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The Association Upcoming Meetings:
10th
CAVEPS and Quaternary Extinction Symposium CANQUA June 5-8, 2005 2nd
International Congress
The Quaternary Times Directory of Quaternary Scientists 2005 Northeastern Friends of the Pleistocene meeting Quaternary-Related Journal Discounts Quaternary Job Opportunities Quaternary-Related Abstracts Quaternary-Related Links Society of American Archaeology Fellowship Announcement Search the AMQUA Site
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Research Initiatives GRAND The main objectives of GRAND are to study the extent and timing of late Quaternary glaciation in Asia (Siberia and the Himalayas) and the impact that this had on the continent's hydrological system. Because of the importance of continental freshwater on ocean circulation and, in turn, on global climate, it is critical to know how Asia's north-flowing rivers were influenced by ice sheets. If, as in North America, the northward-draining river systems to the Arctic Ocean were dammed by ice sheets, Asia's runoff would have been forced to seek new routes southward through the Aral, Caspian, Black, and Mediterranean Seas. Thus much of the continent's freshwater system would have flowed into the central Atlantic Ocean, rather than into the Arctic Ocean as it is today. The new GRAND program will have 8 Working Groups: Glaciation in Asia (led by V. Astakhov, VNIIKAM, St. Petersburg); Glaciation in the Tibet Plateau (L. Owens, Department of Earth Sciences, University of California Riverside); Permafrost and Ground Ice in Asia (N. Romanovsky, Geocryological Department, Moscow State University); Eurasian Arctic Ocean Record (L. Polyak, Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University); Proglacial Lakes and Drainage Systems of Siberia (V. Baker, Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona); Aral-Caspian-Black Sea Drainage System (F. Gasse, Lab. d'hydrologie et geochemie isotopique, University of Paris Sud, Orsay); Drainage off the Tibetan Plateau (F. Lemkuhl, Geographisches Institut, Georg-August Universitat, Gottingen); and Modelling Ice Sheets, Oceans, and Climate (A. Bush, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta). The first meeting of this new IGCP group was held in Tallinn, Estonia, in June 1997. The 1998 annual meeting is scheduled for Menali in the Himalayas of India. Individual Working Group meetings will be organized by their leaders, who can be contacted at the addresses above; some of these will be held in conjunction with other meetings such as GLOCOPH, APARD, International Permafrost Meeting, QUEEN, INQUA, and others. More information about the new GRAND project can be found by contacting one of the project leaders (vaikmae@gi.ee; jt_teller@umanitoba.ca), the scientific secretary (nat.rutter@ ualberta.ca), individual Working Group Leaders, or GRAND's Home Page at http://mercury.geog.ualberta.ca/igcp /IGCP415.html |