ALIVE: A New Protocol for Investigating the Modern Pollen Deposition of Italian Forest Communities and the Correlation with Their Species Composition

Modern pollen deposition studies are essential to forestry and palaeoecological research, as they provide the key to understanding the relationship between the abundance of palynomorphs in natural (moss, litter, top core sediment) or artificial traps and the surrounding vegetation cover. In 1996, the EPMP (European Pollen Monitoring Programme) laid the foundations for pollen monitoring research in Europe, involving several countries and dozens of researchers in placing “Tauber-style” artificial traps across a wide range of ecosystems, and legitimising the collection of mosses for comparative studies. Here, we propose a straightforward, fast, and effective procedure—developed within the ALIVE “TrAcking Long-term declIne of forest biodiVErsity in Italy to support conservation actions” Project—for the collection of moss polsters and vegetation data, aimed at monitoring modern pollen deposition at the national scale. This protocol addresses a gap in existing literature, as no shared fieldwork guidelines are currently available. We demonstrate how the spatial pattern of modern pollen deposition can be investigated using two of the ALIVE Project’s target taxa (Fagus and evergreen Quercus) to explore the potential of microbotanical data in reflecting the current distribution of forest tree taxa at a national scale. The data collected within the ALIVE Project provide a synoptic picture of pollen deposition across Italy’s highly diversified landscapes and allow for preliminary considerations on the relationships between pollen deposition and modern vegetation cover of forest taxa.