INQUA-COMMISSION FOR THE STUDY OF THE HOLOCENE Sub-Commission on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 14 July 1996 CONTENTS Note from the Coordinator------------------------------p. 1 Achievements, Developments, and Future Challenges in Quantitative Quaternary Palaeoecology, H.J.B.Birks ------------------------------------------p. 2 Tree-Ring Width and Density Measurement System, Ian Campbell -----------------------------------------p. 8 MapPad II: The Sequel, John Keltner -------------------p. 9 Padding Around the Prairies, Alwynne Beaudoin ------------------------------------p. 12 So You Want to Run a World Wide Web Server? K.D. Bennett -----------------------------------------p. 14 Book Review: Statistical Modelling of Quaternary Science Data, Andre Lotter ---------------------------p. 17 Statical Modelling of Quaternary Science Data: Trials and Tribulations, Darrel Maddy ----------------p. 18 New Bookshelf 11, H.J.B. Birks ------------------------p. 20 Togetherness - MVSP and SIMSTAT, Warren Kovach ----------------------------------------p. 21 Extensions to Slotting Program PCSLOT, Malcolm Clark ----------------------------------------p. 22 Spreadsheet Conversion Utility, Pierre Zippi ----------p. 23 An Update on Data Sets and Data Handling Tools Available from the World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology, D.M. Anderson et al. ---------------p. 23 Help with MAPINFO, Lisa Wells -------------------------p. 25 Protocols of the European Pollen Database, S. Hicks et al. --------------------------------------p. 26 Convert Your Data, L.J. Maher -------------------------p. 27 Dr. Triage --------------------------------------------p. 28 Useful New Addresses ----------------------------------p. 31 Index for Newsletters No. 1 - 13 ----------------------p. 31 NOTE FROM THE COORDINATOR As you can see, the INQUA Commission for the Study of the Holocene Working Group on Data-Handling Methods has been resurrected as the Sub-Commission on Data-Handling Methods. I am keeping the same numbering system, making this Newsletter 14. I will try to see that issues come out every six months in January and July. Please take a moment to check if the address on the envelope is satisfactory, letting me know if it requires changes. Because of the length of the newsletter, I am not including the usual list of e-mail addresses at the end. But I am trying to keep the list current in the INQUA File Boutique in the file email.txt. Please check there to see that your e-mail address is correct. The Boutique's addresses will be changed during August 1996, but the present addresses will continue to work for an indefinite period. Present INQUA File Boutique address ftp geology.wisc.edu Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /pub/inqua Contents described in file readme.txt World Wide Web http://geology.wisc.edu/~maher/inqua.html Future INQUA File Boutique address ftp ftp.geology.wisc.edu Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /pub/inqua Contents described in file readme.txt World Wide Web http://www.geology.wisc.edu/~maher/inqua.html After Newsletter 13 was distributed, I did some serious thinking about format changes I would make in the Newsletter (and the Boutique) should our enterprise achieve Sub-Commission status. I decided that Jim Ritchie set an initial style that I want to maintain: simple black print on white paper. A real Table of Contents is needed and will be included from now on. (I have put in the Boutique, just before the text of the past newsletters, the files contents.txt and index.txt. These can be used to locate items in previous Newsletters.) I will resist any urge to insert cute clip-art and colored illustrations so that the production cost can be kept low and the information density kept high. In this same vein I have watched many WWW sites become colorful carnivals of sound and movement. The INQUA File Boutique will remain very simple, of one piece, and with few icons, buttons, and colors. Its clientele tends to have a reasonable attention span and a reason for being there. There seems to be a sub-conscientious belief on the Internet that everyone else has the same kind of equipment, software, and connection to the Net that we do. If ours are all "top-of-line," so is everyone else's. Of course that is not true. A colleague on another continent, connecting by a noisy toll telephone line with a slow modem, is unable to appreciate a home page with flashing, kilobyte-devouring sequences of movies and sound. [* p.1 / p.2 *] I now use Netscape Navigator with Windows95 . When I reach the File Boutique I can page up or page down, get to the end with Ctrl-End and back to the beginning with Ctrl-Home. Because the Boutique html is one file, I can search for (Edit | Find) any word or file name to reach the exact place I want. Netscape allows me to do this easily; but an old generic file transfer protocol (ftp) program allows anyone on the Net to get the files too. And we must always remember that some small- computers users do not have access to the Net; they handle their data with floppy disks. 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 ACHIEVEMENTS, DEVELOPMENTS, AND FUTURE CHALLENGES IN QUANTITATIVE QUATERNARY PALAEOECOLOGY H.J.B. Birks Botanical Institute University of Bergen All‚gaten 41, N-5007 Bergen, Norway E-mail: John.Birks@bot.uib.no Introduction It is just over 10 years since Allan Gordon and I reviewed the range of numerical techniques that had been developed and applied in Quaternary pollen analysis and palaeoecology (Birks & Gordon, 1985). Since 1985 there have been major developments in applied statistics brought about, in part, by the remarkable developments in computing power (Efron & Tibshirani, 1991), in Quaternary palaeoecology by the ever-improving taxonomic and temporal resolution of biostratigraphical data (e.g. van der Knaap & van Leeuwen, 1994, 1995), and in radiocarbon-dating with the development and refinement of the calibration of radiocarbon dates into equivalent calendar ages (e.g. Bartlein et al., 1995). Because of these developments, there have been considerable advances in quantitative Quaternary palaeoecology in the last 5- 10 years, with the result that some of what Birks & Gordon (1985) presented is now superseded by more powerful, more biologically appropriate, and more robust techniques. The purpose of this note is to outline what, to me, have been the major achievements and advances in quantitative palaeoecology during the last 10 years and to speculate on future problems and challenges. Inevitably the selection of topics and example presented here reflects my personal interests and biases and no attempt is made to provide a comprehensive review of all the many developments that have been made in quantitative palaeoecology. Advances in applied statistics Some of the greatest developments in applied statistical data- analysis in the last decade have come about as a result of the unprecedented advances in the availability of personal computer power. There is now a whole area of computer-intensive statistical methodology that was barely developed in 1985. This includes randomisation and Monte Carlo permutation tests (e.g. Manly, 1991), jack-knifing and bootstrap methods (e.g. Efron & Tibshirani, 1993), non-parametric regression (H„rdle, 1990; Cleveland, 1993, 1994; Green & Silverman, 1994), generalised linear models (McCullagh & Nelder, 1989) and generalised additive models (Hastie & Tibshirani, 1990), and classification and regression trees (Breiman et al., 1993). Efron and Tibshirani (1991) provide a very readable introduction to some of these developments. They emphasise that "most of our familiar statistical methods, such as hypothesis testing, linear regression, analysis of variance, and maximum likelihood estimation, were designed to be implemented on mechanical calculators." Modern electronic computation has encouraged a host of new statistical methods that require fewer distributional assumptions than their predecessors and can be applied to more complicated statistical estimators. All of these developments differ in one important way from their classical predecessors: they substitute computer algorithms for the traditional mathematical ways of getting a numerical answer. One immediate reward is freedom from the bell-shaped curve assumptions of the traditional approach. More importantly, the new methods free the scientist to choose statistical methodology appropriate to the problem at hand, rather than choosing on the basis of "mathematical tractability." Advances in Quaternary science Within Quaternary science, there have been at least two major developments in the last decade that have directly influenced approaches to and requirements of data [* p.2 / p.3 *] analysis in palaeoecology. First, there has been the development of an internationally adopted radiocarbon calibration data-set for nearly 22000 calibrated years and the availability of this data- set and the up-dated CALIB 3 radiocarbon calibration program (Stuiver & Reimer, 1993). It is now possible to calibrate reliably radiocarbon dates from nearly all Holocene material into equivalent calender ages. Potential artifacts in, for example, estimating pollen-accumulation rates and in numerical analyses involving chronologies (e.g. rate of change analysis - Jacobson & Grimm, 1986) can now largely be eliminated (e.g. Odgaard, 1994; Fossitt, 1994; Sepp„, 1996). Second, biostratigraphical data-sets continue to have finer and finer taxonomic and temporal resolution (e.g. Peglar, 1993a, 1993b; Mateus, 1992; van der Knaap & van Leeuwen, 1994, 1995; Ritchie, 1995; Sepp„, 1996). Such data-sets provide challenges in data presentation and data analysis. Achievements and Developments I will discuss achievements and developments in quantitative Quaternary palaeoecology under four broad headings: data presentation, data analysis, palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, and data interpretation. (1) Data presentation The development of versatile, powerful, and (relatively!) easy- to-use programs for processing and presenting biostratigraphical data and for producing publication-quality stratigraphical diagrams (e.g. psimpoll, Bennett, 1994a; TILIA and T GRAPH, Grimm, 1990) has been a very major achievement that has revolutionised the quality and readability of stratigraphical diagrams in publications and at lecture and poster presentations. The recording of counts of fossils on a pocket computer such as a PSION Organiser (Bennett, 1990) and the direct reading of these counts into programs like TILIA have greatly speeded up data recording and entry and eliminated errors in data transcription and input. A second development that is still in progress concerns depth-age modelling using calibrated radiocarbon dates (e.g. Odgaard, 1994) and the estimation of confidence intervals for sample-age estimates (Bennett, 1994b). Modelling approaches include least- squares polynomial regression, spline functions (Odgaard, 1994), and robust non-parametric regression (Cleveland, 1993, 1994; Birks unpublished). As reliable age estimates (in calibrated years) are the key for much data synthesis, analysis, and interpretation and for comparison of proxy environmental data with observed or simulated data, depth-age modelling deserves greater attention than it has received from palaeoecologists. The third development is most relevant for the problem of an effective presentation of the very large numbers of taxa now being identified by some palaeoecologists. It involves numerical procedures for arranging stratigraphical curves on the basis of similarities in their shape and overall form to derive, if required, so-called "recurrent groups" of taxa, namely groups of taxa with broadly similar stratigraphical patterns (Janssen & Birks, 1994a, 1994b). Peglar (1993a) provides an example of the potential of this approach in her detailed work at Diss Mere (see also Sepp„, 1996). (2) Data analysis Birks and Gordon (1985) reviewed the numerical techniques available for the partitioning or zoning of biostratigraphical sequences. None of those techniques nor more recently developed procedures such as constrained incremental sum-of-squares cluster analysis (Grimm, 1987) have any numerical basis for deciding on the number of "reliable" or numerically "significant" zones within a sequence. Bennett (1996) has recently provided an elegant solution to this problem by using the broken-stick and randomisation models to assess the reliability of different zonations against a model of random distribution of zones within a sequence. He also examined how the number of "reliable" zones depends on the numbers of samples and taxa in the data-set, on data transformations, and on the zonation method used. Bennett proposes that biostratigraphical zones can be defined "as the smallest significant units found in a sequence following numerical analysis" and suggests that sub-zones might be "statistically insignificant units that might be worth drawing attention to." Bennett's (1996) approach now puts the identification and delimitation of zones on a more rigorous and consistent basis than was previously possible. Rate-of-change analysis was developed by Jacobson and Grimm (1986) and Grimm and Jacobson (1992). It is critically dependent on the time standardisation unit (TSU) used to standardise the estimated dissimilarity (e.g. chord distance) between adjacent samples to, for example, chord distance per 200 years. Clearly the TSU must be reliable and be in the same units throughout the sequence (Lotter et al., 1992). Radiocarbon years do not equal calendar years everywhere in the Holocene and late-glacial (see Ammann & Lotter, 1989; Becker et al. 1991;[* p.3 / p.4 *] Kromer & Becker, 1993; Day & Mellars, 1994; Bartlein et al., 1995). Unless an independent absolute chronology is available from annually laminated sediments (e.g. Lotter et al., 1992, 1995) or the sample chronology is based on calendar years derived from carefully calibrated radiocarbon dates (e.g. Odgaard, 1994), there is the danger that some of the peaks in the rate-of-change measure may simply be artifacts of the use of an uncalibrated radiocarbon chronology (Bartlein et al., 1995). Bennett and Humphry (1995) have also examined how the estimated rates of change depend on the dissimilarity measure used, on the number of taxa included (see also Odgaard, 1994), on the number of samples included, and on whether the stratigraphical data are smoothed or not. Their analysis shows the sensitivity of rate-of-change estimates to particular numerical manipulations and highlights the caution that is needed in interpreting peaks in rate-of- change in terms of, for example, rapid abrupt climatic change (e.g. Grimm & Jacobson, 1992). Estimates of past changes in taxon richness with time from biostratigraphical data are possible by rarefaction analysis (Birks & Line, 1990). Examples include Fossitt (1994, 1996) and Bennett et al. (1992). Odgaard (1994) has elegantly extended this approach by deriving empirical relationships between floristic richness and palynological richness today and by applying these relationships to fossil palynological data to estimate floristic richness in the past. Odgaard (1994) then used these estimates to test ecological hypotheses about diversity and disturbance during the Holocene. (3) Palaeoenvironmental reconstructions A large number of seemingly very different numerical methods have been proposed and used for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions from biostratigraphical data since the pioneer work of Imbrie and Kipp (1971) and Webb and Bryson (1972). All these methods have recently been reviewed and synthesised into an unified framework (Birks, 1995) in terms of linear- or unimodal-based techniques, classical or inverse approaches, least-squares, maximum likelihood, or biased least-squares (e.g. partial least squares) estimation, and multivariate regression and calibration. ter Braak (1995) has provided a detailed comparison of selected non- linear techniques and has shown the potential of using simulated training and test data-sets to evaluate the relative performances of different reconstruction procedures under, for example, "no- analogue" conditions (see also ter Braak & Juggins, 1993; ter Braak et al., 1993). Given the present state of knowledge about the relative strengths and weaknesses of different reconstruction procedures, it is important to follow Bartlein and Whitlock's (1993) example of presenting reconstructions for the same environmental variable based on different numerical techniques and deriving a "consensus" reconstruction based on all available quantitative reconstructions, rather than relying on one particular reconstruction procedure. Palaeoenvironmental reconstructions of, for example, land-use practices and soil changes at a local scale have been attempted by Gaillard et al. (1992, 1994). The results obtained are encouraging and illustrate the potential of attempting such local-scale reconstructions if both the modern and fossil data- sets are from the same spatial scales. It is useful to derive response curves and surfaces for the modern abundances of different taxa along environmental gradients for several reasons (see Bartlein et al., 1986; Huntley et al., 1989; ter Braak, 1995; Birks, 1995). Generalised additive models (GAM) (Hastie & Tibshirani, 1990) provide a promising approach for such modelling. They combine the statistical advantages of the generalised linear modelling (GLM) approach originally used by Bartlein et al. (1986) with the flexibility of the locally weighted regression procedure of Huntley et al. (1989) and Bartlein and Whitlock (1993). GAMs are a semi-parametric smooth extension of GLM and are primarily data-driven rather than model- driven. GAMs allow the data to determine the shape of the response curve or surface rather than being limited by the shapes implicit in parametric GLMs. GAMs have several potential advantages over the locally weighted averaging approach of Bartlein and Whitlock (1993) and Huntley et al. (1989), in particular goodness-of-fit measures and the ability to use a forward-selection procedure with cross-validation to find a minimal set of predictor variables that best fit, in a statistical sense, the taxon abundances. Smilauer and Birks (1995) provide some palaeoecological applications of GAMs and Yee and Mitchell (1991) and Leathwick (1995) illustrate the use of GAMs in ecology. (4) Data interpretation A major development in our ability to interpret palaeoecological data comes from the use of computer-intensive randomisation and permutation tests (Manly, 1991) to test specific palaeoecological hypotheses (Birks, 1993a). The hypotheses may concern the importance (or otherwise) of a particular environmental variable, set of variables, or a unique catastrophic event on influencing the observed changes in a group of taxa preserved in the [* p.4 / p.5 *] sedimentary record. The statistical significance of the observed numerical relationship between the taxa and the "explanatory" variables can be derived by computational "brute- force" permutation tests (ter Braak, 1990) associated with the constrained ordination techniques of redundancy analysis (ter Braak, 1994) and canonical correspondence analysis (ter Braak & Verdonschot, 1995). Palaeoecological examples include the impact of volcanic tephra on terrestrial and aquatic systems (Lotter & Birks, 1993; Birks & Lotter, 1994; Lotter et al., 1995), the influence of Picea abies on lake-water acidity (Korsman et al., 1994), and the impact of prehistoric land-use on lake acidity (Renberg et al., 1993) and productivity (Anderson et al., 1995). An alternative but equally useful approach to testing palaeoecological hypotheses involves the formulation of explicit null models (Birks, 1985), the predictions of which can then be compared with the observed patterns. There have, however, been surprisingly few applications of this approach in palaeoecology. Recent examples include Birks and Line's (1993) analysis of tree occurrences in last glacial-stage refugia and Beck's (1996) re- analysis of the "blitzkrieg" model of megafaunal extinctions in North America based on calibrated radiocarbon dates. Challenges In the last 10 years quantitative palaeoecology has moved increasingly from a primarily data-exploratory, descriptive approach to a more statistical approach (Birks, 1993b). Questions of concern are now how does one assess reliability of a numerically derived zonation, how can one test specific palaeoecological hypotheses, how can one derive realistic sample- specific prediction errors for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, and so on. One important challenge for the future is to extend this analytical approach even further given the complexity of multivariate biostratigraphical data. Another set of challenges concerns the numerical analysis of very taxon-rich data and to develop quantitative tools to help interpretation of such data. High taxonomic resolution is important not only for floristic and ecological reasons but also in quantitative environmental reconstructions. For example, the prediction errors (estimated by bootstrapping) are at their lowest when all taxa are included in the reconstructions using weighted averaging regression and calibration (Birks, 1994). The revolution in radiocarbon calibration is creating new challenges and will encourage re-assessment of earlier estimates of population expansion and tree-spreading rates based on radiocarbon years. Improved depth-age modelling based on calibrated calendar years and the use of semi-parametric time- series analysis of biostratigraphical data (Cleveland, 1993, 1994; Cleveland & Grosse, 1991) are further future challenges. The greatest challenge remains in the collection of extensive, high-quality data-sets, both stratigraphical and modern surface- samples (Birks, 1994, 1995; Ritchie, 1995) and in the definition of research problems (Birks, 1993b; Ritchie, 1995). Given large high-quality data-sets, well-defined research problems, powerful software such as psimpoll, CANOCO, S-PLUS, CALIBRATE, etc. (see Birks, 1995), and an appreciation of the underlying palaeoecological and statistical questions and problems, the next decade of quantitative palaeoecology promises to be as exciting and as stimulating as the last decade. Acknowledgements I am indebted to Lou Maher for the invitation to write this note and to many friends and colleagues who help to make quantitative palaeoecology such an enjoyable, stimulating, and fascinating subject. References. Ammann, B. & Lotter, A.F. 1989. Late-glacial radiocarbon and palynostratigraphy on the Swiss Plateau. Boreas 18, 109-126. 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Ecology 67, 958-966. Janssen, C.R. & Birks, H.J.B. 1994a. Recurrent groups of pollen types in time. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 82, 165- 173. Janssen, C.R. & Birks, H.J.B. 1994b. Examples of recurrent groups of pollen and macrofossils in space and time delimited by simple discriminant functions. In Festschrift Gerhard Lang (eds. A.F. Lotter & B. Ammann), pp. 337-351. Dissertationes Botanicae 234. J. Cramer, Berlin. van der Knaap, W.O. & van Leeuwen, J.F.N. 1994. Holocene vegetation, human impact, and climatic change in the Serra da Estrela, Portugal. In Festschrift Gerhard Lang (eds. A.F. Lotter & B. Ammann), pp. 497-535. Dissertationes Botanicae 234. J. Cramer, Berlin. van der Knaap, W.O. & van Leeuwen, J.F.N. 1995. Holocene vegetation succession and degradation as responses to climatic change and human activity in the Serra de Estrela, Portugal. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 89, 153-211. Korsman, T., Renberg, I., & Anderson, N.J. 1994. A palaeolimnological test of the influence of Norway spruce (Picea abies) immigration on lake-water acidity. The Holocene 4, 132- 140. Kromer, B. & Becker, B. 1993. German oak and pine 14C calibration, 7200-9439 BC. Radiocarbon 35, 125-135. Leathwick, J.R. 1995. Climatic relationships of some New Zealand forest tree species. Journal of Vegetation Science 6, 237-248. Lotter, A.F., Ammann, B., & Sturm, M. 1992. Rates of change and chronological problems during the late-glacial period. Climate Dynamics 6, 233-239. Lotter, A.F. & Birks, H.J.B. 1993. The impact of the Laacher See Tephra on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in the Black Forest, southern Germany. Journal of Quaternary Science 8, 263- 276. Lotter, A.F., Birks, H.J.B., & Zolitschka, B. 1995. Late-glacial pollen and diatom changes in response to two different environmental perturbations: volcanic eruption and Younger Dryas cooling. Journal of Paleolimnology 14, 23-47. McCullagh, P. & Nelder, J.A. 1989. Generalized linear models (second edition). Chapman & Hall, London. 511 pp. Manly, B.F.J. 1991. Randomization and Monte Carlo methods in biology. Chapman & Hall, London. 281 pp. Mateus, J. 1992. Holocene and present-day ecosystems of the Corvalhal region, south-west Portugal. Doctoral thesis, University of Utrecht. 179 pp. Odgaard, B.V. 1994. The Holocene vegetation history of northern West Jutland, Denmark. Opera Botanicae 123, 171 pp. Peglar, S.M. 1993a. The development of the cultural [* p.7 / p.8 *] landscape around Diss Mere, Norfolk, UK, during the past 7000 years. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 76, 1-47. Peglar, S.M. 1993b. The mid-Holocene Ulmus decline at Diss Mere, Norfolk, U.K.: a year-by-year pollen stratigraphy from annual laminations. The Holocene 3, 1-13. Renberg, I., Korsman, T., & Birks, H.J.B. 1993. Prehistoric increases in the pH of acid-sensitive Swedish lakes caused by land-use changes. Nature 362, 824-826. Ritchie, J.C. 1995. Current trends in studies of long-term plant community dynamics. New Phytologist 130, 469-494. Sepp„, H. 1996. Post-glacial dynamics of vegetation and tree- lines in the far north of Fennoscandia. Fennia 174, 1-96. Smilauer, P. & Birks, H.J.B. 1995. The use of generalised additive models in the description of diatom-environment response surfaces. Geological Survey of Denmark Service Report 7, 42-47. Stuiver, M. & Reimer, P.J. 1993. Extended 14C age calibration program. Radiocarbon 35, 214-230. Webb, T. & Bryson, R.A. 1971. Late- and postglacial climate change in the northern Midwest, USA: Quantitative estimates derived from fossil pollen spectra by multivariate statistical analysis. Quaternary Research 2, 70-115. Yee, T.W. & Mitchell, N.D. 1991. Generalized additive models in plant ecology. Journal of Vegetation Science 2, 587-602. DendroScan: TREE-RING WIDTH AND DENSITY MEASUREMENT SYSTEM Ian Campbell Canadian Forest Service 5320-122 St. Edmonton, AB, T6H 3C8, Canada Tel: 403-435-7300 E-mail: icampbell@nofc.forestry.ca DendroScan is a new system for measuring densities of tree rings. Developed over the last three years at the Canadian Forest Service's Northern Forestry Centre, it has also been used for ring width measurement, for counting and measuring varves, and for analyzing growth rings in seal teeth. The basic principle of x-ray densitometry is simple. An x-ray beam is passed through a sample of known thickness to a detector, and the extinction of the beam is directly related to the density of the material. There are minor complications with diffraction in crystalline materials, but the system works well on most organic materials. The detector in this system is x-ray film. The image is scanned and marked up electronically with guidelines for the analysis to remain perpendicular to the rings and avoid defects in the wood. This image is then exported to DendroScan, which locates the samples on the image, identifies the ring boundaries, and produces a report of ring widths and densities (Fig. 1). One of the greatest challenges in developing the system was perfecting a method of slicing the wood to a consistent thin width. The equipment designed for similar systems is very expensive (approx. US$8,000+ for a saw); we adapted a table saw to the task for a few hundred dollars [* p.8 / p.9 *]- including the blades. Other parts of the system are similarly inexpensive to build, operate, and maintain. While many labs use a moving table and a narrowly collimated beam to eliminate parallax in the x-ray exposure of the samples, we use a fixed broad-beam source and press the samples into a parallax-eliminating curve. Rather than a dedicated densitometer for reading the negatives, we read positive enlargements with a regular desktop scanner. By combining the inexpensive but reliable 600 dpi (optical) resolution of the scanner with a good photographic enlargement of the negative, we routinely obtain 1200 dpi (20 micrometre) resolution (Fig. 2), and can get 10,000 dpi (2.4 micrometre) resolution if needed. Altogether, our system could be duplicated for less than US$20,000 (Table 1). The most expensive part is the x-ray machine; we use a chamber-type inspection system, which cost about $10,000. Researchers who are interested only in ring widths (or varve thicknesses) will not need the x-ray system or even the table saw. Highly polished samples or good photographs (enlargements to enhance the resolution on narrow rings, or in the case of varves, to keep the scanner clean) can be directly scanned and analyzed for ring widths by DendroScan, for a cost of $3,000 including the computer and scanner. If you already have these, all you need is a sander and the DendroScan software. Table 1. Capital cost (estimated, US$) Saw assembly: $ 900 Resin extraction and press $ 600 X-ray machine and darkroom: $11,500 Print darkroom: $ 2,500 Computer and peripherals: $ 3,500 Miscellaneous: $ 500 DendroScan: $ 100 Total: $19,600 DendroScan outputs include a series of graphs in PostScript, and ASCII tables designed for import into most spreadsheet programs; additional special formats include the International Tree-Ring DataBank format and DigiMic format. DendroScan also saves its files in a special binary .ISC format, which is sufficiently compact that one hundred samples can be fit on a single 1.4 Mb floppy disk. These files can be read by DendroScan and re-edited (for example, inserting missing rings or canceling false rings) at any time. Another useful feature in DendroScan is the ability to compare visually two samples on screen at the same time; this saves enormous amounts of time in cross-dating. The user interface is extremely user-friendly, featuring a menu-driven interface with pop-up windows and context-sensitive on-line help. This software package will be available this fall for about $100, which will include a detailed manual with step-by- step instructions for building and using a duplicate of our x-ray densitometry lab, a user's manual for the software, the DendroScan software on a 1.4 Mb floppy disk (DOS/Windows), and a precalibrated wedge for calibrating x-ray images into densities. If you would like further information, or if you have rhythmic material like varves or tree rings (speleothem growth bands or distal turbidites) and would like to see if DendroScan can work on your material, please send me an e-mail at icampbell@nofc.forestry.ca. MapPad II: The Sequel John Keltner NOAA Paleoclimatology Program 325 Broadway E/GCx3 Boulder, Colorado 80303 E-mail: jkeltner@ngdc.noaa.gov The January 1995 INQUA Newsletter on Data Handling Methods included an article introducing MapPad to an unsuspecting world. In the year and a half since then the producers, writers, and directors have conferred occasionally to discuss whether there was any mileage left in that original idea. Could they possibly get away with, that is to say, was the public clamoring for more? Would their sequel be a bust, or would they finally hit the big time? The Original In case you missed the original, a brief reprise is in