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10th CAVEPS and Quaternary Extinction Symposium
March 29 - April 2, 2005
Naracoorte, SA, Australia

CANQUA June 5-8, 2005
NOTICE: The server to the Winnipeg CANQUA abstract submission site has been periodically down for the past day or so. Please try again if you've been rebuffed; the format and address can be found on the meeting web site <http:www.umanitoba.ca/canqua>. We are extending the deadline until next week.

2^nd International Congress
“The World of Elephants”
Hot Springs, South Dakota, USA September 22-25,  2005

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Friends of the Pleistocene: New 1999 Trips

Pacific Northwest Cell
Tentatively: Sept. 18, 19, 1999
Lower Columbia River
The trip will focus on the lower Columbia River, essentially from the crest of the Cascades (Stevenson, WA) to Clatskanie, OR (about 10 miles upstream from the mouth). As I'm an archaeologist, the theme of the trip will be the interface between geology and archaeological sites. Beginning in the 1970's a number of archaeologists working on the lower Columbia speculated that known or suspected geological "catastrophes" caused identifiable changes in prehistoric settlement patterns, primarily in the Portland Basin. Although this idea received a great deal of attention in archaeological research and publications, there was a marked lack of input from the geological community. This began changing in the early 1990's as a result of geological hazards research by the USGS. Archaeology provides the missing ingredient. The human response to geological processes will be discussed (and debated, I'm sure) at Chinook Indian villages and resource processing sites near Bonneville Dam, Airport Way in Portland, the lower Columbia Slough, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and near Clatskanie, Oregon. For geological purists, we'll look at landslides (large and small), lahar sequences on the Sandy and Lewis rivers, Bretz Floods features just about everywhere and Holocene alluvial landforms and sediments on the largest but least studied river in the world, the Columbia. The base camp will be at Oxbow Regional Park on the Sandy River about 8 miles from Troutdale, Oregon. Contact: Alex Bourdeau, US Fish and Wildlife Service, 20555 SW Gerda Lane, Sherwood, OR 97140, 503 625-4377; fax: -4887; alex_bourdeau@ fws.gov

Midwest Cell
May 21-23, 1999
Goshen, Indiana
The 1999 Midwest FOP Field Conference will convene approximately 20 miles southeast of South Bend, IN. The field trip will focus on Late Wisconsin interactions of the Saginaw, Lake Michigan and Huron-Erie Lobes in north central Indiana and south-central Michigan. If you are not on the Midwest FOP mailing list and would like to receive the first announcement please contact Steve Brown, Indiana Geological Survey, at steebrow@indiana.edu.

Pacific Cell
The Pacific Cell FOP at Yucca Mountain was a success. One hundred and sixty people attended; the weather was beautiful; and site clearances to visit the Nevada Test Site were approved without problem. A few field guides are available for $10 from Emily Taylor, emtaylor@ usgs.gov.

The 1999 Pacific Cell
meeting will be organized by Charlie Narwold. The trip will focus on Late Quaternary Faulting and Pluvial Lake History of the North Quinn River and Alvord Valley, Southeastern Oregon. Contact Charlie Narwold, cfn1@axe. humboldt.edu

Rocky Mountain Cell
September 10-12, 1999
Quaternary and Environmental Geology of the Southwest San Juan Mountains, Colorado
Principal leaders: Mary L. Gillam, consulting geologist; Robert W. Blair, Fort Lewis College; and Stanley E. Church, U.S. Geological Survey. Co-leaders: Scott Elias, INSTAAR; Robert W. Kirkham, Colorado Geological Survey; Thomas Perry, consultant; Fred Phillips, New Mexico Tech; and others.
This trip, which is still being planned, will address natural processes and deposits in formerly glaciated and unglaciated areas as well migration of heavy metals from mineralized zones. It will focus on the Animas River valley in Colorado and New Mexico but may include other areas if time allows. Tentative themes will be the influence of climatic, tectonic, and bedrock controls on moraine, terrace, and related deposits; dating by radiocarbon, amino-acid, and incision-rate methods; and contaminant movement in alluvium of late Holocene and historic age. Proposed stops will feature moraines, terraces, rock glaciers, landslides, loess, soil development, Lava Creek B ash, heavy-metal contamination, and post-glacial deposits at Lake Emma. A pre-meeting hike to remote sites may be added. For more information, please contact Mary L. Gillam at 115 Meadow Road East, Durango, CO 81301, (970) 259-0966, gillam@rmii.com

