Newsletter 2011-2 Chairman : Dr. David Bridgland University of Durham United Kingdom [email protected] Secretary : Dr. Stéphane Cordier Université Paris Est Créteil Val de Marne France [email protected] Executive members Prof. Jef Vandenberghe (Past Chairman) Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The Netherlands [email protected] Prof. Juergen Herget University of Bonn Germany [email protected] visit our Website : http://tolu.giub.uni-bonn.de/herget/FLAG/ 1 Please send to Stephane Cordier any information (workshop, field-trips, PhD defense or report etc) you would like to read in our next Newsletter! Update of the FLAG-membership list If you wish not to receive the next FLAG Newsletters please just send a “no” reply to: [email protected] CONTENTS - Report of Jef Vandenberghe's retirement symposium (Amsterdam, 1st April 2011) - FLAG session at INQUA : the programme - Special issue of the FLAG session at INQUA: call for papers - Announcement : FLAG business meeting at INQUA - Palaeoflood session at INQUA : the programme - Information about the LUCIFS research group - Information about the Geologists' Association meeting on Geoconservation (September 2011) - for your agenda : FLAG 2012 in Luxemburg 2 Report of Jef Vandenberghe's retirement symposium The symposium in honour of our past Chairman Jef Vandenberghe was held in Amsterdam the 1st of April 2011. Over 60 colleagues and friends attended, mainly from the Netherlands but also from Europe (including Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, Serbia) and abroad. This one day symposium included two main sessions and eleven talks. The morning session, chaired by Kees Kasse, was composed of five invited talks focusing on the main topics which dominated Jef's research during his fruitful career. The talk of Hugh French (University of Ottawa, Canada) focused on the cryostratigraphy in periglacial systems, while those of Huayu Lu (University of Nanjing, China) and Slobodan Markovic (University of Novi-Sad, Serbia) were devoted to synthesis about loess, both in China and in Europe (mainly Serbia), with an attempt to unravel the links between loess sedimentation and climate change. In between, Phil Gibbard (University of Cambridge) provided an overview of the fluvial response of temperate rivers to Pleistocene climate cycles. This presentation, mainly based on case studies from England, underlined the high influence of cold periods on fluvial activity and the importance of thresholds in the explanation of climate forcing. Finally, Gert Verstraeten (Leuven University, Belgium) established a link between Jef's research and the geomorphological modelling performed at Leuven. The final, well illustrated lecture was provided by Jef himself. He demontrated the importance of using a multi-analysis approach in event correlation instead of a multiproxy approach, in other terms to take into account all the components of a sediment study (sedimentology, stratigraphy, chronology) to underline the possible occurrence of thresholds or delayed responses, and also to avoid miscorrelations. The afternoon session was chaired by Hans Renssen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). It provided the opportunity to some of Jef's former PhD students to present their past and present research. The presentations were arranged in chronological order, with Kees Kasse, Jef‟s first PhD Student (1985), as first speaker. Kees presented several case studies of his research focusing on the connections between fluvial activity, Holocene climate change and vegetation (palynology). Rene Isarin, who achieved his PhD in 1997, then reported about his job as a geoarchaeologist (specializing in environmental archaeology) in the Netherlands, presenting Jef as a necessary complement of Indiana Jones to underline the importance of performing palaeoenvironmental studies of archaeological contexts. Sasha Keestra (PhD in 2006) brought us back to the fluvial system, but focusing on present-day activity and the importance of both field work (including anecdotes derived from recent field work with Jef) and modelling. In contrast, fluvial archives were the main emphasis in the talk of Freek Busschers (PhD in 2007), dealing with the Rhine sedimentary complex in the Netherlands. This talk was illustrated by various 3D animations, providing the opportunity to discover the country "from all sides", and highlighting the necessary connections between fundamental research on fluvial archives and applied geosciences. The last talk was again given by Jef, and offered a well-illustrated overview of his research worldwide, leading us from America (Surinam, Canada) to Western and Central Europe (Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Poland etc) and Asia (Indonesia, Siberia, China). The session