order. MapPad is a Microsoft Windows (3.1, 95, or NT) program that allows you to put your text and graphics on the map. More precisely, it allows you to place your sites on the map by giving them a name and a latitude/longitude pair. [* p.9 / p.10 *] In addition to showing where your sites are geographically, you can add text and references to graphics that can be displayed by subsequently clicking the site on the map (Figure 1). You can zoom in on a region of the map (see Figures 2 and 3) by clicking and dragging the mouse. When you release the mouse button the map zooms to display the region you outlined. Buttons along the bottom of the map restore it to the previous zoomed image or to the initial, unzoomed map. From MapPad's main window you can create new data files (for your sites and the information associated with them), or you can open existing ones that you created or that were sent to you by a colleague or that you downloaded from a source like the INQUA File Boutique (http://www.geology.wisc.edu/~maher/inqua.html ). You can also add new sites to the map (Figure 2), modify existing sites (their name, latitude, longitude, or with version 2.0, some additional properties), or even delete them. Lastly, you can choose to print the maps as currently displayed in the map frame. You can print the map directly to your printer, or to a file. Printing to a file allows you to bring the map into a graphics package such as Corel Draw where you could, for example, add titles or labels for individual sites. MapPad was designed for your data. To that end a number of maps are available. Additional maps can be made to order (more about maps below). You can associate textual information with your sites by typing directly into the notepad window for each site (Figure 1), or since MapPad data files are just simple text files you can create them with your word processor or database manager or other software. (If you create your own data files then there are a few rules you must follow. These are documented in the online help that comes with MapPad.) Searching, Cut-Copy-Paste are all available from within a site's notepad window. [* p.10 / p.11 *] A Sequel is Born So what has been added to MapPad to entice you out onto the information superhighway to download this latest incarnation? How about vastly improved maps? Ok, they are still just coastlines, islands, lakes, rivers, and political boundaries, but the level of detail, especially for small regional maps is now much, much greater (only continental-scale maps were available for version 1.x). Suffice it to say, if you work or live on a sizable island off the west coast of Scotland, that island now shows up on the map (see Figure 3). Another new feature are map symbols. Version 1.x displayed all sites as red squares on the map. With version 2.0 you can choose from among several symbols (hollow or filled squares, hollow or filled circles, hollow triangle, cross) and one of seven different colors. These different symbols can now represent different categories of sites (in Figures 1-3 the solid circles represent lacustrine and the hollow triangles represent terrestrial sites). With version 2.0 you can also select the point on which the printed map is centered. In version 1.x the printed map was always centered on the center of the map as currently displayed in the map frame. This produced undesirable results for polar maps, so now you can select the centering point. Several new options have been added to the main window's Options menu (Figure 3). The size of the symbols as displayed or printed can be made larger or smaller. You can choose to display a long or a short caption on the descriptor button (the button above the map that displays the site's descriptor when you click a site on the map). The long caption includes the symbol definition for the site. If your data file uses symbols, then you can include a legend on the displayed or printed map. [* p.11 / p.12 *] Now Playing So where can you find MapPad II? It is not sold in any store. You will have get onto the Internet and cruise down (up?) to one of the World Wide Web or FTP sites MapPadded below (Figure 4). To make the size of the distribution file smaller, only one map is distributed with the installation package. This is a map of North America, used by the sample data file. You can download individual maps for the areas you need from the same WWW or FTP sites. To install MapPad you should download the latest self-extracting executable of the setup program. Extract the contents of this file into a temporary directory by executing it from the MS-DOS prompt or from File Manager. Then run the Setup program (setup.exe) to compete installation. Be sure to download any additional maps you need. Each map has also been compressed into a self-extracting executable file. Execute each one to extract the enclosed map file. Roll the Credits MapPad was conceived and produced by Lou Maher. John Keltner was responsible for the writing and directing, and the sometimes shaky camera work. Most of the changes incorporated into version 2.0 were suggested by users. All these suggestions are greatly appreciated. The final version of MapPad II will also be available from the INQUA File Boutique, Ed PADDING AROUND THE PRAIRIES Alwynne B. Beaudoin Archaeological Survey Provincial Museum of Alberta 12845-102nd Avenue Edmonton, Albert T5N 0M6, Canada E-mail: abeaudoi@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca MapPad is an extremely useful and versatile Windows-based utility, written by John Keltner (NOAA Paleoclimatology Program) and available as free-ware from http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/softlib.html. The mechanics of installing and running the program have been described in detail by John Keltner (see CAP (Canadian Association of Palynologists) Newsletter 18(1):18-21, 1995) in an article that is reproduced on the CAP World Wide Web page, found at http://www.ualberta.ca/~abeaudoi/cap/cap.html. Briefly, MapPad allows the user to plot data on a map using latitude and longitude, thus acting as a simple GIS system. MapPad reads data from text files and displays the sites on a map. It is distributed with a number of built-in maps, including one of North America. MapPad text files are simple in structure and allow the user to attach large amounts of information about each site, as a sort of electronic "Post-It" note (Fig. 1). One of its most powerful features is that MapPad files can be created by other applications, thus allowing data to be shared. I have used MapPad extensively in the last year, notably to compile a map of postglacial palaeoenvironmental records in the Canadian Prairie Provinces and adjacent areas (Fig. 2). There are a lot more of these than most people are aware of! One reason for compiling this information was to correct an unfortunate impression, left by some recent reviews, that little work has been done in western Canada. By making this compilation of sites widely available, I hope to make the palaeoenvironmental work from western Canada better known. This file is available to readers as PRAIRIES.MPD and can be retrieved from the INQUA file boutique (http://www.geology.wisc.edu/~maher/inqua.html). Anyone with a copy of MapPad can load and use this file. Thus MapPad provides a powerful means of sharing information among researchers. The PRAIRIES.MPD file includes a considerable amount of information. It compiles data for 189 sites so far, and includes details of dating control (when available), type of [* p.12 / p.13 *] information at the site, and publications. The citations do not include every published reference to the site, but the ones where it is discussed most completely. This file does not include a considerable number of unpublished sites from this region, or ones that are currently being worked on as part of theses or other projects. I have tried to verify site locations where ever possible. If you notice mistakes in this compilation, or know of other sites that should be included, please let me know. It is my intention to maintain this database and provide periodic updates to the INQUA file boutique. Compiling these data was comparatively straightforward because I had most of the information already available in a flat-file database file which has been used as the basis of two papers (Beaudoin 1993, Vance et al. 1995). I designed a form that mimicked the input required by MapPad which I printed to a text file rather than the printer. I retrieved this using a text- editor, to check that it did meet MapPad's specifications. Very little cleaning up was required to make the data MapPad- compliant. Once saved, with a .MPD extension, the file was then ready to be read by MapPad. This procedure sounds rather complex but is in fact fairly straightforward. What this means is that existingdatabase files can be readily configured to export to MapPad [* p.13 / p.14 *] format. Thus if you have some data already in a database file that you would like to display using MapPad, it is not necessary to re-type it. Because I do not want to maintain two database files with the same information, this procedure allows MapPad to be used as an accessory to an existing database. MapPad is also useful for display purposes. For a recent conference, for example, I wanted to produce a map showing only early Holocene sites on the Prairies (Fig. 3). I selected the appropriate sites in the database, re-generated the MapPad file and loaded it into MapPad. I saved my MapPad map by printing it to a file, rather than to a device. MapPad saves maps in Windows metafile (* .WMF) format. I loaded this graphic directly into CorelDraw 4.0. Instead of a bit-map image, the map was imported as objects. Then I was able, for instance, to colour some of the site dots to highlight them, produce a coloured background for the map, and add some labels. Finally I sent the file directly by e-mail to be made into a slide. In conclusion, I have found MapPad to be a very useful program. I would encourage other researchers to use it to facilitate the transfer of information on sites of all kinds. References. Beaudoin, A. B. 1993. A Compendium and Evaluation of Postglacial Pollen Records in Alberta. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 17:92-112. Vance, R. E., Beaudoin, A. B., and Luckman, B. H. 1995. The Paleoecological Record of 6 KA BP Climate in the Canadian Prairie Provinces. G‚ographie physique et Quaternaire 49:81-98. I thank Alwynne B. Beaudoin for letting us add her PRAIRIES.MPD file to the Boutique. If anyone else has a MapPad file that would be of interest to others, please contact me at maher@geology.wisc.edu. L.M. SO YOU WANT TO RUN A WORLD WIDE WEB SERVER? K.D. Bennett Department of Plant Sciences University of Cambridge Downing Street Cambridge CB2 3EA, UK E-mail kdb2@cam.ac.uk WWW http://www-palecol.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/ Use of the World Wide Web (WWW) continues to expand, as predicted by David Green in Newsletter 11. The Altavista index (http://www.altavista.digital.com/) puts the number at about 250,000, and it is growing fast. It has become expected of an institution (educational, governmental, commercial, or charitable) that it should run a server. Countless individuals have "home page", either on their own computer or on someone else's. The aim of this note, following on from David Green's earlier article, is to look at the reasons for running a server, how to do it, and examine some of the pitfalls. It is based on about one year's experience of running a server (http://www-palecol.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/). Why? There are two principal reasons for having a WWW presence. (1) To inform users about your self / group; (2) To make available data, programs, or other information. Both these aims can be satisfied by using someone else's server (for example, by having WWW pages on your institution's server). The advantage of doing it your self is that you have complete control of style and content, and you can monitor closely what is happening: who accesses your pages, and what they are browsing. You can make changes quickly and easily. You are not at the whim of a computer controlled by others. My server, which runs on a computer in my office, has less down- time than the University's mainframe machines, because it is smaller and needs less maintenance. How? First, you need a connection to the internet (probably already the case, if you are a happy WWW browser). Then you need the server program. This runs in the background, monitoring one of the computer's ports, and when an http (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol) request arrives, sends off the pages concerned. Servers are now available for all types of systems, details of which can be found from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Servers. Two popular freeware servers for Unix systems are W3C's own server [* p.14 / p.15 *] (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Daemon/Status.html) and the NCSA server (http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/Overview.html). I use the latter, because I found it easier to compile on my particular system. The WWW pages at NCSA include detailed and thorough instructions for compiling, configuring, and installing. A popular server for the Macintosh is MacHTTP (http://www.starnine.com/machttp/machttpsoft.html), notable for its ease of installation. However, it is shareware, which means a small fee should be paid for continuing use. Having got your server, it needs to be configured, and here choices have to be made. For example, you will need to decide where all your WWW pages are (they should occupy exclusively a subdirectory tree below a point identified as the Document Root), the locations of log files, and whether or not any parts of the pages you are providing should have a restricted access, to name but a few. Mostly, you can go with the defaults at least until problems arise. Next, you need some WWW pages. These are plain text files, containing the information you want to present, with embedded commands from the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). You can enter these commands manually, which is much easier than it sounds, once you have the hang of it. There are also a number of programs available to help (see http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Tools/). In addition, I found books by Ford (1995) and Liu et al. (1994) especially useful. Access to useful advice for authors on style and etiquette can bepub/WWW/Provider/. The content, of course, is up to you, the proud new web administrator. There is nothing to stop you making available anything you like. But certain types of content can cause problems for users. 1) Much the biggest problem with use of the WWW today is speed of delivery of files across intercontinental links, with the trans-Atlantic lines being especially bad. Large files take longer to transmit, increasing delays, and increasing the chance of the line "hanging." So keep files as small as possible, breaking documents into linked pages so that the user has more control of what they get. Graphics files can be huge, although that problem can be mitigated if the user turns off automatic loading. I recommend stating the size of a graphics file next to its link, so the user knows what they are letting themselves in for before they start the download. 