Northeast Cell
May 21-23, 1999
Central Pennsylvania
The 1999 Northeastern FOP trip will focus on paleo-periglacial features and landscapes near the glacial margin in the Ridge and Valley, in central Pennsylvania. Introductory activities will begin at Bucknell University on the evening of May 21. The trip will begin in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania - near the center of the state, at the intersection of I 80 and the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. We will:
*visit good examples of familiar periglacial features: sorted patterned ground, boulder fields, tors, debris fans and ancient fan fragments, dunes, loess, and shale chip colluvium;
*examine some periglacial features not previously seen on a FOP trip - ground ice scars, wind-transverse nivation welts, and associated thermokarst(?) features; and
*review the relative positions of Pre Wisconsin till bodies, outwash surfaces, stream derangements, and terraces. These features have been mapped carefully enough that assertions can made about their temporal and spatial relationships; that is we can tentatively:
*reconstruct units of landscape back to late Wisconsin times;
*understand the local circumstances - soil, drainage, slope, aspect - under which different periglacial features developed, failed to develop, or were destroyed during deicing; and
*establish pieces of relative chronology - showing which events must have preceded which other ones.
The first day's trip will travel west from the river into the high sandstone ridges to view the vigorously deformed slopes and upland valley floors. Then we'll go south into the broad lowlands to visit: high fan remnants, periglacially deformed pre-Wisconsin moraine and outwash features, boulder colluvium and shale-chip colluvium of Wisconsin and earlier age, and complex outwash and terrace surfaces. The briefer second day will follow the Susquehanna north, looking at aeolian sand and silt deposits, classic levels of Susquehanna terraces, and thick pre-Wisconsin tills including some punctured by karst.
For registration materials (to be sent in the Spring) or for more information contact: Ben Marsh, Department of Geography, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837; 717-524-1381 (which becomes 570-577-1381 after January 1st); marsh@bucknell.edu

Southeast Cell
October 8-10, 1999
Soils and Quaternary Geology of the Big Sandy Valley, West Virginia and Kentucky
Place: Caveland Lodge, Carter Caves State Resort Park, NE Kentucky
Leader: David Cremeens, GAI Consultants, 570 Beatty Rd., Monroeville, PA 15146; 412-856-6400 x3234; dlcremeens@ aol.com or env_engineering@gaiconsultants.com

1998 SE FOP trip report:
The 1998 Southeastern FOP field trip was held Nov. 13-15 at Camp Broadstone, near Boone, NC. It was partially sponsored by Appalachian State University. The leaders were Hugh Mills (Tennessee Tech), Ellen Cowan (ASU), Keith Seramur (ASU and Geonetics Corporation), Loren Raymond (ASU), John Allison (formerly NC Department of Environment, Health, and Natural Resources, now private consultant), and Louis Acker (NC Department of Transportation). The trip concentrated on sediments, forms, and soils of "fans" on piedmont slopes of several high mountains in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. On the 14th we visited Roan Mountain, where we examined surfaces and exposures of fans ranging in age from Holocene to pre Illinoian. Efforts to determine thicknesses of deposits using geophysical techniques were discussed. Some highlights were a backhoe pit on a well preserved fan remnant that stands 20 m above modern drainageways, a climb up an even higher fan remnant with exposures showing the bulk of the landform to be saprolite. On the 15th, the weather dawned clear and brisk, and we set off for the west flanks of Rich and Snake mountains. The upper slopes of these mountains are underlain largely by amphibolite so that amphibolite clasts are abundant in the fan deposits. This lithology forms excellent weathering rinds, which have been used extensively for relative-age dating and mapping of fan surfaces. Exposures showed that deposits here are thinner than and lack the large boulders typical of those at Roan Mountain. Perhaps as a consequence, fan remnants here are less well preserved, evolving to rounded ridges as they age. An environmental case study involving contaminant migration showed the practical importance of locating the contact between fan debris and the underlying saprolite.A total of 76 people attended at least part of the two-day trip. Several copies of the field guide remain and are available from Hugh Mills (Box 5062 TTU, Cookeville, TN 38501).

South Central Cell