Conference Activities

Since the lest Newsletter, members of the Commission have been involved in three conferences: first, the Regional Congress of the IGU in Durban in August 2002, secondly, the conference on Hillslope Geomorphology in Leeds in September 2002 organised jointly by the Commission and the British Geomorphological Research Group in honour of Mike Kirkby on the occasion of his retirement, and thirdly the International Symposium on Land Use Change and Geomorphic, Soil and Water Processes in Tropical Mountain Areas.

At the Regional Congress, Heinz Beckerdahl organised 4 sessions of papers on behalf of the Commission. Many of the papers presented had a South African theme, which was particularly beneficial to those of us whose knowledge of the geomorphology of South Africa is relatively rudimentary.

Reports of the other two meetings (that first appeared in Geophemera) are given below.

Hillslope Geomorphology

I’m not sure that conferences are always remembered for the reasons that the organizers intend. Often it is such things as the impromptu late-evening beer fight between Prof. X and Prof. Y that lodge in the collective academic consciousness, not the quality of the papers in session Z. But despite several such eye-feast vignettes (including a real beer fight in a local pub, short but vigorous) the primary take-home memory from BGRG 2002 will surely be exactly what we all went there for, and what the Leeds organizers laboured hard to achieve: an opportunity for the geomorphological community to show its gratitude to, and respect for, Prof. Mike Kirkby on the occasion of his formal retirement from the School of Geography at Leeds.

Predicting the geomorphological impacts of future climate change is probably an easier task than assessing where the science of geomorphology would have been without Mike’s paradigmatic contribution. So no attempts here. Proxy evidence regarding his perceived input was abundant at this meeting, though. For one, senior geomorphologists with fearsomely busy schedules had travelled to the meeting from the US, Canada, Israel, and several European countries to show their gratitude to Mike. Expressions of personal and collective thanks also appeared in abstracts, presentations, and were uttered with obvious sincerity during wineglass-clutched-in-the-other-fist handshakes with the great man during one or other of the meeting's several receptions/meals. Indeed, this writer heard enough ‘How Mike Kirkby has helped me’ stories at the meeting to almost warrant a special issue of ESPL...

The meeting was joint with the IGU Commission ‘Geomorphic Challenges in the 21st Century’, and its subthemes included hillslope processes and landscape evolution, with a specific emphases on the integration of monitoring, theory and modelling; providing forecasts relevant for sustainable landscape management; and linking geomorphology with other environmental science disciplines. Conceptually, we started small and got bigger. After welcomes from Adrian McDonald (Leeds) on behalf of the School of Geography and John Wainwright (King’s London) on behalf of BGRG (Charlie Harris being stuck in traffic), the first session targeted ‘Fine-scale processes and mechanisms’. Jean Poesen (KU Leuven, Belgium) chaired this, and John Boardman (Oxford) kicked us off with an account of recent work by himself and Tim Burt (Durham) on the hydrology of eroding South Downs fields. A negative result here, but not an uninteresting one. Is a preliminary short burst of high-intensity rainfall necessary for runoff to occur on highly infiltrating soils? Next up was Louise Bull (Durham) who described an interesting analysis of spatial rainfall variability using data from SE Spain; the longer-term aim here being to “unlock the secrets of connectivity”. A cautionary tale from John Wainwright (King’s London) followed. The ministrations of Lady Luck meant that a first attempt at modelling infiltration data from Lucky Hills Catchment 223 at Walnut Gulch, Arizona, gave excellent results but subsequent data gave a much poorer fit: “Now if we'd stopped after the first analysis...”. John Wainwright no doubt referred to faeces when first evaluating these results, as did the next speaker, whose presentation focused on modelling the detachment and transport of faecal contaminants. John Quinton (Lancaster) described an application of the new BACTERIA model, which uses a simplification of the Navier-Stokes equations to describe size-selective detachment, redetachment and transport, and the associated surface textural changes. “Lumpers and splitters revisited” opined John Thornes (King’s London) in his summing-up of the session, asserting that whereas some papers had – to their detriment – ignored important effects that should have been included, others had “nit-pickingly” included representations of minor processes that could well have been omitted. John suggested that we need to remember at all times that a model is only an approximation to reality: the challenge is to adequately capture mainline effects without ignoring the important local effects.