2) Keep the content simple, very simple. Some servers and browsers (notably Netscape) now allow very sophisticated handling of tables, forms, and multiple windows. This can look great, if the user has the appropriate software to deal with it. Not every one does, or if they do, prefer not to use it because of slow line speeds. The old-style line-mode browsers (such as lynx) work very well on simple WWW pages, and can make it possible to get information when lines are slow or difficult. But they will not work properly on highly complex, graphics-dominated pages, especially those with clickable images. It is well worth viewing your pages with as many browsers, including line-mode browsers, as possible to check on what the outside world gets. It is surprising how often an organisation presents a WWW page in which the name of the organization is presented within a huge graphic. With a line-mode browser, or any ordinary browser with images turned off, this never gets seen. Publicity? How will anyone know I have a WWW server? There are a zillion WWW indexes out there, all clamouring for details of your new site. If your site is within an organization that has its own pages, get the web administrator of the organization to include a link in these pages to your site. Post details of your new site in any relevant listserver or newsgroup, as this will draw it to the attention of others in your immediate field. And then sit back and watch. Other sites in the same field will add a link to your site in their pages. Surprisingly quickly, you will find your site getting visits from WWW-exploring robots (see below), and entries to it will begin to appear in the major WWW indices. If you cannot get your site linked in through an organizational hierarchy, you may need to make a bit more effort. Maintenance? You mean I have to look after it? Yes. The software and the hardware it is running on must be available 24 hours per day, 365 (366) days per year. Will it reboot, and set-up the server, automatically after a power-cut? If not, you need to keep an eye on it so you can do it manually. You are giving the outside world unrestricted access to (part of) your computer. So you need to check log files to see what users are doing, and ensure that they are not able to get into parts of the system they should not see. Log files accumulate information verbosely. (Did you know that a computer somewhere has logged every access to every WWW page you have ever made?) These files need to be checked and cleared out periodically. They are, however, an extremely useful source of information to a webmaster about who is using the WWW pages, and which ones attract attention. A file that logs errors is a useful source of information on errors [* p.15 / p.16 *] in the links embedded in a WWW pa non-existent page it is often because of a mistake in the URL. What can go wrong? Not too much, fortunately. There are reports of servers becoming clogged up by automated WWW systems (spiders, robots, etc) that cruise the WWW collecting WWW page details for indexes. Most of these are benign, but they can account for a significant proportion of log file statistics. It is possible to create a file called "robots.txt" with entries that tell a robot whether it is welcome or not. Of course, only well-behaved robots look... It is revealing, however, to check log files for which users have requested a file called "robots.txt," because they will almost certainly only be automated users of one kind or another. There is a useful list of these creatures at http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/robots.html, which can help in determining whether a user is automated or not. Direct feedback from users, in my experience, is extremely low. If there is a problem with a page, no one will tell you. Which means that it is really up to you, the web administrator, to make sure everything works properly. There are tools to help. Three that I have found especially useful are: 1) weblint (http://www.khoros.unm.edu/staff/neilb/weblint.html). This is a perl script that reads in WWW pages and checks the HTML syntax, printing out any errors. 2) Anchor Checker (http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/spider/q7f192/branch/tools.html) This program (available for unix and MS-Windows) checks that the links in your WWW pages actually work. 3) wwwstat (http://www.ics.uci.edu/WebSoft/wwwstat/). This is another perl script. It reads in NCSA server access log files, and summarizes the statistics conveniently, by machine, file, and date. It assumes that dates are in US format, but it is not too difficult to change it to the format used by your access log file, if this is non-US. Others are listed by W3C: (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Tools/). Who will read my pages? Astonishing numbers of people, from around the world. Purely as an illustration, I list below the numbers of machines that have accessed my WWW site, by continent, over the period 28 May 1995 to 23 May 1996. 1265 Europe, including FSU (317 within Cambridge) (27 countries) 1202North America (2 countries) 699Unresolved 77Australasia (2 countries) 65 Southeast Asia (9 countries) 24 South and Central America (7 countries) 11Near East (4 countries) 8 Africa (South Africa and Egypt only) The total of accesses from 3351 different IP addresses means an average of about nine new visitors per day. The geographical pattern of access is probably not untypical, at least for a European academic site. The lack of access from some regions, especially Africa, reflects current minimal penetration of internet use in many parts of the world. The "Unresolved" machines are those for which the Domain Name Server in Cambridge had no information (or was down at the time of access), and could not "resolve" the numeric IP address. The large numbers of these concerns me a little: I would like to know more about users of my pages. My "robots.txt" file has been requested 239 times (including multiple requests from the same robot). And I have had accesses from seven machines in the US military domain... Is it worth it? Definitely. It is a superb way to provide access to information. Although direct feedback is minimal, indirect response can be positive, and it is clearly an effective way to present information and publicize activities. I thank Kathy Willis for helpful comments on this note. Ford, A. (1995). Spinning the Web: how to provide information on the internet. International Thompson Publishing, London and New York. Liu, C., Peek, J., Jones, R., Buus, B. & Nye, A. (1994). Managing Internet Information Services. O'Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol, CA. [* p.16 / p.17 *] BOOK REVIEW: Maddy, D. & Brew, J.S. (Eds.) 1995. Statistical Modelling of Quaternary Science Data. Technical Guide 5. Quaternary Research Association, Cambridge. 271 pp. ISBN 0-907780-12-1. Price œ9.00 for members, œ16.00 for non-members; postage as applicable for UK or overseas destinations. It is obtainable from: Dr W.A.Mitchell (QRA Publications Secretary), School of Geological and Environmental Sciences, University of Luton, Park Square, Luton LU1 3JU UK Andre F. Lotter Geobotanisches Institut der Universitaet Bern Abt. Palaeooekologie Altenbergrain 21 CH-3013 Bern, Switzerland E-mail: lotter@sgi.unibe.ch Quaternary science is primarily a non-experimental subject. During the last two to three decades the statistical analysis of Quaternary data has become increasingly important, either as a tool for data exploration or, more recently, in the form of hypothesis testing in confirmatory data analysis. Traditional statistics textbooks, however, would rarely cover the problems that Quaternary scientists have been facing. Books on statistical methods in Quaternary science such as the one I have the pleasure to review, are therefore highly desirable. Avid readers might remember that Maddy & Brew (1993) were announcing the book in an INQUA newsletter and were looking for possible contributors three years ago. The book has eventually appeared and deserves a review in this newsletter. It is organised in seven chapters each written by different authors and focusing on different aspects of statistical analyses of Quaternary data. The chapters deal with explanatory modelling of uncorrelated and spatially or temporally correlated data, data reduction, ordination, and reconstruction. To each chapter there are one or several examples in order to illustrate the different methods. At the end of the book an index helps to find the relevant key-words in the different chapters. Furthermore, each author provides the relevant literature to his chapter as well as a list of the available software. The first chapter, written by Warren L. Kovach gives an introduction to "multivariate data analysis." He discusses the problem of data transformation prior to the analysis before going into details of different kinds of cluster analyses. Ordination methods, indirect gradient analyses (principal components analysis, principal co-ordinates analysis, correspondence analysis, detrended correspondence analysis), as well as direct gradient analyses (canonical correspondence analysis) are then explained and exemplified on pollen data. In chapter two John Walden and John P. Smith discuss simultaneous R- and Q-mode "factor analysis" by using two examples: the reader is guided step by step through the factor analysis of a hypothetical data set using MINITAB software. The second example uses geochemical and geomagnetic data to reconstruct the land-use change in a lake catchment. In chapter three David G. Green discusses "time and spatial analysis." In a first part, time series methods as a means to identify and model sources of change in time series are presented. The numerical zonation methods using Maher's (1992) SLOTSEE program as well as the cusum method to identify break points in individual curves are applied to pollen data. An extensive paragraph on time series analysis introduces the reader to the basics of this method by explaining filtering, standardisation, cross-correlation, auto-correlation, and spectral analysis. A further paragraph concentrates on spatial data analysis with emphasis on spatial pattern, estimation of number of objects, types, or area covered, as well as sampling fidelity. If you have a special interest in tree-ring and climate reconstruction then chapter four by Martin C. Bridge gives you an overview and a critical discussion of the basic statistical methods such as, e.g., crossmatching, autocorrelation, and standardisation used in this field of Quaternary science. In chapter five John S. Brew and Darrel Maddy deal with "generalised linear modelling." After an introduction they explain the general concepts of GLMs in terms of data classification, error functions, link functions, as well as parameter estimation. Three examples on depth-age modelling, logistic regression in relation to fluvial lithology, and log-linear analysis of pebble roundness data (using GLIM software) illustrate the use of these generalised linear models. A separate paragraph on statistical modelling with GLMs explains the procedure of model development step-by-step, such as the choice of variables, error and link functions, as well as model choice and evaluation. The sixth chapter consists of a comprehensive overview of "quantitative palaeoenvironmental reconstruction" written by H. John B. Birks. After a section on the general theory [* p.17 / p.18 *] behind the different models the importance of the basic assumptions and requirements for any quantitative palaeoenvironmental reconstruction are stressed. Statistical aspects of quantitative reconstruction such as linear versus unimodal models, estimation of prediction errors, and critical evaluation of the reconstruction are discussed in detail in this extensive chapter that includes one third of the whole book. The performance of modern biological training sets is assessed by means of the root mean square error and emphasis is laid on the use of a cross-validation through jack-knifing to estimate the root mean error of prediction. The following section on statistical methods first explains linear-based techniques such as classical and inverse linear regression, principal components regression as well as partial least squares regression. Moreover, the use of canonical correlation analysis and redundancy analysis regression makes the link to regression approaches introduced in the first chapter. Then, non-linear unimodal techniques such as maximum likelihood, correspondence analysis, canonical correspondence analysis and the widely used weighted averaging and weighted averaging partial least squares regression techniques are thoroughly presented. The following section on other methods of quantitative environmental reconstruction includes critical discussions of some prominent published examples on modern analogue techniques in relation to poll reconstructions and response surfaces (e.g. the mutual climate range method). The evaluation of environmental reconstruction is discussed in terms of lack-of-fit measures and sample specific root mean square errors of prediction as assessed through bootstrapping. Eventually, a comparison of the different regression techniques is given on the basis of the classical Imbrie & Kipp (1971) foraminifera and sea surface temperature and salinity data-set. In chapter seven David G. Green gives information on "on-line resources and information services" such as e-mail listservers and newsgroups. He lists some Gopher, WWW, and anonymous FTP site addresses relevant to Quaternary scientists and also gives and example on how to build up a WWW homepage. I am aware that the editors could not cover every aspect of statistical modelling relevant to Quaternary science. Due to my personal preferences, however, I would have liked to see a chapter on topics important in palaeoecological studies, such as generalised additive models, rates of change, and confirmatory data analysis. Nevertheless, I would very much recommend this book to Quaternary scientists and students in Quaternary science who are looking for an overview on the subject of statistical methods applicable to their data. For those who then want to go into more detail each chapter provides plenty of references that will guide the interested reader to the relevant literature. With its price of œ9.00 for QRA members (œ16.00 for non-members), this book is good value for money, and I congratulate the editors and authors to its completion. References. Maddy, D. & Brew, J.S. 1993. Statistical Modelling of Quaternary Science Data: a practical manual. INQUA Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-handling Methods Newsletter 8, 13. Maher, L.J. 1992. SLOTDEEP.EXE manual correlation using the dissimilarity matrix. INQUA Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data- handling Methods Newsletter 9, 21-26. Imbrie, J., & Kipp, N. G. 1971. A new micropalaeontological methods for quantitative paleoclimatology: application to late Pleistocene Carribean core V28-238. In: Turekian, K.K. (ed.), The late Cenozoic glacial ages. Yale University Press, New Haven. pp. 77-181. Statistical Modelling of Quaternary Science Data: Trials and Tribulations Dr Darrel Maddy Centre for Environmental Change & Quaternary Research Francis Close Hall, Swindon Road, Cheltenham, UK E-mail: Dmaddy@chelt.ac.uk Like most guidebook ventures it would be easy to say "if I knew what I know now I would have run a mile." Luckily I know who to blame for this. As a postgraduate at Royal Holloway University of London I was fortunate to come under the influence of John Brew. John had recently joined the academic staff, trained as an engineer, he came from a position where he had been undertaking operational research using clinical trial data for a local health authority. An unusual background perhaps but this serves to demonstrate the vision of Prof. David Bowen (head of the Quaternary Research Centre) who realised the need to bring on board specialists who could utilise numerical and statistical techniques. I had always been interested in the application of statistical techniques from the days I had written my first BASIC program to allow me to complete my undergraduate regression practicals. In some ways I had been fortunate to catch the end of the era when data analysis formed a prominent role in undergraduate [* p.18 / p.19 *] Physical Geography (what chance today's undergraduates?). However the quantitative revolution in geography had stalled, in fact it had stagnated, with only a few individuals continuing to take an interest in developments in main stream statistics. John introduced me to a new world which offered great possibilities for the analysis of qualitative data, in particular there was this rather intriguing family of statistical models grouped together under the rather uninformative title of Generalised Linear Models. Enlightened by his experience I began a mini-crusade to promote utilisation of these methods. As my own research expanded into the area of palaeoecology I delved deeper into the statistical literature and discovered a wealth of different techniques including correspondence analysis (particularly the wonderful work of Cajo ter Braak,) and the exciting world of transfer function work. Although a battery of techniques existed their use was restricted to a select band of dedicated individuals with the wider Quaternary community seemingly largely ignorant of its potential use in a much wider context. Mainstream statistics packages such as SPSS and Statgraphics had begun to include some of these techniques and desktop PCS were now cheap and powerful enough to make them widely available and accessible for the first time. Hence an idea was born what was needed was a cheap technical guide short and sweet to attract the interest of the wider community. From here we turned to the Quaternary Research Association, whose excellent series of technical guides were cheap and well respected exactly what we were looking for. Could a commercial publisher have produced a guide for œ10? Our vision was perhaps optimistic. How do you cover relatively advanced statistics when the general readership may have forgotten about regression or worse yet never undertaken any statistical analysis (yes they do exist!). We hoped to make it a practical manual, a kind of cookbook, but we had to modify this both in the light of the manuscripts and because it ultimately proved too ambitious. We decided instead to try and cater for a range of abilities with chapters which would act in some cases as memory joggers whilst encouraging further development. Other chapters would introduce new concepts. Thanks to the help of Lou Maher who allowed us to call for contributors in this Newsletter, our quest was greatly aided by those who volunteered to write the various sections. An international list of contributors including John Birks (Norway) and David Green (Australia) has its own problems especially when trying to meet deadlines. However we decided to take a pragmatic view and allow the authors time to write contributions they could be proud of. We provided only a brief list of guidelines which were observed religiously by often surprisingly co-operative contributors. Although our production time-table slipped progressively, the QRA remained supportive. As with all such ventures the contributors produced their manuscripts at widely differing rates. The chapters on Factor Analysis (John Waldon and John Smith) and methods appropriate to tree-ring sequence matching (Mquickly as they present short case studies of specific techniques. Warren Kovach had the unenviable task of summarising Multivariate Data Analysis and David Green the equally impossible task of summarising Time Series Methods - both in single chapters. Given the space limitations both have completed their contributions with considerable merit and should provide the reader with sufficient knowledge to approach these vast subject areas with confidence. Our own chapter on Generalised linear models went through several modifications with much soul searching over the precise balance between theory and practise I am not certain we achieved the balance we would have wished for. Perhaps the most amazing contribution is that of John Birks. With typically thoroughness his review of Quantitative palaeoenvironmental reconstruction is, in my view, the most impressive chapter ever written on the subject miss it at your peril! During the preparation of the guide we suffered a number of further difficulties not the least of which was the departure of John from Royal Holloway. Unfortunately some of his colleagues did not share the early vision of David Bowen and it was time for him to move on. Utilising e-mail from home the work continued however. Final submission of the document produced a number of new headaches. Due to financial constraints the printing and binding of the Guide was undertaken in the Geography Department at Durham University. Early attempts suffered from inadequate binding (pages often falling out) and poor cover quality. The combined efforts of Dr David Bridgland and Dr Wishart Mitchell (both acting on behalf of the QRA) resolved these problems despite my persistent moaning. Did we succeed? Well we certainly completed the guide! Perhaps the whole is not as coherent as we would have liked and perhaps not as practical as we first envisaged. [* p.19 / p.20 *] There are many things that can be criticized (and I am sure they will be!) and indeed there are a number of things we would do differently if we started all over again but generally we are satisfied with the outcome. Sales are evidently going well but we would be happy to know what you think. If you would like a copy of the guide, the full reference is listed at the beginning of its review by Andre Lotter. NEW BOOKSHELF 11 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. Allen, J.R.L. et al. (Eds.) 1994. Palaeoclimates and Modelling. Chapman & Hall, London. 140 pp. Bailey, K.D. 1994. Typologies and Taxonomies. An Introduction to Classification Techniques. Sage University Press, Thousand Oaks. 90 pp. Paperback. Barnett, V. & Turkman, K.F. (Eds.) 1994. Statistics for the Environment 2. Water Related Issues. J. Wiley & Sons, Chichester. 391 pp. Berglund, B.E., Birks, H.J.B., Ralska-Jasiewiczowa, M. & Wright, H.E. (Eds.) 1996. Palaeoecological Events during the last 15000 years. Regional Syntheses of Palaeoecological Studies of Lakes and Mires in Europe. J. Wiley & Sons, Chichester. 764 pp. Bishop, C.M. 1995. Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 482 pp. Paperback. Breiman, L., Friedman, J.H., Olshen, R.A. & Stone, C.J. 1993. Classification and Regression Trees. Chapman & Hall, New York. 358 pp. Paperback. Brown, C. 1995. Chaos and Catastrophe Theories. Sage University Press, Thousand Oaks. 77 pp. Paperback. Brown, P.J. 1993. Measurements, Regression, and Calibration. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 201 pp. Chambers, J.M. & Hastie, T.J. (Eds.) 1992. Statistical Models in S. Wadsworth & Brooks, Pacific Grove, California. 608 pp. Paperback. Chapin, F.S. & K”rner, C. (Eds.) 1995. Arctic and Alpine Biodiversity. Patterns, Causes and Ecosystem Consequences. Ecological Studies 113, Springer-Verlag, Berlin. 332 pp. Cromwell, J.B. et al. 1994. Multivariate Tests for Time Series Models. Sage University Press, Thousand Oaks. 98 pp. Paperback. Crutzen, P.J. & Goldhammer, J.G. (Eds.) 1993. Fire in the Environment. The Ecological, Atmospheric, and Climatic Importance of Vegetation Fires. J. Wiley & Sons, Chichester. 400 pp. Diggle, P.J., Liang, K.-Y. & Zeger, S.L. 1994. Analysis of Longitudinal Data. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 253 pp. Donner, J. 1995. The Quaternary History of Scandinavia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 200 pp. Duff, K.E., Zeeb, B.A. & Smol, J.P. 1995. Atlas of Chrysophyte Cysts. Kluwer, Dordrecht. 189 pp. Edington, E.S. 1995. Randomization Tests (Third Edition, Revised and Expanded). Marcel Dekker, New York. 409 pp. Efron, B. & Tibshirani, R.J. 1993. An Introduction to the Bootstrap. Chapman and Hall, New York. 436 pp. Elias, S.E. 1995. The Ice-Age History of Alaskan National Parks. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington. 150 pp. Paperback. Ennos, A.R. & Bailey, S.E.R. 1995. Problem Solving in Environmental Biology. Longman, London. 175 pp. Paperback. Everitt, B.B. 1994. A Handbook of Statistical Analyses using S- Plus. Chapman and Hall, London. 143 pp. Paperback. Forman, R.T.T. 1995. Land Mosaics - The Ecology of Landscapes and Regions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 632 pp. Paperback. Fotheringham, S. & Rogerson, P. 1995. Spatial Analysis and GIS. Taylor & Francis, London. 281 pp. Paperback. Frenzel, B. (Ed.) 1995. Problems of stable isotopes in tree- rings, lake sediments and peat-bogs as climatic evidence for the Holocene. Pal„oklimaforschung 15, 189 pp. Frenzel, B. (Ed.) 1995. European river activity and climatic change during the Lateglacial and early Holocene. Pal„oklimaforschung 14, 226 pp. Frenzel, B. (Ed.) 1995. Solar output and climate during the Holocene. Pal„oklimaforschung 16, 186 pp. Frenzel, B., Reisch, L. & Weiss, M.M. (eds.) 1994. Evaluation of land surfaces cleared from forests in the Mediterranean region during the time of the Roman Empire. Pal„oklimaforschung 10, 168 pp. Gilster, P. 1994. Finding it on the Internet - The essential guide to archie, Veronica, Gopher, WAIS, WWW (including Mosaic), and other search and browsing tools. Wiley, New York. 302 pp. Paperback. Gliemeroth, A.K. 1995. Pal„ookologische Untersuchungen ber die letzten 22,000 Jahre in Europa. Pal„oklimaforschung 18, 252 pp. Graves, J. & Reavey, D. 1996. Global Environmental [* p.20 / p.21 *] Change - Plants, Animals, & Communities. Longman, London. 226 pp. Paperback. Gower, J.C. & Hand, D.J. 1996. Biplots. Chapman & Hall, London. 277 pp. Green, P.J. & Silverman, B.W. 1994 Nonparametric Regression and Generalized Linear Models. Chapman and Hall, London. 182 pp. Hand, D. & Crowder, M. 1996. Practical Longitudinal Data Analysis. Chapman & Hall, London. 232 pp. Huston, M. 1994. Biological Diversity. The Coexistence of Species on Changing Landscapes. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 681 pp. Paperback. Krassilov, V.A. 1995. Ecosystem and Egosystem Function. Pensoft Publishers, Sofia and Moscow. 172 pp. Paperback. Krzanowski, W.J. (Ed.) 1995. Recent Advances in Descriptive Multivariate Analysis. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 362 pp. Liao, T.F. 1994. Interpreting Probability Models. Logit, Probit and other Generalized Linear Models. Sage University Press, Thousand Oaks. 88 pp. Paperback. Lindsey, J.K. 1993. Models for Repeated Measurements. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 413 pp. Lindsey, J.K. 1995. Modelling Frequency and Count Data. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 291 pp. Lotter, A.F. & Ammann, B. (Eds.) 1994. Festschrift Gerhard Lang. Beitrage zur Systematik und Evolution, Floristik und Gebotanik, Vegetationsgeschichte und Pal„o”kologie. Dissertationes Botanicae 234. J. Cramer, Berlin. 587 pp. Maddy, D. & Brew, J.S. (Eds.) 1995. Statistical Modelling of Quaternary Science Data. Quaternary Research Association Technical Guide 5, Quaternary Research Association, Cambridge. 271 pp. (includes chapters by Warren Kovach, David Green, John Brew and Darrel Maddy, John Wadden and John Smith, Martin Bridge, and John Birks). Menard, S. 1995. Applied Logistic Regression Analysis. Sage University Press, Thousand Oaks. 98 pp. Paperback. Podani, J. 1994 Multivariate Data Analysis in Ecology and Systematics - A Methodological Guide to the SYN-TAX 5.0 Package. SPB Academic Publishing, The Hague. 316 pp. Paperback. Powell, T.M. & Steele, J.H. (Eds.) 1995. Ecological Time Series. Chapman & Hall, New York. 491 pp. Paperback. Rosenzweig, M.L. 1995. Species Diversity in Space and Time. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 436 pp. Paperback. Schneider, D.C. 1994. Quantitative Ecology - Spatial and Temporal Scaling. Academic Press, San Diego. 395 pp. Sokal, R.R. & Rohlf, F.J. 1995. Biometry. The Principles and Practice of Statistics in Biological Research. Third edition. W.H. Freeman, New York. 887 pp. Venables, W.N. and Ripley, B.D. 1994. Modern Applied Statistics with S-Plus. Springer Verlag, New York. 462 pp. With diskette. Togetherness - MVSP and SIMSTAT Warren Kovach Kovach Computing Services 85 Nant-y-Felin Pentraeth, Isle of Anglesey LL75 8UY Wales, U.K. E-mail: WarrenK@kovcomp.demon.co.uk Those of you who were receiving this newsletter in its earlier incarnation will have read about MVSP - A MultiVariate Statistical Package (described in issues 4 and 10). For those who missed it, MVSP performs a number of analyses commonly used in Quaternary palynology. These include several types of eigenanalysis ordinations: principal components (PCA), principal coordinates (PCO), and correspondence/detrended correspondence analyses (CA/DCA). It can also perform cluster analysis, using nineteen different distance or similarity measures and seven clustering strategies. Clustering can be stratigraphically constrained, a feature which is very useful in Quaternary work. Diversity indices may be calculated on ecological data; these include Simpson's, Shannon's, and Brillouin's indices. Development work on MVSP continues and a Windows version is nearing completion. It will be available later this year. Besides the modernized user interface, the new MVSP will have improved graphics, a greatly expanded data matrix size (up to 2 billion rows and columns!) and will perform canonical correspondence analysis, in which environmental data can be ordinated along with the species data, giving a direct gradient analysis. Last year I teamed up with Normand Peladeau (Montreal, Canada), the author of SIMSTAT, the inexpensive shareware statistics program for DOS. This program calculates a wide variety of general statistical tests, including basic stats, anova, regression (linear, non-linear and multiple), time series analysis, various nonparametric analyses and bootstrap analysis. [* p.21 / p.22 *] I became a distributor of SIMSTAT and, more importantly, we worked together to link the MVSP and SIMSTAT programs. This allows the user to run the powerful multivariate analyses of MVSP from within SIMSTAT, using the same data files and user interface as when running SIMSTAT's analyses. The combination of these two programs gives you much of the power of the big commercial statistical packages, but at a fraction of the cost. SIMSTAT has an add-in menu that allows a number of programs, including MVSP to be run. When MVSP is selected from that Add-in menu, a second menu is displayed, allowing you to choose the basic analysis desired (see Fig. 1). You are then presented with a dialog box that lets you change all the user options available in MVSP. Once you are done, SIMSTAT sends its currently open data file to MVSP and sets it off analysing the data. The results are then placed in SIMSTAT's results browser, letting you look at and print the output. If you choose to have graphic plots displayed in MVSP you can view and print these in the normal way. SIMSTAT can import Lotus, dBase, SPSS/PC+ and ASCII files and it has its own data editor for entering new data. It also has a number of powerful data manipulation functions, such as recoding and variable transformation, to make it the ideal system for maintaining your data files. A Windows version of SIMSTAT is in beta-test and will be released very shortly (perhaps by the time you read this). It will retain the link to MVSP for DOS, allowing you to run MVSP analyses under Windows. When the Windows version of MVSP is released it too will work with SIMSTAT for Windows. The combined package of MVSP and SIMSTAT for DOS is available at the special price of GBœ99 (US$149) plus shipping & handling (a 10% savings over the separate prices). Full descriptions and shareware versions of both programs, plus the SIM2MVSP utility needed to tie the two together, are available from my Web pages at: http://www.compulink.co.uk/~kovcomp/ (Do not forget the ~ and the final / !). If you would like any more information