Ben Bell, a PhD candidate has just published his latest collaborative research on cedar pollen and climate variability. His research is focussed on ways in which Cedrus atlantica might be used as a proxy for (palaeo)climate in the Atlas. This paper examines a previously postulated link between pollen grain size and moisture availability, and concludes that moisture availability is not a significantly related to grain size in this context.
The study makes use of a number of methods for determining grain size – light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and laser granulometry. I was involved in the laser granulometry aspect, which Ben proves experimentally is comparable to the microscopic methods. Laser granulometry is considerably less time consuming than microscopic examination, so allowed for the large sample size used in this study.
The paper is published in Palynology, and is open access, available here.