The aim of this service is to collect, to store, to preserve, to organize and to make available information on present and paleo-biodiversity, climate and environmental conditions, mainly based on vascular flora and vertebrate fauna and limnogeological data covering a complete N-S/W-E transect along the Iberian Peninsula, with particular emphasis on NE areas (the Pyrenees-Ebro Valley gradient, the Iberian mountain range and the Aragon region).

    The main items and data stored are the following:

• Vascular Plants:    - herbarium sheets:
                                   - Bibliographic data:
                                   - Field notebook data:
             (All computerized and georeferentiated –accuracy of 1km2-)
    Seed collection: samples of 2000 plant species from the Pyrenees and Aragon

• Reference plant collection: Consisting of selected herbarium sheets of more than 3500 plant species with different dried individuals representing the different phenophases of each plant. This collection has been made with the aim of helping progress in taxonomy.

• Reference pollen collection: The palynotheque is composed of i) 200 modern samples collected during polinization of different species, and prepared through chemical treatment for fossilization in a laboratory (Acetolyse) and ii) microscopic preparations in smear slides (800) organized by plant family-genus-species to enable learning techniques and comparison between pollen grains and spores.

• Reference collection of plant epidermis: Includes microscopic preparations of more than 200 plants with drawings and keys to recognize remains of species (stomach and faeces contents, etc).   
  Medicinal plant collection: 400 herbarium sheets prepared for exhibitions, presentations, etc.

• Vertebrate collections: Consist of nearly 5000 samples of more than 300 species of vertebrate (50 mammals, 160 birds, 65 reptiles and 25 amphibians together with several thousand items of field data collected in the last 40 years in the Pyrenees and other Iberian territories. This collection is computerized, although only in a small part.

• Lacustrine cores collection: It includes the largest collection of Quaternary lake records available in Spain (> 400 m) that covers a transect of the different geographic and climatic zones of the Iberian Peninsula. Most of them have been collected in collaboration with the U. of Minnesota and include the karstic, deepest and largest lakes in the country. The records span the last 30,000 years in several sites, but we also have high resolution intervals for the Holocene, including varve sequences, in Andalucia, the Iberian Range and the Pyrenees. We recently acquired a long (72 m) lake sequence up to the Eemien (130ka, dated with OSL) in the Iberian Range.

• The most specific objectives of the Unit are:
  • To provide basic information on taxonomy, biodiversity, paleoclimate , paleolimnology and past environments to the researchers of the IPE and other Spanish and international public research organisms.
  • To centralize the information on paleo- and present plant diversity (biodiversity and pollen census) and plant species distribution and changes on a regional scale withAragon (nearly half of the whole Iberian flora) and the Iberian Peninsula (paleovegetational changes).
  • To give direct advice on plant and animal conservation policies at a regional and national level (Departamento de Medioambiente del GA; Ministerio de Medioambiente, environmental consultants, etc).
  • To spread awareness of plant and animal taxonomy and distribution to the general public, trying to obtain in exchange new information for the databases (feedback fluxes of information on biodiversity).
  • To construct a pollen reference collection database using the herbarium collection
  • To become a National Lacustrine Core Repository in Spain, similar to the National Lacustrine Core Repository in the LRC (U. Minnesota, USA) where cores are conserved and samples are provided to researchers for future studies.