please contact me. EXTENSIONS TO SLOTTING PROGRAM PCSLOT Malcolm Clark Department of Mathematics Monash University Clayton, Victoria, Australia, 3168 E-mail: Malcolm.Clark@sci.monash.edu.au A major limitation of previous versions of my program PCSLOT (for slotting two sequences together into a single combined sequence) has been that both sequences must comprise no more than 100 cases, points or levels. This restriction was necessary because all calculations were done using the PC's conventional memory. Steve Juggins, University of Newcastle, UK, is at present modifying the program so that it will make use of extended memory (RAM) whenever this is available. The size of sequences that can be handled by PCSLOT will then be limited only by the amount of RAM available. In addition, the number of variables, e.g. taxa, will be increased beyond the present limit of 20. In the meantime, I have modified PCSLOT so that the latest version, Version 1.7, has the option of running under batch mode. This is particularly useful when you want to run PCSLOT repeatedly, for example doing the same analysis on many different sets of data, or doing repeated analyses on the same data. In batch mode, you make a simple change to the control file, and supply the name of that file when invoking PCSLOT. The program then runs automatically without prompting for file names or other interactive options. Version 1.7 is available by anonymous ftp from the INQUA File Boutique at the University of Wisconsin. Please contact me by electronic mail for further informa- [* p.22 / p.23 *] tion about the expanded version of the program being developed by Steve Juggins. Reference. Clark, R. M., 1995. Depth-matching using PCSLOT Version 1.6. INQUA-Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 13:11-13. NAPD FOSSIL POLLEN DATA FILE TO SPREADSHEET CONVERSION UTILITY Pierre Zippi 7518 Twin Oaks Court Garland, TX 75044, USA E-mail: paz@airmail.net NAPDtoSpread 1.0 makes fossil pollen data available to researchers using the Macintosh computer platform. The wealth of fossil pollen data available from the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program can be converted to a format where it can be utilized by most commercial data analysis software on the Macintosh, DOS, Windows and UNIX computer platforms. The NAPD FOSSIL.asc to Spreadsheet Conversion Utility will convert the Fossil Pollen database files, (.ASC, .F70, and .P15 files) available from the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program web site (http://www.ngdc.noaa .gov/paleo/napd.html ), to the standard tab-delimited ASCII spreadsheet format. The spreadsheet data can be referenced to depth or interpreted age (if age is available in the original data set). The software operation is very simple: 1) Download the fossil pollen data files from the paleoclimate internet site. 2) Open a NOAA FOSSIL.ASC, .F70, or .P15 source file with the NAPDtoSpread 1.0 software utility. 3) Optionally, type in a file name for the converted spreadsheet file (a new filename based on the original name is automatically suggested). The converted data is saved as a TEXT file with an EXCEL icon. Depth or age values are contained in the first column of each row. Species (or category) names are contained in the first row as the column headers, and the resulting sample-by-species matrix is filled out with the corresponding abundance data. Only depth (age), species names and count data are saved. All commentary information is ignored (i.e. all lines staring with the "#" symbol). In the original format, the data is not readily available for import into most commercial software applications. However, once in spreadsheet format, the utility of the pollen data is greatly enhanced. The resulting tab-delimited ASCII spreadsheet of data can be opened or imported into almost any computer software application on the Macintosh, DOS, Windows and UNIX platforms. A wide variety of proven commercial spreadsheet or statistical applications may be used to manipulate and analyze the data. WellPlot 1.0 (available from Pierre Zippi) may be used to make range charts and pollen diagrams that can be incorporated into by virtually any Macintosh document. More information about the NAPDtoSpread 1.0 and other stratigraphic, geologic and counting software (mainly for the Macintosh) may be found at my web site: "http://web2.airmail.net/paz/PAZhome.html". Alternatively, you may write to me at the address listed above. AN UPDATE ON DATA SETS AND DATA HANDLING TOOLS AVAILABLE FROM THE WORLD DATA CENTER-A FOR PALEOCLIMATOLOGY David M. Anderson, Bruce Bauer, John Keltner, Jonathan T. Overpeck, and Robert S. Webb NOAA Paleoclimatology Program 325 Broadway, Code E/GC Boulder, CO, 80303 USA ( URL address: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html ). This update provides an introduction to some of the new data sets and data handling tools available from the World Data Center-A located in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Additional information is available in past Data Handling Newsletters, in WDC-A pamphlets and publications (including a complete list of data sets), and of course, at our web site listed above. Scope of Data is Expanding The scope of data archived at the World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology continues to expand. Much credit for the expansion goes to the heroic efforts of Data Coopera- [* p.23 / p.24 *] tives that have worked hard to compile and organize new data sets for use by paleoenvironmental scientists around the world. In particular, new ice core and tree ring data sets have expanded the geographical range of data available from the WDC-A. A second source of new data sets has come from agreements with the journals Paleolimnology and Paleoceanography to serve as an electronic repository for published data sets. These data are made available as soon as the journal volume appears, or later when the data are received at the WDC-A. In most cases, this provides rapid access to an electronic version of a newly- published data set. Data sets are available in their original format (as submitted by the contributor) as well as in alternate formats designed to meet specific scientific objectives and to provide consistency between different types of data. The alternate formats consist of ASCII files that include site and contributor information, and for stratigraphic data, depth, age, and measurements. These additional formats are easily generated once the data have been placed into a relational database. The WDC-A uses relational databases to organize both large and small data sets, following the successful practice of several data cooperatives. Relational databases offer many advantages. The most valuable is the ability to query and retrieve any subset of information in the database. For example, one can quickly and easily locate all the data for the Younger Dryas time interval, independent of data type and source. Such a search would be very difficult if the data were only available in their original format. Queries can be submitted based on the information a user provides on a World Wide Web form. This eliminates the need for the user to purchase and learn the specialized database software and the structure of the database. Relational databases also make the archiving of data more efficient, and provide error-checking and other tools. Finally, relational databases can be manipulated programmatically to enhance the power and flexibility of managing data. An entire archive of ASCII data files for a data CD-ROM or FTP site can be produced automatically whenever the database is updated. PaleoVu Now Available for Mac and PCS PaleoVu, a computer program to browse, visualize, and subset selected paleoclimate data, is now available for Macintosh and PC (windows) computers. PaleoVu is a great way to search for data in a geographic region, or become more familiar with different types of data that might be useful for a particular scientific problem. Here at the WDC-A, we often use PaleoVu to answer phone queries, such as "Is there any data regarding sea level rise in South America?" PaleoVu is also a great way to export a subset of data in a format that makes plotting or analysis easy. Once the data are selected geographically and plotted within PaleoVu, they can be exported in several different formats that can be read by text editors, or graphics and analysis packages. PaleoVu is a stand-alone application, meaning that once you install the software and data sets, you do not need proprietary software, or access to the Internet to use it. Data are stored in compact binary files on your computer, and for those short on disk space, the installation routine lets you choose which data sets to install. A CD-ROM version is planned (see below). How To Obtain PaleoVu The PaleoVu program, and associated data sets, can be obtained free of charge over the Internet, via anonymous FTP (address ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov) or using a Web browser (URL:http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html). PaleoVu may also be ordered on diskettes for the cost of reproduction (17 diskettes, $425.00 US). To order diskettes, one can fax us at (303) 497-6513, or send mail to the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program, 325 Broadway, Code E/GC, Boulder, CO, 80303 USA World Wide Web Tools The WDC-A web site is not only a place to get data and data handling tools, but also has links to other sites and information about paleoclimatology. The site has an ever-expanding set of links to, and descriptions of other programs. A stop at the WDC- A site is a quick way to augment any search for information on paleoclimatology, and find resources that might not appear in a general web or other Internet search. The WDC-A also has new tools for the display and analysis of paleoclimate (and other) data. Several of these, including MapPad*, SiteSeer*, ShowTime* ( * indicates a stand-alone program that can be downloaded to your own computer), and the Address Exchange, were described by John Keltner in the January 1995 Newsletter (#13). At the WDC-A we are taking advantage of forms- based web pages that allow users to make searches and operations based on forms that the users create. Forms are web pages that allow the user to enter information by filling in fields or checking boxes. This information is then read or processed by the host, and results returned to the user (usually) as a new web page. The Address Exchange is one type of form, where we can obtain address information from the user (we could also create a [* p.24 / p.25 *] form for data entry, or site information). The climate model output search page is another example, where the user can create a very selective search by selecting items on a form. This makes the web much more than a static book-like display of information, because it makes possible a two-way exchange of data and information. How To: To look as some of the forms now in use, try the Address exchange page at the WDC-A URL: http://ww w.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/addrx.html). While you are there, make sure your own address information is up to date! For more information on creating and using html forms, one place to start is the web page at NCSA, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The URL address of the page that describes forms is: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/ Forms/ A Mirror It is no secret that the growing popularity of the web slows the speed and degrades the performance of the Internet. To maintain the highest-quality access to paleoclimate data from sites around the world, the WDC-A has recently established a mirror site in Europe. Thanks to the assistance and cooperation of Medias France and the folks in the European Pollen Community, scientists in Europe can get much faster Internet response times. How To: Access to the server in France is enabled when users check a box on one of our web page data search forms. The anonymous FTP site can also be accessed directly (medias.meteo.fr). HELP WITH MAPINFO Lisa Wells Department of Geology Vanderbilt University Post Office Box 28, Station B Nashville, TN 37235 E-mail: wellsle@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu I would like to announce the availability of a new book "Understanding MapInfo: A Structured Guide" by Ian Johnson. For anyone using or trying to learn MapInfo, a desktop GIS program for Mac or Windows, you will know that the manuals are not very helpful. I have recently been teaching myself this program and have found Ian's book incredibly helpful and preferable in most instances to the manuals. There do not seem to be comparable books available, so I recommend it to any one using or teaching this program. The book provides both hints, explanations and up- front discussions of the strengths and limitations of this program. This book is a substantial revision of "Mapping Archaeological Data: A Structured Introduction to MapInfo," and while written to a more general audience, the examples are largely based on archaeological problems. As such, it is also more useful to the Quaternary Scientist than the standard books which focus on business applications of GIS. If you have questions you can contact Ian Johnson directly at: Ian.Johnson@Antiquity.su.edu.au. The book can be ordered from the University of Sydney: Attn: Philippa Holy, Publications, Archaeological Computing Facility, Archaeology (P & H), University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia E-mail: Philippa.Holy@Antiquity.su.edu.au Cost AUS$48 plus shipping (Australia $10; Other AUS $20). Multiply by 0.78 for $US. Johnson, Ian, Understanding MapInfo: A Structured Guide, ISBN 1 86451 016 1, 1996 (Ed. The following is a note from author Ian Johnson) Detailed information on the book, including a full table of contents, readers comments and a sample chapter are available from: http://www.arts.su.edu.au/Arts/departs/archaeol/suams.html I am happy to answer any specific questions people may have about the book (or more generally about non-business applications of MapInfo). Ian Johnson, Coordinator, Archaeological Computing Laboratory, University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia, Tel: +61 2 351 3142, Fax: +61 2 351 4889, Ian.Johnson@Antiquity.su.edu.au [* p.25 / p.26 *] PROTOCOLS FOR THE EUROPEAN POLLEN DATABASE (As revised 3 February 1996 - Cracow; Reprinted from EPD Newsletter No. 6, p. 5-6.) Editorial Board: S. Hicks, H. Lamb, J.-L. de Beaulieu and R. Cheddadi The following protocols for the database were discussed and agreed by the Advisory Board at its meeting in Cracow. In the event that additional changes are necessary in the future, all database contributors and users will be notified and the changes will be published in the Newsletter of the European Pollen Database. The current protocol will also be distributed with any data transferred from the EPD to the user. A. Data 1. Data must consist of the original counts, not percentages or digitized data. 2. The database must contain the original taxonomic identifications, with exceptions of exact nomenclatural synonymy. As primary entries, taxa will not be lumped into higher taxonomic groups in the database. For practical reasons, higher-level hierarchies will exist within the database in two ways; the first will be according to pollen morphology, the second according to plant taxonomy. 3. Data will be classified as restricted or unrestricted. All data will be available in the EPD, although restricted data can be used only as provided below. 4. Unrestricted data are available for all uses, and are included in the EPD portion of the World Data Center-A (Paleoclimatology) and the EPD portion of the Global Pollen Database, which are distributed from various electronic sites globally. 