[Sasnet] Fwd: Quantitative landscape reconstructions symposium at the XII IPC

[Bonnie.A.B.Blackwell at williams.edu]

----- Forwarded message from sheila hicks <sheila.hicks at OULU.FI> -----
    Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 15:22:58 +0300
    From: sheila hicks <sheila.hicks at OULU.FI>
Reply-To: sheila hicks <sheila.hicks at OULU.FI>
 Subject: Quantitative landscape reconstructions symposium at the XII IPC
      To: QUATERNARY at CLIFFY.UCS.MUN.CA

Dear Colleagues,
Apologies for cross-posting.

As part of the XII International Palynological 
Congress which will be held in Bonn 30th August - 
5th September (see congress website: 
<http://www.paleontology.uni-bonn.de/congress08/index.htm>http://www.paleontology.uni-bonn.de/congress08/index.htm

for details) we will be arranging a symposium 
entitled "Pollen calibration for high-resolution 
quantitative landscape reconstructions" (see 
details below). We welcome contributions to this 
symposium, which is number 16 on the programme 
list. Abstracts are due on or before Wednesday, 
April 30, 2008 and this is also the date for 
early registration so we would like to encourage 
you to visit the web page and submit an abstract.

Symposium 16 "Pollen calibration for 
high-resolution quantitative landscape reconstructions"
The quantitative reconstruction of past 
vegetation/landscape/land-cover has become an 
essential part of climate change, nature 
conservancy/biodiversity, and archaeological 
research. The traditional interpretation tools 
used in Palynology, such as the indicator species 
approach and the modern analogue/comparative 
approach, are unable to provide the type of 
vegetation data needed to test hypotheses on the 
effect of quantitative land-cover changes on 
climate, biodiversity and societies.

During the past decade, much effort has been put 
into calibrating pollen data in terms of plant 
abundance and land-cover. In particular, two 
initiatives breaking from the traditional 
approach, the INQUA Pollen Monitoring Programme 
(PMP, http://pmp.oulu.fi/ ) and the NordForsk 
POLLANDCAL network 
(http://www.ecrc.ucl.ac.uk/pollandcal/), have 
focused on the calibration of pollen deposition 
(pollen accumulation rates) and pollen 
percentages, respectively. The PMP uses pollen 
traps to monitor annual pollen deposition across 
vegetation units from closed forest to open 
situations in order to provide reference material 
for interpreting fossil pollen abundance in terms 
of tree-line locations and vegetation density. 
Within the POLLANDCAL network, a simulation and 
modelling approach has been adopted to develop 
powerful tools for quantitative 
landscape/land-cover reconstructions at local to regional spatial scales.

In this symposium, we invite all contributions on 
the calibration of pollen data in terms of 
quantitative vegetation characteristics, 
including innovative alternative approaches not 
included in the PMP and POLLANDCAL developments. 
Throughout the aim is to precisely define the 
spatial and temporal scales of any reconstructions.


Marie-José Gaillard-Lemdahl and Sheila Hicks

Sheila Hicks
Research Professor in Quaternary Ecology
Institute of Geosciences
PO Box 3000
90014 University of Oulu
Finland

Tel: +358-8-5531438
Fax: +358-8-5531484  
----- End forwarded message -----



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