpoll program provides a well- documented, easy, and powerful means to prepare pollen diagrams in the MS-DOS, Macintosh, and UNIX environments. The output diagrams are of publication quality and can be printed on any Postscript printer. However, many users may still want to make modifications to their final versions that cannot easily be done in psimpoll. For these individuals, version 5.5 of Adobe Illustrator (AI) for the Macintosh is bundled with Adobe Acrobat, which can easily and quickly convert a psimpoll output file (or any Postscript file for that matter) into a format that AI can read. The file produced by Acrobat is in a vector format, and objects produced by psimpoll are preserved and can be edited within AI as if they were originally drawn by that program. Within AI, the plots for each taxon can be shaded or colored, text can be added or modified, and various forms of non-pollen data can be added to the diagram. The psimpoll/AI combination allows the user quickly to produce colored overheads and slides, as well as high-quality black and white illustrations for publication. [*p. 23 / p. 24*] -------- EXAMINING LARGE FILES Glen M. MacDonald Department of Geography McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario Canada L8S 4K1 E-mail: gmmacd@mcmaster.ca In connection with the two articles I contributed on CD-ROMs (MacDonald, 1993, 1994), the coordinator asked me how I went about browsing through the really big files one finds on these devices. I use two approaches when I want to get a look at a certain part of a big CD- ROM file and I do not want to write a little FORTRAN program. Wordprocessing packages cannot handle the file sizes, and the same applies to DOS Edit. If I am using FORTRAN I use the WatEdit from Waterloo FORTRAN. However, this does have some maximum file size, and then it dumps you out. However you can use it to have a look at most files. Second, I use the shareware LIST.COM. I have a really old version (late 1980's!) that works fine for the few times I used it. References. MacDonald, G.M. 1993. Environmental data bases on CD-ROM: Part I, INQUA - Commission of the Holocene Working Group on Data-Handling Methods. 10, 1-3. MacDonald, G.M. 1994. CD-ROM data sets: Part 2, Global ecosystems database version 1.0. INQUA - Commission of the Holocene Working Group on Data-Handling Methods. 11, 8-10. (NOTE from the Coordinator: Glen mentioned LIST.COM, a utility by V.D. Buerg which is by far the most useful DOS utility I have ever used. I have put a copy of shareware version 7.3d in the INQUA File Boutique in the self-extracting file LISTZ.EXE. Typing List gives you a directory tree. You can always press F1 to get a help screen. An even more powerful version can be purchased from the author: Vernon D. Buerg, 139 White Oak Circle, Petaluma, CA 94952.) -------- PaleoVu BROWSE AND VISUALIZATION Excerpt from the Paleoclimate Data Record, World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology Newsletter, vol. 4, n. 1, December 1994 The alpha (test) version of PaleoVu, the Program's browse and visualization software for PC's and Macintosh computers, was released in July 1994. PaleoVu allows users to search for data, map sites and search by map location, graph data, and export data sets for use by other programs. The alpha version has been distributed to a limited number of scientists for testing. The first release for general distribution is scheduled for early 1995. This version will be available for the cost of reproduction (free to data contributors, and free over the Internet.) -------- Readers should refer to the Paleoclimate Data Record for up-dates on data and program status. PaleoVu is going to be a very useful way of browsing, graphing, and printing interesting datasets. (Ed.) -------- PALEOLIMNOLOGY/DIATOM HOME PAGE P. Roger Sweets Indiana University E-mail: sweets@ucs.indiana.edu Hello paleolimnologists. In my continuing effort to drag us all kicking and screaming into cyberspace, I have published a Paleolimnology/Diatom home page on the World Wide Web. The page is still under construction and I welcome all comments. It's really in two sections, so paleolimnologists who are bored silly by diatoms should definitely log on. The WWW URL is: http://nickel.ucs.indiana.edu/~sweets/home.html Please give it a whirl, it's the greatest thing since sliced white bread. Also, send all suggestions for worthwhile data and web connections along to me please! [*p. 24 / p. 25*] -------- PALEOLIMNOLOGY LISTSERV Tom Whitmore E-mail: whitmor@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu and Mark Brenner E-mail: brenner@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu We announce the establishment of a new listservice entitled the Paleolimnology