5. Restricted data may be used only be permission of the data originator. Appropriate and ethical use of restricted data is the responsibility of the data user. 6. Restrictions on data will expire three years after they are submitted to the EPD. Just prior to the time of expiration, the data originator will be contacted by the staff of the EPD with a reminder of the pending change. The originator may extend restricted status for further periods of three years by so informing the EPD each time a three-year period expires. B. Contributors 1. Can declare data unrestricted or restricted, but are strongly encouraged to provide data in unrestricted form so as to allow widespread use. 2. Can ask to verify that data in the database are correct. As a mater of general policy. the central database should routinely return to the data originator a hardcopy printout of the data as they are entered in the database for optional verification by the originator. 3. May use any unrestricted data. 4. Can obtain copies of application software and the database itself for use on his/her own computer. 5. Should receive a periodic newsletter or report concerning the database. 6. Can ask at any time that his/her data be withdrawn from the database or that their status (unrestricted or restricted) be changed. 7. May, by so informing the EPD, extend the restricted status of a data set after the standard three years. 8. In the case of a dispute regarding inappropriate use of restricted data, the Advisory Board will serve as arbitrator. C. Users 1. Must ask permission from the data originator for use of restricted data. 2. Should, as a matter of courtesy, inform data originators of the uses being made of their data. 3. If the contributor wishes, should show the contributor results of analyses and manuscripts for publication for critical comment. 4. Should cite, in any publication using data from the database, the contributors' original publications describing their data. 5. Should send contributors reprints of publications that use their data. 6. Should acknowledge contributors for use of unpublished data and for any advice they may have provided. 7. No user can pass data on to another party. All users must obtain data from the central database. 8. Normal ethics apply to co-authorship of publications. The contributor should be invited to be a co-author if a user makes significant use of a single contributor's data, or a single contributor's data comprise a substantial portion of a larger dataset analyzed, or a contributor makes a significant contribution to the analysis of the data or to the interpretation of the results. This guideline applies to unrestricted as well as to restricted data. 9. The data are available only to non-profit-making organizations and for research. Profit-making organizations by use the data, even for legitimate uses, only with the written consent of the Advisory Board, who will determine or negotiate the payment of any fee required. [* p.26 / p.27 *] CONVERT YOUR DATA Louis Maher Data-handling often involves converting data from one unit of measurement to another. Some electronic calculators can convert units with the press of a key. Many unix systems have a conversion program built in. When you type units you will be asked in sequence what unit of measure you have and what measurement unit you wish to convert it to? A conversion multiplier (and its reciprocal) will then be displayed. If you use unix, type man units to read its manual. When I was in college, the local engineering society printed a four-page table of conversion factors as a center-fold to its journal. I have kept the sheets in file drawers for 40 years, mislaying them many times. Finally I decided to put them in a computer program that would be harder to lose. So with the original list and additions from other sources, I soon had over 900 factors to include. How much does a 20-stone man weigh in pounds? If a plane climbs at 1500 feet per minute, what is this in km per hour? (See *, below, for answers.) I call this DOS program CONVERT.EXE. To illustrate how it works, let us assume we measured a small rectangular pond on a U.S. map and found its surface area to be about 75,000 sq. ft. We wish to convert the area to sq. meters. When we start CONVERT from DOS (or a DOS window), it loads its data into memory and fills its screen with conversion factors starting with the first item, "abamperes," high-lighted. We need to find the line converting square feet to sq. meters (Fig. 1). The instructions are always at the bottom of the screen. We can move using the Up/Down arrow keys, the Page Up and Page Down keys, and the Enter key. We can get to the end of the list with the End key and back to the start with the Home key. But with hundreds of factors, it is easiest to type the first letter or letters we want to see. Typing square f will get us to the square feet category and the arrow keys can do the rest. When the desired high-lighted pair is reached, touching the F5 key brings up the screen to convert square feet to sq. meters (Fig. 2). Typing in 75000 yields the answer 6970 sq. meters. We are warned that the significant digits of the conversion factor should be used in interpreting the precision of the answer. We can convert other values if we wish. Touching the Enter key without any data returns us to the menu of factors. Most of the conversions are based on a single multiplier, but searching for temp allows you to convert Cų to Fų or Fų to Cų. You can pick up a copy from the File Boutique. It is an executable file so you will want an exact binary copy. If you use anonymous ftp, remember to type the word bin first. (*Answers: 20 stones = 280 pounds. 1500 feet per minute = 27.44 kph.) ANNOUNCEMENT: The Tilia List Server, a place for hot tips, questions, and news about updates. To subscribe, address a message to: listproc@lists.colorado.edu with the contents of the message being: subscribe tilia-l [* p.27 / p.28 *] FIRST AID FOR Tilia, psimpoll, MapPad, Windows95 (plus DOS- users of Windows95) and Netscape Users By Dr. Triage  Tilia and TiliałGraph  Dr. Triage: Can we use Tilia and other DOS programs with Microsoft Windows95? Do we have to keep our DOS-directory files to run them? I am Somewhat Uncertain. Dear S. Uncertain: You can run your DOS programs with Windows95 without a separate DOS directory. For example, you can run Tilia in a DOS window without any problems. (However, read the next letter to me before you try to run TiliałGraph.) Some DOS programs like the Tilia spreadsheet are difficult to read without using the whole screen. To use the whole screen, click on the 4-arrowed-box icon at the top edge of the DOS window. But once you click that box, the full screen becomes the default, and you will not see a small DOS window again until you specifically request it. When you finish the task that required using the full screen, one easy way to restore things is to press the double-key sequence: Alt-Tab. That returns you to the desktop with the DOS icon on the lower task bar. Right-click on the icon; click on Properties; click on the tab for Screen, and in the Usage box, see that Window is selected rather than Full Screen. D.T. Dr. Triage: How can we use TiliałGraph with Microsoft Windows95? A Legion of Users. Dear A. Legion: Eric Grimm's program Tilia can be run without difficulty in a DOS Window under Windows95. But DO NOT go directly to TiliałGraph (TłG) from Tilia's menu; TłG is a DOS program that requires certain ancillary information and programs be loaded by way of DOS's autoexec.bat file. Therefore you should treat TłG as a stand-alone program. You must do a little preparatory work before you use TłG for the first time under Windows95. In the following, I assume you have installed Windows on drive C: and Tilia on drive D:. If you use different drives, edit the drive letters in the following example: From Windows95, click in succession: Start | Programs | Windows Explorer. Using the directory tree, find the drive with TłG (say, D:\TILIA). Right-Click on TłG. In the resulting dialogue box click on Properties, and on the Properties dialogue box click on the Program tab. In the Cmd Line text box, type: D:\TILIA\TG.EXE, and in the Working Directory textbox type: D:\TILIA\DATA. Then click on the Advanced button near the bottom of the dialogue box. On the Advanced Settings dialogue box, click (to add a check mark) on "MS-Dos mode" and "Wait before Entering MS-Dos mode." Click on the choice "Specify a new MS-Dos configuration." Then in the text window labeled "CONFIG.SYS for MS DOS mode," type the two lines: DOS=HIGH,UMB DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS In the text window labeled "AUTOEXEC.BAT for MS DOS mode," type the following lines: SET TMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP SET TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP SET PROMPT=$P$G SET WINBOOTDIR=C:\WINDOWS SET PATH=D:\TILIA;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND SET KERNEL=D:\TILIA SET CURSORMODE=TRUE SET CGIPATH=D:\TILIA\DRIVERS D:\TILIA\DRIVERS.EXE Then click on "Ok" until you are back to the Windows Explorer screen. From now on when you double-click TG.EXE in Windows Explorer, you will be asked if you wish to go to DOS mode. If you click Yes, your computer will restart and run TłG in DOS mode. When you quit TłG, Windows95 will again resume. D.T. Dear Dr. Triage: You once told us how to get Tiliał Graph to output a *.DXF (Drawing Interchange File) so TłG's diagram can be further edited by CADD and other Drawing/Sketch programs that can import *.DXF files. I cannot find the reference. Issue Please! Dear I. Please: My explanation on page 28 of the July 1992 (no. 8) issue of the Data-Handling Newsletter was really too short to be useful. You can get TłG to "print" its diagram as a DXF file by a somewhat involved process that takes longer to describe than to do. Go to the Tilia subdirectory called DRIVERS. Look at the files, and you should see CGI. CFG as well as another called DXFTEXT.SYS. The CGI.CFG file is an ASCII configuration file listing all the defaults that you have set up for TłG. For safe keeping I suggest that you copy CGI.CFG to another file called CGI-HOLD.CFG, and also copy CGI.CFG to a file called CGI-DXF.CFG. (In DOS: copy CGI.CFG CGI-HOLD. CFG and copy CGI.CFG CGI-DXF.CFG ). Now use a simple text editor (vi, TED, your normal word-processor) and read in CGI-DXF.CFG. Find the line that probably [* p. 28 / p.29 *] says: PRINTER=CGIPOST.SYS and change it to PRINTER=DXFTEXT.SYS and then save this changed file as ASCII text with the same name (i.e. CGI-DXF.CFG) that it was before you changed the "PRINTER= " term. When you wish TłG to make a DXF file, from the DOS prompt in the directory DRIVERS, type: COPY CGI-DXF.CFG CGI CFG and then when you run TłG and "print" the diagram, it will actually make a file called "CGI.DXF" in the directory that you have made the default for youul to you. D.T. Dear Dr. Triage: I need to do superscripts with a Tilia label - i.e. grains/cm3, etc. And how do I get the genera taxon names to print as italics? Some Code? Dear Mr. Code: In checking over Eric's demo diagrams, I see he uses the sequence \^14\^ to indicate a superscript 14. If you wanted to indicate grain concentration in cubic cm you would write the label: (Grains/cm\^3\^). Note the "escape sequence" is "backslash cap" and it precedes and follows the number you want to use as the superscript. If you wish a subscript 2, the escape sequence is \v2\v. To italicize Ambrosia in Ambrosia-type, the sequence would be \iAmbrosia\i-type. These and many other esoteric facts can be found in the README file that comes with Tilia. That file also explains the possibilities of the different fonts that come with Tilia. D.T.  psimpoll  Dear Dr. Triage: The INQUA File Boutique's self-extracting file psimpdoc.exe produces a PostScript file to print out a paper copy of the psimpoll manual. But it does not cover the latest version of psimpoll and pscomb. What Gives? Dear W. Gives: The manual for psimpoll was originally available as a PostScript file. Keith Bennett recently up-dated and converted the manual to a set of hypertext files that are available at his Web site: http://www-palecol.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/ . You can use Mosaic, Netscape, or another browser to get to Cambridge and read and hot-link your way through the psimpoll documentation. Lou Maher continually complained that the Internet link to Europe was often so busy that searching the manual was agonizingly slow; he told me he was keeping the old version of the manual in the File Boutique because he thought even an out-dated manual of ones own was better than standing in line to read the new one. Now you know that Dr. Triage believes that "new is better," so I have asked Keith Bennett to let us take a copy of the psimpoll hypertext manual that psimpoll users can keep on their own computer, using their Web browsers to refer to it with lightening speed. P227MANZ.EXE (216 kb) is a self-extracting zipped hypertext version of the psimpoll MANUAL by Keith Bennett. From DOS, place this file in a separate directory (i.e. D:\PSIMMAN) of your hard disk, and type its name. Then from your WWW browser, select File | Open File... and browse and click on the file PSIMPOLL.HTM. Add this to your list of bookmarks, and you will have fast access to a copy of the same hypertext manual that is available at Bennett's Web Site. This manual covers psimpoll v. 2.27 and pscomb v. 1.01. The unzipped files require about 404 kb of disk space. Should your hard-disk space be tight, you can unzip P227MANZ.EXE to a floppy disk. Just remember to insert that disk in the proper drive before you call it from Netscape! D.T.  MapPad  Dr. Triage: I need a MadPad mapfile (*.MPM) of Africa showing coastlines, rivers, lakes and international boundaries. I have a site and datafile created in MapPad for my area, but I can't get MapPad to display a map of Africa. I am Out of Africa! Dear Ms. Isak Dinesen: When you unzipped MapPad in a temporary directory on your hard disk, you should have had the following compressed file: AFRICA.MP_, and when you put MapPad on your disk using Window's Run and the Setup.exe program that John Keltner provided, I assume you selected the Africa map as one of those maps you installed. Now on the header of your Mappad data file (say, African .mpd), you should have something like: MapPad Datafile 1.0 Date: 17 Feb 35 Title: My African Adventures By: Baroness Karen Blixen Mapfile: d:\mappad\africa.mpm . -00.03.00 37.25.00; Our Coffee Plantation Lines of data ... . The Mapfile: line (shown in bold type) instructs MapPad to load the African map. Change the example's drive and path to where you keep the map file. D.T.  