Mulling over these wise words we headed for coffee, and the first of the poster sessions (some excellent contributions here). Revived by concentrated caffeine, the session continued with Stuart Lane (Leeds) chairing after giving us details of the next day’s ‘field class’. Then, due to a programme change, the session’s first paper was delivered by The Man Himself, Mike Kirkby. This was a masterly presentation which outlined a linkage of Topmodel with a representation of soil creep. Lean and elegant stuff, this; as usual from Mike. Next came Duncan Wishart (Durham), who summarized work using aerial photography and GIS to understand spatial and temporal change in the upland River Wear, County Durham. One interesting nineteenth-century anthropogenic driver here turns out to be hydraulic mining using ‘hushes’. With a focus on processes at a much smaller scale, David Favis-Mortlock (Queen’s Belfast) then described a modelling study of rill initiation which suggested a somewhat paradoxical influence of microtopography at differing scales. Running over time, this talk terminated in an unusual manner when Stuart sprang for the off switch during the final overhead. Cooling the pace and bringing the collective focus back to field approaches, Aaron Yair (Hebrew University, Israel) then gave a thoroughly convincing and classically structured presentation which demonstrated just how these things should be done. It seems that infiltration losses are extraordinarily rapid in the arid Sede Boqur experimental catchment, so that much runoff is lost over a flow distance of only 8 m! As a result, there are many discontinuities in the resulting flow sequences, since rainfall events are often of high intensity but short duration. Aaron then outlined what this might mean for the development of slope profiles over long periods of time. To follow this was a paper with – for a change – a laboratory focus: Rorke Bryan (Toronto) began in Jedi Knight fashion by declaring that “The empiricists strike back”, then launching into a presentation packed with fascinating results from flume experiments on the geometry of rill confluences. Here we learned that asymmetrical junctions tend to develop in such a way that the junction becomes more symmetrical, and that scour at such junctions, cutting through the rill’s basal seal, can form a pattern which repeats periodically downstream from the junction.

Lunch, then on to session 3 (on ‘Evolution of fine-scale forms’) which was chaired by Tony Parsons (Leicester) and began with Tim Quine (Exeter) on the subject of tillage redistribution. Tim’s specific focus here was tillage’s impacts on the spatial variability of soil. Assuming that 137Cs is picking out the pattern of tillage redistribution as the dominant process on his experimental sites, Tim found some relationships between 137Cs residuals and patterns of soil carbon, N, and P. Next, Helen Rendell (Loughborough) switched our gaze to Basilicata, in southern Italy, where erosion of biancane (small conical hills) and calanchi (hillslope scarps with knife-edge ridges) was measured. Keeping their form as they erode, these unusual morphologies apparently result from competing effects of creep, rainsplash, and rain dislodgement. Janet Hooke (Portsmouth) followed this with a superbly stimulating presentation on the evidence for nonlinear dynamics in meander evolution: provided a sufficiently long time series is available, the temporal trajectory of meander sinuosity can be seen to trace a periodic path, which may continue to cycle or may eventually converge to a fixed value. Nikolaus Kuhn (Clark University, USA) then brought the presentations to a close with a summary of work on the Negev Badlands: rainfall simulation was used to test the hypothesis that, despite this being an apparently homogenous environment, ridges are runoff generating areas and slopes are sinks. Finally, Jean Poesen (KU Leuven) led discussion, observing that the afternoon’s papers tended to focus more on interactions between processes whereas those in the morning session tended to concentrate more on single processes.

Following ‘the cup that cheers’ and a chance to look at the second batch of posters, the fourth and final session of the day began. Tim Quine (Exeter) chaired this, introducing Martin Evans (Manchester) whose presentation focused on eroding blanket peat bogs, with an emphasis on slope-channel coupling. Anton Van Rompaey (KU Leuven) then considered the impacts of collectivisation on sediment supply in Eastern Europe. This modelling study made use of SEDEM, which produced good results despite the need to retain Belgian parameterisation due to a lack of local data. Forest hydrology and sediment movement was the focus of the paper from Maria Sala (Barcelona, Spain) and Adolofo Calvo (Valencia, Spain). In NE Spain such areas have a more complex spatial pattern than in more arid Mediterranean areas, it seems. The final paper of the day was from Andy Rebeiro-Hargrave (King’s London) who gave us an overview of cellular automaton modelling, including a simple model for gully growth. Jean Poesen then wrapped things up by summarising the papers, followed by general discussion. The geomorphological chat continued at a wine reception in the School of Geography, and with its vigour undiminished (but possibly with some reduction in sharpness of focus) in various pubs afterward. Till a late hour, for some.