Forum (PALEOLIM) that will be supported at the University of Florida's Northeast Regional Data Center. Paleolimnological research requires the collaboration of investigators from diverse academic disciplines. Our purpose for establishing a new listservice is to facilitate the exchange of information across disciplinary lines. The PALEOLIM listservice will encourage open discussion on all aspects of paleolimnology, including: * radioisotopic dating methods, models, and applications * historic changes in nutrient loading, eutrophication, and biogeochemical cycles * stable isotope and trace metal studies in paleolimnology * climatic reconstruction, paleohydrology, salinity, and lake-level changes * human influence on erosion in watersheds and sedimentation rates * lake acidification studies * biological indicators (e.g. spores, pollen, chrysophytes, diatoms, microinvertebrates, pigments, spicules, macrophyte remains, biogenic silica) of past environmental conditions * dating sediment cores by amino-acid racemization * paleolimnology and historic wetland delineation * utility of paleolimnological studies to lake and water shed management programs. Contributions to the Paleolimnology Forum will be archived monthly, and can be retrieved from the listserv facility. Subscriptions are available on a self-enrolling basis. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: LISTSERV@NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU Leave the subject line blank, and include this one-line message in the body: SUBSCRIBE PALEOLIM firstname lastname where "firstname lastname" are your first and last names. Please send questions or comments to either of the authors. We look forward to your participation in the PALEOLIM discussion group. -------- I have put a complete set of the newsletters at the University of Wisconsin's Geology & Geophysics Library, 1215 West Dayton St., Madison, WI 53706 USA, and an additional set at the library at PAGES (Past Global Changes), Baerenplatz 2, 3018 Bern, Switzerland. If you need an old newsletter and cannot rach me, you might try the library that is closest to you. L. M. -------- NEW WEBWARE FOR THE WORLD DATA CENTER-A FOR PALEOCLIMATOLOGY John Keltner NOAA Paleoclimatology Program 325 Broadway E/GCx3 Boulder, Colorado 80303 E-mail: jkeltner@ngdc.noaa.gov The World Wide Web (WWW) is steadily gaining in popularity due to the ever widening access to the Internet and freely available client software such as Mosaic (in Windows, Macintosh, and Unix flavors). These developments make the task of locating and exchanging data and information both simpler and quicker. The burden now falls on providers such as the World Data Center - A for Paleoclimatology (WDC-A) in Boulder to create a friendly, intuitive WWW interface for their products. A goal of the WDC-A is to place all of the data we collect and manage on-line and available free of charge via the Internet. Most of the data collected and processed thus far is and has been available via anonymous ftp. Slowly but surely we are adding WWW interfaces not only to make downloading almost as easy as clicking the mouse button, but also to allow everyone to search and conveniently find out what we have. Someday this will even include ad hoc queries of our Paleoclimatology database. [*p. 25 / p. 26*] How far have we come? If you open the URL (Uniform Resource Locator, the addressing scheme used by the WWW) to our home page (Figure 1): http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html) you can check our progress. Once you have connected to the Program's home page you will see that we have divided our activities into Data Resources and Program Features. Resources are the data that we have on-line and that are available for you to download. Features include Proposal Abstracts, the Address Exchange, and an introduction to the IGBP Pages Project and our role as a WDC-A. With regard to data, Paleovegetation and especially Pollen have thus far received the most attention (the other types of data we provide still use a simple, gopher-like interface, which is fine when you either know what you are after or you have the time to look through the read-me files). Pollen Data If you click on the link to Paleovegetation under Data Resources and then select the link to Pollen Data you will be taken to the Pollen page (Figure 2). From there you can explore the holdings of the European Pollen Database (the unrestricted data only) or the North American Pollen Database. (Data is also beginning to come in from the Indo- Pacific and Latin America--watch for these data to be available soon.) The Pollen page also contains notices and reports of meetings of interest to the pollen community (contact us if you would like