Netscape  Dr. Triage: How can I rid the lab's computer of all those color- shaded hot-contact labels that show where my students have wandered on the Web? I Blush. Dear [* p.29 / p.30 *] Mr/Ms Blush: Search out the subdirectory where Netscape resides and rename the file NETSCAPE.HST to NET-HST.BAK so that you can start out again with the pristine hot-links. (If you then cannot remember your own routes, you can always copy NET-HST.BAK to overwrite what will be the newly created NETSCAPE.HST.) D.T. Dr. Triage: Help! I have saved so many Web bookmarks that their list is too long to be useful. Active Weber. Dear A. Weber: Go to Netscape's subdirectory and copy the file BOOKMARK.HTM to another directory, say, D:\NETSTART. BOOKMARK.HTM is a hypertext file in ASCII that starts with the warning that it is an automatically-generated file that should not be edited because it will be read and overwritten. But you and sly old Triage know it will not be overwritten in the copy's new location! The file has all your many bookmarks and some extra stuff about when they were established. Load the file into your word processor, delete the extraneous material, and move the lines with their hot-links and addresses around to form logical groups such as Data- Handling, People, Places, Things, Examples of Wretched Excess. Save these groups as ASCII text to their own html files (i.e. DATA.HTM) in the same directory. Then make an html file (i.e. STARTER.HTM) with just the group names each with its hot link to its *.htm file. "Gussy up" the hypertext files to display buttons and icons to your taste. Then start Netscape and make its start-up option point to STARTER.HTM on your hard drive. (Sequence: Options | General Preferences; click the Appearance tab and in the Start window's Start With entry, type, say, D:\NETSTART\STARTER.HTM and click OK. Now when you start Netscape, STARTER.HTM will display your interest-group choices. When things work well, you can run Netscape and delete the files in its own copy of BOOKMARK .HTM. Save new bookmarks as you have always done. Then move them over to your own *.htm files when you have some time. D.T. A SOLUTION TO A PARTICULAR PET PEEVE; COULD IT HELP YOU? Dr. Triage I have a department colleague who assumes that everyone else has exactly the same e-mail program that he has. When he first found out he could e-mail a formatted file from his word processor, I started getting long attachments that were uuencoded. When I uudecoded them, I would find he was using a different wordprocessor than I use. And rather than sending the file in a format of an earlier version of his wordprocessor that my older wordprocessor could probably import he would always send the file formatted in the very latest version that mine knew nothing about. Later he got a new e-mail system that encoded in mime; I could deal with that. But his most recent exposition came encoded in Binhex 4.0 which I had always associated with Macintosh users. I hunted here and there to find a PC program that could deal with Binhex, but had no luck. Then I finally walked over to the computer center and asked for help. I was given the following WWW address: http://www.shareware.com/, and I contacted them from the privacy of my own office. One can search by platform and by key word(s). I requested programs that would work in Windows and involved the term "binhex." Within a short time I was offered the choice of a half dozen programs that would convert Binhex at a number of sites around the world. I selected one that could handle most forms of encoding for e-mail. It worked like a charm. And if my colleague keeps sending me stuff in Binhex (and it is more interesting than the last message) I may actually send some money to the shareware author. ANNOUNCEMENT: The Tilia List Server, a place for hot tips, questions, and news about updates. To subscribe, address a message to: listproc@lists.colorado.edu with the contents of the message being: subscribe tilia-l [* p.30 / p.31 *] USEFUL ADDRESSES AVAILABLE TO PUBLIC BY TELNET, ANONYMOUS FTP, WWW, ETC. INQUA File Boutique. ( N e w August 1996 ! ) ftp ftp.geology.wisc.edu Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /pub/inqua Contents described in file readme.txt http://www.geology.wisc.edu/~maher/inqua.html World Data Center-A (WDC-A), U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ftp ftp.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 Canadian Association of Palynologists http://gpu.srv.ualberta.ca/~abeaudoi/cap/cap.html David Green's Life at Charles Sturt University http://life.csu.edu.au/ David Green's PalaeoLife at Charles Sturt University http://life.csu.edu.au/paleo.html Paleolimnology/Diatom Home Pages http://www.indiana.edu/~diatom/branch.html University of Cambridge Palaeoecology and Evolutionary Biology http://www-palecol.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/ CALIB (Stuiver-Reimer Program for Calibration of 14C Dates) ftp ftp.u.washington.edu Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /public/qil/calib ftp://ftp.u.washington.edu/public/qil/calib/ Journal of Paleolimnology http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/science/geological_sciences/PAL EOLIM/jopl.html A Place to find Shareware on the Internet http://www.shareware.com/ Main INQUA Home Page http://inqua.nlh.no/ 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.] INDEX FOR DATA-HANDLING NEWSLETTERS NUMBERS 1 - 13 Andrews, J.T., CORESEG: A Program for the Detection of Changes (i.e. Definition of Segments) in a Down- Core Property, #10, p. 8-11 Anonymous, PaleoVu Browse and Visualization Software, #13, p. 24 Anonymous, Psimpoll PostScript Files and Adobe Illustrator, #13, p. 23 Anonymous, Useful Addresses Available to Public by Telnet, Anonymous FTP, Mosaic, etc., #13, p. 31 Batten, D.J., et al., Palynology at Aberystwyth, #6, p. 6-7 Beaudoin, Alwynne B., A List Survey of Statistics Texts, #13, p. 17-19 Bennett, K.D., PSIMPOLL - A QuickBASIC Program that Generates PostScript Page Description Files of Pollen Diagrams, #8, p. 11-12 Bennett, K.D., PSIMPOLL version 2.23: A C Program for Analysing Pollen Data and Plotting Pollen Diagrams, #11, p. 4-6 Bennett, K.D., Pollen Counting on a Pocket Computer, #3, p. 5 Bennett, K.D., Use of PostScript to Increase Portability of Pollen Diagrams, #7, p. 6-7 Berglund, Bj”rn, and Persson, Thomas, Information on Spore Tablets: Lycopodium Spore Tablets (Batch 124961), #12, p. 10 Birks, H.J.B., Impact of Computer-Intensive Procedures in Testing Palaeoecological Hypothesis, #9, p. 1-5 Birks, H.J.B., New Bookshelf 1, #3, p. 7-8 Birks, H.J.B., New Bookshelf 2, #5, p. 6-7 Birks, H.J.B., New Bookshelf 3, #6, p. 8-9 Birks, H.J.B., New Bookshelf 4, #7, p. 8-9 Birks, H.J.B., New Bookshelf 5, #8, p. 16-17 Birks, H.J.B., New Bookshelf 6, #9, p. 17-18 Birks, H.J.B., New Bookshelf 7, #10, p. 13 Birks, H.J.B., New Bookshelf 8, #11, p. 17-18 Birks, H.J.B., New Bookshelf 9, #12, p. 19-20 Birks, H.J.B., New Bookshelf 10, #13, p. 21-22 Birks, H.J.B., Recent Publications in Multivariate Data [* p.31 / p.32 *] Analysis and Practical Computing of Relevance to Palaeoecologists, #1, p. 5-10 Birks, H.J.B., Useful PC Software 1, #3, p. 8-10 Birks, H.J.B., Useful PC Software 2, #5, p. 7-8 Birks, H.J.B., Useful PC Software 3, #6, p. 9-10 Birks, H.J.B., Juggins, Hazel, and Sae‘tersdal, Magne, An Annotated Bibliography of Numerical Methods in Quaternary Pollen Analysis 1985-1989, #5, p. 8 Birks, H.J.B., and Sae‘tersdal, Magne, An Annotated Bibliography of Numerical Methods in Quaternary Pollen Analysis 1985 - 1989, #3, p. 6-7 Bulman, Dave, and Kershaw, Peter, On the Use of the Chi-Square Statistic for the Detection of Modern Analogues for Fossil Pollen Spectra, #10, p. 11-12 Campbell, Ian, A Short Introduction to PostScript Code, #10, p. 18-20 Campbell, Ian, CANPLOT: A FORTRAN Program for Plotting Pollen (and other) Data, #10, p. 17-18 Charles, D. F., et al., The PIRLA DataBase Management System, #2, p. 3-6 Chumbley, Craig A., PALYPLOT: A PC-based Program for Plotting Pollen and Plant Macrofossil Stratigraphic Data, 5, p. 2-4 Clark, Malcolm, A New Version of PCSLOT, #10, p. 21-22 Clark, Malcolm, Assessment of Sequence-Slotting, #9, p. 5-10 Clark, Malcolm, Corrections and Extensions to PCSLOT, #12, p. 21 Clark, Malcolm, Depth-Matching using PCSLOT Version 1.6, #13, p. 11-13 Clark, Malcolm, Sequence Comparisons and Sequence-Slotting, #8, p. 3-6 Cushing, E.J., SARI: A HyperCard Stack for Describing and Identifying Spores and Pollen Grains, #6, p. 1-3 Cushing, E.J., Sealing Compounds for Slides of Pollen in Silicone Oil, #9, p. 20-21 Davis, Owen K., A Questionnaire on Data-Handling, #7, p. 9-10 Davis, Owen K., Preliminary Results of Data Format Survey, #8, p. 14-16 Davis, Owen K., Program Sources, #10, p. 30-33 Davis, Owen K., Specific Programs, #1, p. 4-5 Davis, Owen K., The ASSP Data Committee, #3, p. 5-6 de Beaulieu, J-L, et al., The European Pollen Database, #7, p. 1-4 Fritts, Hal, Diagnostic analyses of Tree-Ring Data, #2, p. 6-7 Gajewski, Konrad, A Pollen Database Bulletin Board?, #10, p. 22 Gajewski, Konrad, Pollen Data Storage and Analysis on Microcomputers, #1, p. 2-4 Goodman, D.K., and Becker, R.C., The PALCAT Interactive Paleontological Database and Image Storage and Retrieval System, #8, p. 6-8 Green, David G., Databasing the World, #9, p. 12-17 Green, David G., Hypermedia and Palaeoenvironmental Research, #10, p. 23-27 Green, David G., Polsta Interactive Time Series Analysis, #2, p. 7-8 Green, David G., The Year of the Web, #11, p. 20-21 Green, David G., and Stocker, Robert C., A Special Interest Network for Quaternary Research--SINQUA, #13, p. 14-17 Green, David G., Wesley, Anthony, and Peters, David, Information Analysis via the World Wide Web, #12, p. 7-9 Grimm, Eric C., BTA: Binary to ASCII Conversion Program, #8, p. 9-11 Grimm, Eric C., North American Pollen Database Call for Data, #10, p. 14 Grimm, Eric C., The North American Pollen Database, #4, p. 4-5 Grimm, Eric C., The North American Pollen Database, #6, p. 7-8 Grimm, Eric C., Tilia and Tilia-Graph: PC Spreadsheet and Graphics Software for Pollen Data, #4, p. 5-7 Guiot, J., The Quantitative Paleoenvironmental Reconstructions using Biological Proxy Data: Recommendations, #11, p. 1-4 Hope, Geoff, Southwest Pacific Pollen Atlas, #12, p. 11-12 Hope, Geoff, Martinello, Carlo, and Owen, Judy, Australian and Southwest Pacific Pollen Atlas Project, #8, p. 1-3 Jacobson, George L., Jr., Workshop Leading to Creation of a European Repository for Late-Quaternary, Pollen Data. August, 1989, Lund, Sweden, #2, p. 1-2 Janssens, Jan A., Ecology of Peatland Bryophytes and Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction of Peatlands using Fossil Bryophytes Summary, #3, p. 1-5 Juggins, Steve, et al., The Data-Handling Internet, #8, p. 17-24 Keltner, John, MapPad: A Windows Notepad for Map- based Information, #13, p. 3-5 Keltner, John, New Webware for the World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology, #13, p. 25-28 Keltner, John, SiteSeer & ShowTime: Pollen Database Visualization Tools, #12, p. 2-5 Kovach, Warren L., MVSP 2.1, #10, p. 20-21 Kovach, Warren L., MVSP: A Multivariate Statistical Package, #4, p. 1-3 Kutzbach, J., and Behling, P., Comparison of Paleoclimate Simulations and Observations, #12, p. 5-7 Lotter, Andre F., and Juggins, Steve, POLPROF, TRAN [* p.32 / p.33 *]and ZONE: Programs for Plotting, Editing and Zoning Pollen and Diatom Data, #6, p. 4-6 MacDonald, Glen M., CD-ROM Data Sets: Part 2 Global Ecosystems Database Version 1.0, #11, p. 8-10 MacDonald, Glen M., Environmental Data Bases on CD-ROM Part I, #10, p. 1-3 MacDonald, Glen M., Examining Large Files, #13, p. 24 Maddy, D., and Brew, J.S. (editors) Statistical Modelling of Quaternary Science Data: A Practical Manual, #8, p. 13 Maher, L.J., A Program for Counting Things on 16 Fingers, #11, p. 6-7 Maher, L.J., Calibrate your 14C Dates with the Latest Version of CALIB, #10, p. 12 Maher, L.J., Characters with Diacritical Marks and the Internet, #12, p. 14-15 Maher, L.J., Data-Handling while Sampling Cores: SPOON-EZ.BAS, #10, p. 27-30 Maher, L.J., DEPTH-AGE Conversion of Pollen Data, #7, p. 13-17 Maher, L.J., EDITKEY: For When You Change Your Mind, #11, p. 12-14 Maher, L.J., Geodesics for Fun and Profit, #11, p. 28-29 Maher, L.J., INQUA File Boutique on World Wide Web: #13, p. 6 Maher, L.J., Keep the Heart of the NAPD on a Single HD Floppy, #10, p. 15-17 Maher, L.J., LIGA and SLICE Colleagues, #13, p. 5-6 Maher, L.J., Locate your Scandinavian Sites with SITE SCAN.BAS, #12, p. 21-23 Maher, L.J., MacPollen, #11, p. 29 Maher, L.J., Menu Structure of TILIA and TILIA- GRAPH, #12, p. 28-33 Maher, L.J., POLPAL-L, A List-Server for Palynologists, #10, p. 22-23 Maher, L.J., POLPAL-Listserver, #11, p. 18-19 Maher, L.J., Programs Useful in the Pollen Lab, #4, p. 7-10 Maher, L.J., Re-Configuring your Computer made Easy, #5, p. 4-5 Maher, L.J., Required Reading: (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), #13, p. 23 Maher, L.J., Seeing Laptop Cursors, #7, p. 8 Maher, L.J., Sending Binary Files by E-mail, #6, p. 10-31 Maher, L.J., SLOTDEEP.EXE: Manual Correlation using the Dissimilarity Matrix, #9, p. 21-26 Maher, L.J., Synthetic Pollen Slides, #13, p. 28-31 Maher, L.J., The Inqua File Boutique, #10, p. 27 Maher, L.J., The Ultimate Palynological Database (Pollen Slides), #8, p. 17 Maher, L.J., Thoughts on Practical Data Exchange, #5, p. 8-10 Maher, L.J., Turn Your Expensive Old PC into a Dumb Pollen Counter, #8, p. 24-27 Maher, L.J., Using the Global Positioning System, #11, p. 23-28 Marcoux, Nancy, and Richard, P.J.H., A New Look at Betula Pollen Curves, #10, p. 6-8 McAndrews, J.H., and Yu, Zicheng, Random Access Computer Keys (RACKs), #11, p. 10-12 Naldrett, Dana L., An Internet Guide to Quaternary Library Resources (1), #11, p. 14-17 Naldrett, Dana L., An Internet Guide to Quaternary Library Resources (2) - Scandinavia and the United Kingdom, #12, p. 15-18 Naldrett, Dana L., An Internet Guide to Quaternary Library Resources (3) -- The Pacific Rim, #13, p. 19-21 Odgaard, Bent, Speeding up Screen Plotting in Tilia- Graph, #7, p. 5 Ralska-Jasiewiczowa, Magdalena, and Walanus, Adam, Polish Palynological Database (POLPAL) in Course of Building, #5, p. 1-2 Reimer, Paula, Radiocarbon Calibration News, #11, p. 21-23 Ritchie, Jim, Pollen Data Bases, General and Particular, #4, p. 3-4 Schweitzer, Peter N., ANALOG: A Program for Estimating Paleoclimate Parameters using the Method of Modern Analogs, #13, p. 7-9 Shepherd, K.M., Computerized cataloguing: Paleobiology Division, National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa, #2, p. 2-3 Smol, John P., and Last, William M., Computer Applications to Paleolimnology, #13, p. 2-3 Sweets, P. Roger, DIATOM-L, A Listserver for Diatom Research, #11, p. 19 Sweets, P. Roger, Paleolimnology/Diatom Home Page: #13, p. 24 Treloar, W.J., Automation of Pollen Identification and Counting using Digital Image Processing Techniques, #10, p. 3-5 Triage, Dr., First Aid for PSIMPOLL and TILIA Users, #12, p. 24-27 Triage, Dr., First Aid for TILIA and PALYPLOT Users, #6, p. 13-14 Triage, Dr., First Aid for TILIA and PALYPLOT Users, #7, p. 18-20 Triage, Dr., First Aid for TILIA and PALYPLOT Users, #8, p. 27-28 Triage, Dr., First Aid for TILIA and PALYPLOT Users, #9, p. 26-27 Walanus, Adam, Optimizing Taxon Codes in Pollen [* p.33 / p.34 *] Counting, #11, p. 6 Walanus, Adam, Pollen Data in Space and Time - Local Approach, #13, p. 13-14 Walker, Ian, Emulation of DOS-based Programs on the Powermac, #12, p. 20 Ward, Jerome, and Maher, L.J., Spore Marker Tablets - Help!, #11, p. 7 Webb, Robert S., and Bauer, Bruce A., World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology Database Holdings and Data Documentation Requirements, #12, p. 23-24 Webb, R.S., et al., A Description of the NOAA Paleoclima tology Program and World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology, #9, p. 10-12 Webb, R.S., et al., World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology at the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program: July 1993 Update, #10, p. 14-15 Whitmore, Tom, and Brenner, Mark, Paleolimnology Listserv, #13, p. 25 Wolfe, Alexander, Rarefaction Analysis and Microfossil Count Size, #13, p. 9-11 Zippi, Pierre, A., Scientific Software for Apple Macintosh, #7, p. 10-13 ANNOUNCEMENT: The Laboratory of Botany and Palynology seeks a student to carry out thesis research on Oak migration trajectories using the European Pollen Database (EPD). The aim of the project is to produce maps at different time slices starting from the Late-Glacial to the present and to make comparisons with the present day distribution of oak. The research study will be conducted in close collaboration with the database manager of the EPD and the agronomists, and requires good skills in manipulating palaeo data and computing. Applications from the European Union are welcome. The grant will start on October 1, 1996. The fellowship is 7000 FF (Tax free) per month for 36 months. Please send CV to: Dr. J.-L. de Beaulieu, Facult‚ de St J‚r“me, LBHP - Boite 451, 13397 Marseilles, France