"Brief notes of the President on the Meeting of the INQUA Terrestrial Processes
Commission"
Florence, the 25th of August 2004.
Dear colleagues,
I attended the works of the Commission which were hold in Florence the 25th of August 2004, hosted by the 32nd IGC. The
meeting lasted a couple of hours and here are the main points come out from the discussion.
The President, Jim Teller, recalled that in 2003 INQUA established five new Commissions to
encourage, promote, sponsor, and oversee new Quaternary research activities. A primary goal of the new Commissions is to
stimulate Quaternary research, especially in areas that incorporate multiple and cross-disciplinary research efforts,
multi-national research especially involving developing
countries, and those investigating new frontiers and research thrusts in Quaternary science.
Projects may be proposed, according to the new INQUA regulations (http://www.inqua.tcd.ie/projects.html), and submitted
directly to one of the five new Commissions, or through one or more of the existing Subcommissions who, in turn, will review
the proposal and send it forward with their comments to the Commission. The flow-chart of the process of project submission
is depicted in the figure.
The program of the next INQUA congress of Australia 2007 has not been formulated, but it is foreseen that the "call for
proposal" will start soon. Therefore I guess that it is time to think about sessions related to Paleopedology that can be
proposed.
I have talked with Martin Iriondo and with Ludwig Zoeller, president of the Loess Subcommission of the Stratigraphy and
Chronology Commission. Both agree on a proposal for a session related to "Pedogenesis of aeolian deposits".
What other sessions could we propose?
All the best to you all
Edoardo A.C. Costantini