to announce or reference your activities on our Web pages). We have made pollen data available in a variety of formats to serve the various user communities. Thus you can get the complete set of database tables (currently as Paradox tables), or data for individual sites in Tilia format (Tilia spreadsheet and Form files for each site). For North America we also have a P15 format (percentages for the top 15 pollen types plus Other trees and shrubs and Other herbs at each site), an F70 format (raw counts for a common set of 70 pollen types for all of North America), and a dataset of modern samples (surface samples and core tops). Searching the Pollen Databases From the Pollen page select the North American Pollen Database link to go the NAPD page. Now select the Tilia link to get to the Data Retrieval form (Figure 3). There are two ways to use this form: you can search by name (site name, place name, or the name of the contact person for a site) or by latitude and longitude (not shown). To search by name just enter a name in the text window, select the field you want to search (site, place, or contact person), and then select a search method (any part of the name, the whole name, or the start of the name). Searches are not case-sensitive and, at least for now, dia- critical marks should not be used (e.g. use quebec for Qu‚bec). Click the Help button (not visible in Figure 3) to get more information on searching. Clicking the Search button [*p. 26 / p. 27*] starts the search. When one or more sites match your search criteria the names of the sites, where they are located, their latitude/longitude, and the name of the contact person are listed (Figure 4). At this point you can select a site and initiate an ftp transfer of the compressed, zip (pkzip version 2 or later) file containing the Tilia and Tilia Forms files (be sure to select Load to Disk from the Options menu both before and after the transfer). To search by latitude and longitude simply fill in values that define a bounding region (scroll down from the Search by Name form shown in Fig- ure 3 to find the Search by Latitude/Longitude form). Enter integer values for degrees and an N, S, E, or W, and click the Search button. Search will find any sites in the database that are within the region you have specified. As with the name search, clicking any of the matched sites will initiate an ftp transfer of the zip file for that site. Paleoclimatology's Address Exchange From Paleoclimatology's home page you can also get to the Address Exchange (select the Address Exchange link under Program Features). The initial form (Figure 5) allows you to enter the last name of a person (this search is not case-sensitive, although here, diacritical marks are optional -- e.g. you can use villagran or villagr n for Villagr n). The Exchange displays a list of matches to the name you entered (Figure 6). You may now select from this list to review the address, phone, fax, and email information (Figure 7) in our database of researchers in the paleoclimate/paleoecology community. [*p. 27 / p. 28*] You can greatly assist us by searching for yourself and verifying that we have current and complete information for you. If as a result of your initial search you are not in our database, add yourself by submitting a New Record. If as a result of reviewing your existing record you find that some of our information is out-of-date, please make the corrections and Submit your changes. We review all responses and will email you a confirmation message before actually making any changes to our database. Come On Down! Now that you know where to find us on the Web (http://www.ngdc.noaa.go- v/paleo/paleo.html) and have seen a glimpse of what you will find (data and more) -- please come visit us. We are open 24 hours a day, 365.25 days a year for your surfing pleasure. And if you come during the day, odds are it will even be sunny! -------- SYNTHETIC POLLEN SLIDES Louis J. Maher I believe most pollen analysts share a common mixed emotion when they complete their first fossil core. Although it is good to be finished, they realize the reliability of the first-counted samples are not nearly as good as those counted last. Counting technique and pollen recognition tend to improve with experience. When we decide to "bite the bullet" and recount those first slides, we always find that our suspicion was correct; the recount does not match the original. Because we are now more sure of our taxa, we attribute the difference to earlier inexperience. After all, we were working at expensive microscopes with marvelous optics and finely-crafted vernier controls, so why else would the counts differ? It is true that identifying taxa correctly will produce more consistent and thus