Day two began with the field trip, led by Stuart Lane. In glorious Wharfedale we also heard Ian Evans (Durham) on the area’s geology and glacial history, Joe Holden (Leeds) on peat hydrology, and Adrian McDonald (Leeds) on water quality and microbiological problems. A fine day, but with a lunch that, for some, was slightly marred by The Innumerate Innkeeper. A letup in the food flux there may have been, but there was no letup in the flow of geomorphology following our return to Leeds. In the palatial lecture theatre of the Business School we heard Mike Kirkby’s Frost Lecture. With a title from a crossword puzzle, the motif of this talk was ‘geomorphology as a puzzle’, with Mike looking back at 40 years of his research and “wondering what he has been doing”. Covering a full range of spatial and temporal scales, we were treated not just to a magisterial overview of this vastly impressive body of work but also to some illuminating insights into the roots of Mike’s thinking and methods. For example: Mike’s feeling that computer code for a geomorphological model should be no more than 10 lines long due to early experiences with paper tape input; tales of ‘light touch’ supervision by the late Dick Chorley; and the role of continued advocacy in the wide acceptance and usage of Topmodel. This was by no means solely a review of past work, however. Evidence of Mike’s continued and continuing efforts to refine and extend modelling concepts appeared throughout. “What is an acceptable level of complexity for models at a particular scale? How might we best ensure that nonlinear responses are real and not model artefacts?” Such questions will surely set the agenda for geomorphological modelling in the 21st century.

Then after the lecture, the reception! Held in the foyer of the Business School, this was in honour of Mike, and also gave us a chance to thank Fiona Kirkby for all she’s done for ESPL. Thanks Fiona! Yet even after an excellent buffet and ample wine, it seems that some geomorphologists cannot stop geomorphologizing. A quick headcount in a bar of the local pub near closing time indicated a concentration of c. 30% geomorphologists: not bad for a Friday night in Leeds.

On the final day of the conference we got bigger. The first session of the morning was ‘Process mechanisms at coarse scales’, commencing with a paper by Kenji Kashiwaya (Kanazawa University, Japan) who asked “How long does an earthquake continue to change the earth's surface?” This focused on sedimentation rates following the 1995 Kobe earthquake, using supplemental information from heavy rainfalls in 1938 and 1967. It also included the immortal line, “This model was only formulated the day before yesterday so we don’t have any results yet”. Next was Simon Dadson (Cambridge) who presented a model for landscape evolution which represents bedrock landsliding as a stochastic process, and uses nonlinear diffusion to represent shallow landsliding. Charlie Harris (Cardiff) then outlined investigations into the nature of periglacial solifluction by means of freeze-thaw experiments using a large centrifuge. Scaling of processes was a major theme here: deformation turns out to be as a plastic solid rather than as a viscous fluid, as was previously thought. In the final paper before coffee, Nick Drake (King’s London) described a study to quantify error propagation in a model for soil erosion across southern England: with a 30 m spatial resolution, this was used to model the effects of heavy rainfall on 11th October 2000. Large total errors here! Paul Bishop (Glasgow) acted as discussant and, among other points, emphasised the need to focus on errors in data and their propagation.

After coffee, Chris Brookes (Leeds) presented a paper on application of Topmodel to the Upper Wharfedale catchment, quantifying the effects of changing DEM resolution on patterns of saturated areas. The focus then shifted to gully initiation in Colorado in the paper from Greg Tucker (Oxford): a modelling study indicated that gullies here can have their birth in small but intense convective storms, and that in this strongly nonlinear system there appears to be a marked feedback between vegetation and erosion under some circumstances. Following, Phil Ashworth (Brighton) became the second Jedi Knight of the meeting, commenting “The physical modellers strike back” during his presentation, which made use of a 1 : 50 scale model of a braided river in a 4 x 5 m flume to quantify avulsion frequency. The dynamics of braided rivers are different from those of alluvial fans: this was the take-home message from this interesting paper. Paul Bishop again reported on the papers in this session.

