WP-1: Inventory of Past and Present Pollen Biodiversity. The APD will promote standardisation of methods for the inventory of past and present pollen biodiversity.
WP-2: Ecosystem Dynamics. This work package addresses the following basic question: how will global (climate) change affect ecosystem stability and the relationships between plant species?
WP-3: Land cover change: the management of soil and water resources. The objective of this work package is to promote the reconstruction of long-term vegetation history, in support of developing management strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and natural resources.
WP-4: Modelling and Mapping. The objective of this work package is to collect data to reconstruct biomes from pollen data in an objective way, which constitutes an excellent diagnostic tool for comparing climate model simulations with data, and to map individual taxa to reconstruct the migration of species from their refuges at the last glacial maximum. These migration patterns can then be compared with the genetical variations of these species, which give information on the relationship between genetical diversity and long-term species dynamics.