better results. But we make a serious mistake attributing count differences solely to experience, because that kind of reasoning reinforces a very dangerous attitude: my data will be perfect if I identify every pollen grain correctly. Thus once our pollen recognition improves, we start to believe what we calculate from our counts. This leads to statements like "Because Acer decreased by half (from 5.61 % to 2.80 %) upward across the stratigraphic boundary, it is clear the Younger Dryas cooling event is recorded at this site." We must always keep in mind that our labor-intensive counts are nothing but estimates of what is in our sample vials. Until a few years ago I was never really able to drive that point home with my students. I would provide the class a vial of processed pollen, and each member would make a slide and count the pollen on it. When the results were [*p. 28 / p. 30*] pooled, I tried to introduce and test some of the ideas about sample variance. But I never had much luck; the students were not consistent with their identifications, and there was a lot of "noise" in the results. Even when I fabricated samples containing but three or four modern taxa of very distinct types, there was sure to be several who reported 10 to 15 different taxa. It was then that I hit on a plan to strip away all the subtle complexity of taxonomy, the intricacies of microscope manipulation, and the hours of counting time needed to gather the data. I decided to write a program to generate a synthetic pollen slide printed on a sheet of paper. The user has the choice of sending output to one of several different printers, or to disk--where it can be printed later using one's own word processor. There are only three taxa represented by a dot, a plus mark, and a circle. (It would be easy to have many "taxa," but we are striving for simplicity, and three will suffice.) The instructor gets to assign nominal percentage values for the dot and for the plus mark; the circle is then automatically allotted a value such that the sum of all three will equal 100 per cent. The program prints a heading consisting of the date and a random four-digit serial number, such as the 5434 of Fig. 1. The program then uses an algorithm that will print the three taxa randomly but at about the requested proportions. Blank spaces will be printed about 80% of the time so the synthetic pollen grains appear suspended in a transparent medium as they do in real slides. After the slide is printed, the stipulated and actual percentages and the actual number of each taxon printed are summarized on a second sheet. This printout serves as an instructor key which the student need not see. In the case of Fig. 1, the summary is: SYNTHETIC POLLEN SLIDE 12-13-1994 Serial No: 5434 POLLEN 1 (.) IN SAMPLE = 206 GRAINS ( 21.28099 %) POLLEN 2 (+) IN SAMPLE = 530 GRAINS ( 54.75207 %) POLLEN 3 (0) IN SAMPLE = 232 GRAINS ( 23.96694 %) Stipulated % : '.'= 20 ,'+'= 55 , 'O'= 25 To "count" the slide, the student uses a transparent overlay sheet like those employed in overhead projection. Ink a pair of thin parallel lines (separated by about one centimeter) from one corner to its opposite. The space between the lines defines a view for a synthetic microscope traverse; all taxa between the lines are counted, and the numbers are recorded. The student can experiment with counting techniques, either counting contiguous swathes across the slide, separating the swathes, or counting traverses that are not parallel. The student can also experiment using parallel lines with different spacing. When the space is too small (high magnification) one concentrates on fewer grains; when the space to too big (low magnification) it is easy to miss some grains or count others twice. In addition to observing that the taxon proportions and the actual numbers observed vary between traverses, the student also begins to wrestle with the problem of what to do with grains lying only partly in the view. I remember arguing about this with contemporaries when I was a student. Some count any grain they recognize, others count grains that intersect the top of the view and ignore those at the bottom. Others record any grain lying partly out of the view as half of a grain. (Because the printer works in a rectilinear world of rows and columns, traverses exactly horizontal or vertical on the page should be avoided. Otherwise all grains at one or both margins may lie partly out of view.) In most cases it does not really seem to matter how one deals with this problem. However a bias occurs when the objects differ substantially in size. Figure 2 illustrates an extreme example. There is only one bi- saccate grain on the slide, but it will be seen and counted on nearly every