SHAPE Workshop

The first Southern Hemisphere Assessment of Paleo-Environments workshop is to be held at GNS Science, Lower Hutt, New Zealand on the 16th September 2013.

If you are developing proxy data, have environmental reconstructions, or are interested in the last 60ka, please come along and join us at this workshop!

Limited funding is available for New Zealand early career researchers to present – please indicate whether you would like to be considered for travel support.

Email Andrew Lorrey with a presentation title. We will notify presenters about the format (talk or poster) in late August.

INQUA ECR 2013

INQUA 2013 Early Career Researcher Inter-congress meeting: 2nd– 6th December, 2013, Wollongong, Australia.

The INQUA ECR meeting has a limited number of travel awards available for those giving an oral presentation and intending to publish in the QI Special Issue. For international attendees this amounts to (AU $1000) and for Australasian attendees this amounts to AU $500). Please return INQUA 2013 ECR Inter-congress meeting Travel Award Application form to Craig Sloss.

AQUA is also offering two student prizes to the value of AU$500 each to assist in attending the INQUA ECR. Note, only current AQUA student members will be eligible. Please submit an abstract, brief CV and endorsement from your supervisor to AQUA president Jessica Reeves.

As part of the INQUA 2013 ECR Inter-congress meeting Quaternary International has agreed to run a special issue for ECRs. The aim is for ECRs (MSc/PhD candidates, Post-Doctoral Researchers and research-active academics within 5 years of obtaining their PhD) to either be the primary or single author with manuscripts that are at an advanced stage and ready for submission to the QI editorial process (see QI contributors 2014 ECR INQUA for details on how to submit to the Special Issue).

Submissions associated with the commission themes and associated INQUA projects are welcome (http://www.inqua.org/commissions.html).
– Coastal and marine processes [CMP]
– Palaeoclimate [PALCOMM]
– Humans and Biosphere [HaBCom]
– Stratigraphy and Chronology [SACCOM]
– Terrestrial Processes, Deposits and History [TERPRO]

Submissions need to be at the required standard for publication in QI and will undergo the normal QI editorial process. The aim is to have manuscripts submitted before the meeting in December and followed up with writing workshops at the ECR meeting to assist in addressing reviewer’s comments and further developing the manuscripts.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss a submission please contact the Guest Editors of this special Issue Craig Sloss or Lynda Petherick.

AQUA Blog

Hola, Kia ora everyone,

My name is Ignacio Jara and I am PhD student from Chile, currently studying at the School of Earth Sciences at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. After one and a half years of living and studying in Wellington, New Zealand, I have been asked to write a monthly blog commenting on different topics about Quaternary research for AQUA. Ignacio
Ignacio in the microscope laboratory

This is going to be my first experience writing a blog and honestly I am quite excited about it. Undoubtedly this blog represents a huge challenge for me, especially because English is my second language. However, this blog is a good opportunity to write in a less formal type of English and also an opportunity to catch up with the current literature and ideas in Quaternary sciences.

My doctoral research is focused on reconstructing the vegetation and fire histories of New Zealand and Patagonia, South America. To do this, I am developing pollen records from lakes and peaks bogs on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. These two regions share important environmental and physiographical features such as latitudinal position, volcanically active cordilleras, glacial and tectonic activity and related floras; but there are also striking differences concerning their climate regimes and human histories. My study will take the form of an inter-regional comparison that (hopefully) will provide insights into the interactions between vegetation, climate change, and human activities across the southern Pacific. This work will contribute to the new, recently launched, Southern Hemisphere Assessment of Paleo-environments (SHAPE) initiative which aims to improve our understanding of the past climate change in the Southern Hemisphere. SHAPE continues the work of Aus-INTIMATE and aims to develop new proxy records and integrate with model simulations, in order to generate regional climate event stratigraphies that extend back to 60,000 cal years before present.

So far during my PhD I have looked at a pollen record from a lake in the northwest corner of the South Island of New Zealand, and at present I am spending many hours looking down a microscope counting pollen and charcoal from a peat bog in the Waikato Basin in central North Island, New Zealand.

Adelaide Tarn in northwest South Island, New Zealand

I am also helping to coordinate a recently launched Paleo-climate seminar group with other PhD students at Victoria University. These seminars are article-based discussions and I am pretty sure they will provide a great source of information for this blog. I have become aware of a general lack of connectivity or communication between Quaternary science postgraduate students from the different universities of New Zealand and I am afraid there is a similar problem in Australia. I hope to use this blog to suggest different initiatives and promote student and general scientific networking.

But of course I am not here to talk exclusively about myself. Instead, the aim of this blog is to provide a brief monthly report about new articles, comments, recent or upcoming scientific events that may be of interest to AQUA members. The emphasis will be on research from the Southern Hemisphere. But I may also comment on research from other areas if it is relevant to our region. I am very keen to receive any ideas, recent papers or references and general feedback. (e-mail)

Thanks and keep in touch. Hasta la vista!

Ignacio Jara Parra.