was closed by a short speech by Bauke Oudega, the Dean of the Faculty of Earth Sciences, who honoured Jef's involvement in the administration of the Faculty and underlined Jef's support of field trips with students. A friendly reception closed the symposium, which (as during the coffee breaks and lunch) provided the opportunity for informal discussion amongst participants and, above all, 3 to pass informal congratulations to Jef. On behalf of the FLAG community, the executive board associated itself with all colleagues who attended the meeting, to wish to our past Chairman a pleasant, fruitful, and definitely 'fluvial' retirement. Stéphane Cordier 4 Jef in the field with his PhD student Xianyan Wang 5 FLAG session at INQUA : the programme Here is the content of Session 53 of INQUA (“Palaeohydrological archives, fluvial environments and surface-groundwater flow processes”) which was organized jointly by the FLAG and the GLOCOPH (Global Continental Palaeohydrology) research groups. The session will take place on Monday (25th) and Tuesday (26th) and include four oral subsessions (with one invited talk per session) and one poster subsession. The first two subsessions will be mainy devoted to palaeohydrology, the two last focusing on fluvial archives. The programme for oral presentations is as follows : Subsession 1 (Monday 25th, 8.30-10.10) A.G. Brown - Uplift, Palaeoehydrology and Pleistocene Fluvial Sequences. A Comparison of Adjacent Catchments in Southern England. (invited talk) Jian Wang - Estimation of water discharge of Yangtze River at Nanjing reach in the Last Glaciation Maximum. Anna Sim - Hydrological variability in the Sydney region: A proxy record constructed from floodplain sediments of the Hawkesbury–Nepean River, south-east Australia. Stephen Chilcott - Effects of anthropogenic hydrological change on a dryland river: investigating the recent history of floodplain lakes (billabongs), Macintyre River, Australia. Marta Baró - Late Holocene flood frequencies and climate variability in high mountain environments inferred from Lütschine fan delta sediments, Swiss Alps. Subsession 2 (Monday 25th, 10.50-12.30) Leszek Starkel - Rainy periods and floods recorded in continental facies as background for the Holocene climatostratigraphy (key study from Poland) (invited talk) Gerardo Benito - Rainfall-runoff modelling and palaeoflood hydrology applied to reconstruct centennial scale records of flooding and aquifer recharge in ungauged ephemeral rivers Laurent Devriendt - A 50 ka hydrological record from northern Australia inferred from the chemistry of ostracod valves: implications for the Australian monsoon Renzo Valloni - Hydrostratigraphy of Pleistocene alluvial fan and river plain deposits of the Po foreland basin Abi Stone - Recharge investigations above the Stampriet Aquifer in semi-arid Namibia using geochemical methods and environmental tracers; sand, salt and water. Vincenzo Picotti - Paleohydrology of the Salar de Atacama (Chile) in the last 70 ky from river terraces and halite cave morphology and deposits. Poster subsession (Monday 25th, 14.45-15.50) The list of posters is available at : http://www.inqua2011.ch/?a=programme&subnavi=abstractlist&sessionid=53 Subsession 3 (Monday 25th, 15.50-17.30) Cornelis Kasse - Climate-driven fluvial changes and channel-belt abandonment during the last glacial-interglacial transition (Oude IJssel-Rhine valley, Germany) (invited talk) David Bridgland - Late Cenozoic Fluvial Archives: evidence for coupling between climate and landscape evolution Alessandro Fontana - LGM sedimentation in NE Italy: the continuity of alluvial systems from the Alpine glaciers to the Adriatic floor Stéphane Cordier - Geochronological reconstruction of the Pleistocene fluvial incision of the Moselle River and its main tributaries the Meurthe and Sarre Rivers (France, Germany) Falko Turner - Late Glacial climatic shifts and fluvial-environmental expressions: a multidisciplinary case study from middle Elbe river valley, Northern Germany 6 Cyril Castanet - Holocene fluvial responses to external drivers in the Northwestern Mediterranean Africa: contributions of the study of Oued Sebou in the Gharb alluvial plain (Morocco) Subsession 4 (Tuesday 26th, 8.30-10.10) Danielle Schreve - A revised stratigraphy for the early pleistocene terrace sequence of the Gediz River, western turkey (invited talk) Alpa Sridhar - Fluvial response to major Holocene climate events: a comparision from river basins of Gujarat, western India Bao-tian Pan - The relationship of surface erosion and tectonic uplift in the northern Qilianshan Mountain, Northwest China. Toshihiko Sugai - Last 600 ka terrestrial environment changes reconstructed from analysis of the Uwa Basin-fill Sediment, SW Japan. Jane Richardson - Climate Change and Holocene