Project description

What you will do

Find your nearest pollen trap by downloading the VegeMap app (coming soon) and tell us what types of plants and how many of them you see surrounding the pollen trap – don’t worry this will be fully guided through the app and training materials.

What we will do

Place pollen traps in a range of environments across Australia, collect the pollen over 12 months and then sort through the pollen and identify what types and how much of each pollen type was caught over that time. Then, with the information you collect about the surrounding vegetation, we can link together how much pollen is being produced by the different types of plants in each of these environments.

Why do we want this information?

Believe it or not, pollen actually gives us a look into the past! Pollen is very durable and can be found fossilised from millions of years ago. Scientists have been able to use these fossils to track what vegetation existed in the past. Because some plants can produce more pollen than others and some pollen can travel great distances transported by air or insects,

We may know WHAT plants existed in the past but not HOW MANY. This is crucial to really understand big questions like ‘how quickly did environments change thousands of years ago?’, ‘what animals, birds and insects could have lived in those habitats?’, ‘how did humans navigate the lands?’.

About CABAH

VegeMap is funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity & Heritage (CABAH). CABAH is a large collaborative research group across multiple universities and other partner organisations that focus on understanding Australia’s past so we can better prepare for the future. To find our more visit epicaustralia.org.au