Palynology for Sustainability: A Classical and Versatile Tool for New Challenges

Palynology is a bridge between different research fields. This centenary discipline studying fossils and modern pollen and spores represents a landmark in multidisciplinary studies on both past and current environmental issues. Palynology plays an important role not only in ‘basic research’ on botanical taxonomy, phylogeny, reproductive biology, and phenology but also in ‘applied research’ focused on the measurement of environmental variables, including the quality of food and air. Aerobiology is one of the main fields, together with palaeoecology, which demonstrates the great power of pollen as a methodological approach to add details and information to other methods. In addition, paleoenvironmental studies are based on the analysis of pollen from sediments and archaeological layers, which provides a long-term perspective to understand ecosystem responses to different human and climate triggers. In this sense, recent palynological research has repeatedly demonstrated that past cultures adopted cultural choices to tackle environmental and climate changes to ensure social resilience by using multi-functional land uses to exploit nature without compromising the environment.

Starting from the MedPalynoS-2021 meeting, this issue aims to collect groundbreaking papers using palynology as a cornerstone for their research, including some papers awarded during the conference. Pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, and sedimentary charcoal are excellent bioindicators for detecting human impact and landscape development. For this reason, interdisciplinary bio-geo-archaeo investigations on on-site/off-site integration and Holocene contexts and palynology in studies on phylogeny, reproductive strategy, melissopalynology, and forensic sciences are welcomed.

We encourage submissions of research articles from the palynological community on all aspects of the discipline, especially reporting the latest updates to face future challenges.