Pollen-based vegetation counts from IODP Site 353-U1446, Bay of Bengal

The dataset includes counts of all identified pollen and spore morphotypes, as well as the main ecological groups: tropical forest, wet evergreen forest, tropical deciduous forest and xerophyte plants. Samples of 1–5 g of dry sediment were processed using the standard protocol for marine samples, which includes coarse sieving (150 μm mesh), consecutive treatments with cold HCl and cold HF and micro-sieving (5 μm mesh). Residues were mounted unstained in a mobile media (glycerol) to allow polar and equatorial observations of pollen grains. Counting was performed using a Nikon light microscope at ×500 and ×1000 (oil immersion) magnification.