John W. (Jack) Williams

Data and Downloads

North American Surface Sample Dataset (2.5MB Zip file)
This dataset archives pollen surface samples from North America, along with attributed climatic and vegetational data for each location.  A full description of the dataset and its compilation is provided by Whitmore et al. (2005).  This data is the foundation for a new atlas of modern pollen-climate and pollen-vegetation relationships (Williams et al., in press).  A mirrored version of the NASSD is available at the University of Ottawa.

Whitmore, J., K. Gajewski, M. Sawada, J. W. Williams, B. Shuman, P. J. Bartlein, T. Minckley, A. E. Viau, T. Webb, III, P. M. Anderson, and L. B. Brubaker. 2005. North American and Greenland modern pollen data for multi-scale paleoecological and paleoclimatic applications. Quaternary Science Reviews 24:1828-1848.

Williams, J. W., B. Shuman, P. J. Bartlein, J. Whitmore, K. Gajewski, M. Sawada, T. Minckley, S. Shafer, A. E. Viau, T. Webb, III, P. M. Anderson, L. B. Brubaker, C. Whitlock, and O. K. Davis. in press. An Atlas of Pollen-Vegetation-Climate Relationships for the United States and Canada. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists Foundation, Dallas, TX.

Pollen Viewer (18MB)
Pollen Viewer presents animated maps of pollen distributions in North America since the last glacial maximum, which can be used to study how plant distributions responded to late-Quaternary environmental change.  The animations can be viewed at the World Data Center; the data files and java applet can be downloaded here.  Pollen Viewer was created by Phil Leduc of Brown University.  The data and maps underlying Pollen Viewer are described by Williams et al. (2004).

Williams, J. W., Shuman, B. N., Webb, T., III, Bartlein, P. J., Leduc, P.(2004) Quaternary vegetation dynamics in North America:  Scaling from taxa to biomes.  Ecological Monographs 74: 309-334.   (PDF)