MICROFOSSILS/Palynology 465 leading to the gathering of much detailed information on former plant distributions and to a tradition of palaeobotanical studies that continues, with considerable enhancement of the technique, to this day The palynological elucidation of detailed vegetation histories of north-western Europe was followed by attempts to produce biostratigraphic correlations, which, in some instances, merged into climatostratigraphies Holocene palynological research was inevitably linked to the human influence on both landscape and vegetation and early work began to show the importance of the anthropogenic impact on natural ecosystems Palynological research into such influence on the environment is still of primary importance today, and a detailed knowledge of past environment has allowed present and future management and protection of sensitive ecosystems to be better planned Problems are inherent in the time-transgressive nature of temporally and spatially detailed Holocene palynological records; this has caused obvious problems with correlation and has led to a movement away from relying on biostratigraphy deduced from Holocene sequences For Late Pleistocene and Holocene work, radiocarbon dating has permitted detailed correlation and synthesis of palynological data from sequences younger than, in theory, ca 40 000 years, although the most certain dates come from within the limits of reliable radiocarbon calibration methodologies (