This dataset contains information about the locations and local environmental conditions of 123 Malaise trap samples collected in November-December 2021 in the 908 km2 forested ‘leakage belt’ buffer zone of the Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP) in eastern Sierra Leone, where cocoa, a driver of deforestation, is the main cash crop. Each trap was set out for five days with >99% ethanol. The samples were transported from Sierra Leone to the UK, where they have been sent for metabarcoding for arthropods (using Leray2 PCR primers). The work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (Grant NE/S014063/1). Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/161315e4-71c1-481d-906c-149ab2e9705c

The dataset contains abundance data of airborne pollen (including Anthoxanthum odoratum (sweet vernal-grass), Arrhenatherum elatius (false oat-grass), Cynosurus cristatus (crested dog's-tail), Dactylis glomerata (cock's-foot), Lolium perenne (perennial ryegrass), Phleum pratense (Timothy), Poa pratensis (smooth meadow-grass), grass species within the genera Alopecurus/Agrostis, and one probe that was found to be degenerate and unable to discriminate grass species. Here we used qPCR to track the seasonal progression of airborne grass pollen, in time and space. To do this we collected aerial samples from thirteen sites across the UK during the pollen seasons (May to September) of 2016 and 2017. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/28208be4-0163-45e6-912c-2db205126925