Lunch, then (after John Wainwright introduced the swish new-look BGRG website) the first session on ‘Evolution of landforms’. Jamie Woodward (Leeds) began with a foray into the Pleistocene, asking “What is the date of glacial forms in the Pindus Mountains, Albania?” In a study which updates Bruno Messerli’s classic 1960s work on Mediterranean glaciation, Jamie came to an unexpected conclusion. Next, Paul Bishop (Glasgow) focused our attention upon knickpoint retreat in fluvial channels incised into bedrock. From a modelling exercise using data from SE Australia, it seems that knickpoints are preserved if a streampower-based relationship is used, but are smoothed out if shear stress is used. Again we came to the question: what is the optimum complexity for process descriptions at given spatial and temporal scales? Cristina Persano (Glasgow) then gave a geologically-flavoured presentation which again focused on SE Australia but journeyed considerably further into the past, with thermochronology being used to constrain the dates. More geology from Glasgow rounded off the session, with the paper by Trevor Hoey (Glasgow) concentrating on the tectonic setting of geomorphic forms in southern Spain. Mike Kirkby summed up these four papers, reminding us that they were revisiting the ‘big’ questions about landscape evolution, and that this is both desirable and exciting for geomorphology. But, he asked, are hillslope processes in these studies being described in an appropriate way with respect to scale?

After pondering these thoughts over tea, we returned for the final session of the meeting, which continued the theme of landform evolution. With Janet Hooke (Portsmouth) chairing, we opened with Tim Burt (Durham) revisiting Bicknoller Combe in Somerset’s Quantock Hills. “How old is my valley?” he asked, and used Mike Kirkby's SLOPEN model to try to find out. Tom Coulthard (Aberystwyth) then gave another modelling-based paper, using his CAESAR model to simulate the evolution of four Yorkshire rivers over the last 9000 years, using the same scenarios of climate and land use throughout. We learned that different zones of each catchment appear to respond quite differently to the same forcings (and that each run of Tom’s model takes about two months!). The final paper came from Martin Gude (Jena, Germany) who told us of recent work in the HIVAL project on the Kärkevagge valley in northern Sweden, building upon classic work by Anders Rapp. An admirable use of multiple methodologies here, with (for example) GIS being used to construct a geomorphological process map and geophysical techniques being used to construct depth profiles, which in turn are used to constrain the mass balance accounting. Martin and colleagues were able to come up with estimates for the frequency and magnitude of rock falls which compared very well (too well?) with present-day observations. Mike Kirkby then acted as rapporteur once again, noting that tea time had been a kind of fault line between a more geological approach and a more geomorphological approach to landscape evolution, and that we need to learn to bring these together. More generally, there is a need to promote a dialogue between work at fine and coarse scales: this is at the heart of links between process and form. We are all part of earth system science (or whatever we might choose to call it) so as such we should focus our studies on the earth system at all scales.

And still it was not over! Following presentation of the Wiley Award, the Sweeting Dissertation Award and the Gordon Warwick Award, this highly satisfying meeting was brought to a most satisfying end by Athol Abrahams (SUNY Buffalo, USA) with his Linton Lecture on ‘A sediment transport model for channels and hillslopes’. The new relationship outlined here is relatively simple but promises to be widely applicable, and thus is likely to be much used. The Conference Dinner and the BGRG AGM followed.

“If you seek my monument, look about you.” The sheer quality and variety of geomorphological research at the BGRG 2002 Annual Conference, all of which owed some debt to Mike Kirkby’s work, was ample evidence of a monument which will thrive as long as scientists continue to study the surface of our planet.

Dave Favis-Mortlock, Queen’s University Belfast

International Symposium on Land Use Change and Geomorphic, Soil and Water Processes in Tropical Mountain Areas

This symposium, organised by Gerard Govers on behalf of the Laboratory for Experimental Geomorphology, K.U. Leuven; the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam; PROMAS, University of Cuenca; Projecto Paramo ECOPAR; GCTE Focus 3, Soil Erosion Network and the IGU Commission Geomorphic Challenges of the 21st Century, was an excellent opportunity to escape preparations for Christmas for the exciting geomorphology of Ecuador. It attracted participants from a wide range of discipline backgrounds (including Geomorphology , Agriculture, Pedology, Forestry, Geology and Engineering) and countries (including Ecuador, Thailand, Peru, Belgium, the Netherlands, United States, United Kingdom, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, Canada, Honduras and Germany), promising stimulating exchanges of ideas and lively discussion.

