The future of the Paleopedogy Commission

Posted by Edoardo A.C. Costantini 11 Sen 2003 13:44:21

I have read the comments about the disappointing exits of the last INQUA
meeting, i.e. the modification of the INQUA structure, which was actually
well foreseen, and the proposals of the members of our group. My personal
feeling is that we must take the good from the bad. I don't think we should
leave INQUA and form another society. I think we should maintain our
individuality as a group and the best possible links with INQUA and IUSS.
Inside IUSS we maybe have more opportunities, but all has to be verified. We
can as well form a sub commission inside INQUA and a commission inside
IUSS. To be a group and have an international prominent state the most
important thing is to work together and produce good scientific stuff:
projects, collaborations, conferences, business meetings, excursions. I hope
the different activities of the members of the group will be shared on our
web site and many of us will come to our next meeting of Florence. Another
issue is proposing new ideas, new scientific challenges, new projects. Some
good ones are the topics of our next meetings: "Paleosols and soil mapping
activities" (Florence), "Timing the soil forming processes" (Mexico),
another one could be "Paleosols as part of our cultural heritage". (By the
way: speaking with Sergey Sedov I understood the next meeting in Mexico
would have been a joint meeting with the Paleopedology group, did I wrong?).

At the moment I don't have any ideas about the funding for the printed
version of our newsletter, but I wonder: we do need it really?

Looking forward to your suggestions

Edoardo A.C. Costantini
Istituto Sperimentale per lo Studio e la Difesa del Suolo
Piazza M. D'Azeglio 30
50121 Firenze
Italy
www.soilmaps.it
www.issds.it/cncp
tel. 0039-055-24912 22 or 33/21/39
fax. 0039-055-241485
e-mail costantini@issds.it