traverse. The large grain will seem to be more common in the slide than it really is; the principle applies any time the counted objects differ in size. Most of my students conclude that all grains--large or small--have a single center of mass: if the center lies within the microscope view, the grain is counted; if it does not, it is ignored. Using the same reasoning, an isolated conifer bladder is counted as a half a grain only if the bladder's center is in the view. The students' assignment is to predict the true relative abundance of the three taxa on the slide without counting all its grains. They cannot escape the fact that the estimates based on larger counts tend to cluster better than those based on smaller counts. They can then refer to Mosimann (1965) to set confidence limits on their estimates as well as doing Chi-square tests to see if their fellow students' counts are sufficiently alike to accept the null hypothesis that they all were drawn from a single population. In addition to these "inside-the-sum" counts, the students can define one of the taxa as an artificially introduced exotic marker grain and examine the statistics of counts "outside-the-sum." My simple programs [*p. 30 / p. 31*] MOSLIMIT.BAS and MOSITEST.EXE help with the computation. Students who do this exercise never expect repeat counts of real pollen slides will yield exactly the same proportions. In fact they cannot understand why anyone would ever believe they should! If MOSITEST shows they can accept the null hypothesis, they then combine their counts to reduce the confidence limits and go on their way. (I do not stress to them that these tests do not show their identifications were correct--only that they have been consistent in naming the objects.) You can also use synthetic slides to illustrate the problems of documenting up-core-changes in pollen abundance. Make up three or four synthetic slides in which you specify subtle uni-directional changes in one or two of the taxa. Define the slides as coming from discrete depths in the core, and see if the students can determine what is really happening through time. I have put the files SYNSLIDE.BAS, MOSLIMIT.BAS, and MOSITEST.EXE in a self-extracting zipped file named SYNSLIDZ.EXE, and put it in the INQUA File Boutique. You can get it by anonymous ftp at geology.wisc.edu in the subdirectory /pub/inqua. If you use Mosaic, you can reach them at URL http://geology.wisc.edu/~maher/inqua.html (select the Mosaic Option, "Recover to Disk" before you click on SYNSLIDZ.EXE). Mosimann, J. E. 1965. Statistical Methods for the Pollen Analyst, in B. Kummel and D. Raup (Eds.). Handbook of Paleontological Techniques: Freeman and Co., San Francisco, pp. 636-673. -------- USEFUL ADDRESSES AVAILABLE TO PUBLIC BY TELNET, ANONYMOUS FTP, MOSAIC, ETC. INQUA File Boutique. ftp geology.wisc.edu (ftp 144.92.137.14) Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /pub/inqua Contents described in file readme.txt http://geology.wisc.edu/~maher/inqua.html World Data Center-A (WDC-A), U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) Paleoclimatology Program (Note: Numeric Host Address Subject to Change) ftp ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov (ftp 192.149.148.109) (Other aliases: ngdc1.ngdc.noaa.gov and online.ngdc.noaa.gov) Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /paleo or /paleo/pollen http:// www.ngdc.noaa.gov/ http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html LIFE at the Australian National University. ftp life.anu.edu.au (ftp 150.203.38.74) Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /pub and its subdirectories http://life.anu.edu.au/ http://life.anu.edu.au/landscape_ecology/pollen.html Paleolimnology/Diatom Home Page http://nickel.ucs.indiana.edu/~sweets/home.html International Organisation of Palaeobotany Plant Fossil Database http://sunrae.uel.ac.uk/palaeo/index.html CALIB (Calibration of 14C Dates) ftp ftp.u.washington.edu (ftp 140.142.56.2) Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /public/calib Weather Information for selected cities in states: telnet madlab.sprl.umich.edu 3000 Logon/Password: None needed. Type ? for help Geographic Names, location, population, ZIP: telnet martini.eecs.umich.edu 3000 Logon/Password: None needed. Type ? for help On some multi-tasking unix systems typing: get filename - or get filename "| more" will let you browse a text file on line at the ftp site. [Filename - scrolls through the document; use key to stop the scrolling. Filename "| more" shows a screen page at a time. Press key to continue. These techniques work from our unix system, but not if I run telnet (DOS version) from my PC, Ed.] [*p. 31 / p. 32*] E-MAIL ADDRESSES [*p. 32 / p. 34*] (Not repeated here)