It began in Quito with a day of papers on the theme of geomorphic, soil and water processes, and the effects of land-use change on these processes (Jean Poesen on gully erosion, tillage erosion and soil conservation in the Ethiopian Highlands, Michel Hermelin on erosion rates in soils derived from volcanic ashes in Colombia, Lieven Claessens on modelling the effects of shallow landsliding on long-term landscape dynamics, Christian Valentin on effects of slope gradient on decreasing runoff in Laos and Thailand, Raoul Vazquez on the main measures for evaluating the performance of distributed hydrological models, Jozef Deckers on animal-powered tillage erosion assessment in the Southern Andes region of Ecuador, Anton Rijsdijk on sediment contribution from tributary gullies, mass wasting and bank erosion in East Java, Indonesia, Luis Jerves on the monitoring and management of sedimentation in the Paute reservoir near the important hydro-electric power plant, Veerle Vanacker on spatial variation of suspended sediment concentration in a tropical Andean river system, Pascal Podwojewski on the influence of soil properties and land use on the water availability of the parámos in the Andes of Ecuador, Wouter Buytaert on the use of a linear reservoir model to assess impacts of land use changes on the hydrology of mountainous parámo catchments in south Ecuador, Gerard Govers on spatial modelling of the impact of deforestation on landslide susceptibility, Christopher Woltemade on the influence of land use and geology on geomorphic response to hurricane Mitch in mountainous northwestern Nicaragua, Eric Cammeraat on land use change and its consequences for land degradation in the lake Baringo area in Kenya, Robert Hofstede on participatory mapping to involve the community in parámo management in Ecuador).

The following day was a field day (13 hours) to Cangahua (Cayambe), where inappropriate land use (cropland) leads to extensive water and tillage erosion resulting in the exposure of duripan (locally named cangahua or tepetate in Mexico). There was and a lively discussion by several participants on its origin. During that day we witnessed the devastating effects of ash fall caused by the November (2002) eruption of the Reventador volcano: e.g. collapsed greenhouse roofs under the weight of 5 - 10 mm of volcanic ash and eroded teeth of cows grazing rangelands covered by this ash. It also became clear that ash fall significantly contributes to an increase in potential energy of these Andean landscapes! On our way back to Quito, we travelled through the Oyacachi glaciated valley and the Cayambe Coca Reserve with wet parámo landscape.

The final day of the Quito part of the symposium saw us yet again in the field where we had the opportunity to inspect the hazards of road building in a steep mountain environment. Is it wise to stand on the outside of a tension crack to look down into a valley a hundred metres below? We vigorously debated the usefulness of planting eucalyptus forests to sequester carbon , and surprised the local population by appearing in the most unlikely places in our bus. Near La Merced village, we observed extensive cangahua (duripan) exposure and badland development as a consequence of past land use. The last stop of the day, before we boarded the plane to Cuenca, was a lava flow from 1750, now providing a handy source of building material. At the airport we elbowed our way to the front of the queue (no reserved seats) to claim the recommended window seats on the right-hand side for the best views.

In Cuenca, the format was repeated. We began with a day of papers first continuing the theme of the effects of land use change on geomorphic, soil and water processes (Jean-Paul Briquent on soil erosion under land-use change in Laos and Thailand, Anton Rijsdijk on runoff and sediment production from rural roads in E. Java, Samuel Rivera on the effect of management practices on discharge and water quality in central Honduras, Carol Harden on effects of land use change on rivers in the Paute basin and Anton Van Rompaey on effects of changes on landscape connectivity on river regimes and sediment yield). After coffee we moved to the theme of sustainable land and water management (Olav Slaymaker on the MANRECUR project, Andreas Mende on geo-potential mapping, Coen Bussink on using GIS for decision making in the Peruvian Andes, Gladys Lopez Rivadeneyra on recuperation of degraded soils from effects of the oil industry in the Peruvian forests, Jan Sevink on carbon stocks and sequestration in the high Andes, Igino Emmer on land use change projects under the Kyoto protocol, Gerd Werner on sustainable rehabilitation of degraded volcanic soils in Mexico and Chile and Jan-Peter Lesschen on the use of trade-off analysis to investigate interrelationships between potato productivity, tillage erosion and pesticide leaching) The paper session concluded with a general discussion which raised several important issues and which prompted a good deal of participation. The day concluded with a visit to the PROMAS (Programa para el Manejo de Agua y Suelo) centre in the University. In the evening we were entertained to a conference dinner with fireworks and dancing. The former included devices that are a cross between a hot-air balloon and a paper lantern that are released and float up into the sky. They provided an opportunity for budding meteorologists (or meteorologists manqué) among us to study vertical atmospheric profiles.

The next day, a short field excursion of 12 hours, took us first to the Josefina landslide (which we had seen from our well chosen seats as we came into land 2 days before). In 1993, this landslide blocked the valley of the Rio Paute with about 20 million m3 of sediment, causing a lake to accumulate behind it that reached a maximum of 60 m depth and 10 km length. The breach in the dam that was created to drain the lake caused a peak flow discharge 8000 m3 s-1 down a channel with an average discharge of 40 m3 s-1. Engineering works (drop structures) continue to stabilise the site, but inspection of the valley downstream of the landslide showed that there exist several other similar sites for an event of similar magnitude in the future. Our second stop of the day was to the Burgay catchment, where we inspected channel change in response to recent land-use change, but failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for a deposit we inspected adjacent to old braided channel. Our final visit of the day/evening was to the Machangara catchment where, despite the protestations of our bus driver that he’d not been told it was this far, we climbed through a glaciated valley up to 3500 m to the Paramo observing another large landslide that had eroded a kame terrace.. The landscape was spectacular, but it was probably a relief that it was dark as we descended the narrow track.

Our final day saw us on the road again, this time to Guayaquil, where the conference ended for those not going on the post-conference excursion back to Quito. There was one planned stop in Santa Isabel to look at the effects of irrigation agriculture on soils and erosion processes. As ever, however, we managed more than the planned number of stops, including Cumbe where, as we stood in the rain, we were informed by Jean Poesen that ‘in principle, this is a dry location’. After Santa Isabel we did visit a site dry in practice and in principle. The rainfall gradient from this location (around 200 mm a-1) to the coast was dramatic. In 20 minutes we went from a site with almost no vegetation to a lush tropical vegetation with coffee, cacao and where we could buy bananas by the roadside. We were late, as usual, arriving in Guayaquil, but none of us cared.

During the post-conference excursion a spectacular transect was made through several bio-geographical regions: from the coastal plain (port of Guayaquil) through the western and eastern cordillera (over 4000 m a.s.l. with Mount Chimborazo (6310 m a.s.l.), glaciers, wind, sheet and rill erosion) to Riobamba (located at the footslope of the active Tungurahua volcano) where we visited an impressive valley draining to the Oriente (with hanging valleys, old basalt flows, recent lahars, reservoir siltation problems and rather unstable valley sides) before returning to Quito. The landscapes were spectacular, and the field discussions both informative and stimulating.

Tony Parsons, University of Leicester
Jean Poesen, Catholic University, Leuven.

Forthcoming conference

The next International Geographical Congress will be taking place in Glasgow between 15th and 20th August 2004. The Commission is organising a 4-day Geomorphology Conference jointly with the British Geomorphological Research Group, and the International Association for Geomorphology. This conference will run from the 17th to 20th August.

The theme of the Conference is
‘Geomorphology and Sustainability: Towards a Sustainable Future’.
It comprises whole-day sessions on:
Geomorphology and Instability
The Managed Landscape and Restoring Nature
Geomorphology in a New Century/ Submitted papers
Past Hydrological Events Related to Global Change

The Conference will include the BGRG AGM, the Annual Linton Lecture and the Frost Lecture. Keynote addresses will be given by Professor Will Graf, (IGU), Professor Mario Panizza (President IAG), Professor Adrian Harvey (Chair BGRG) and other leading British and international geomorphologists.

For further details visit the BGRG website:
http://www.bgrg.org/
Or email the Conference Coordinator: janet.hooke@port.ac.uk

Past Hydrological events related to understanding of Global Change

The Commission participated in a successful bid to ICSU, led by Professor Ken Gregory President of the GLOCOPH Commission of INQUA, for funds to support a project which involves international research collaboration to demonstrate how knowledge of past hydrological events can be employed to enhance understanding of the impact of global change. Whereas previous research necessarily focused primarily upon recent hydrological events, upon palaeohydrological interpretations, upon sediment delivery, or upon interpretation of sediment sequences, this project fosters collaboration between these activities. Details of the project, and a full list of those currently involved can be found at www.geodata.soton.ac.uk/glocoph. Members of the Commission who are interested in this project are invited to contact Tony Parsons, Jean Poesen, or Ken Gregory.

Membership changes

At the Durban General Assembly of the IGU it was decided to eliminate the distinction between full and corresponding members of IGU Commissions. Previously, there had, officially, been a small list of full members and all other members of the Commission were termed ‘corresponding members’. In reality, the distinction was that full members took a more active role in the running of the Commission. Henceforth, all participants in the Commission will be known as ‘members’ and there will be a Steering Committee for the Commission. Until the Glagow Congress, the Steering Committee will consist of the former list of full members (see Newsletter 1).

Tony Parsons