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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.

2nd International Congress
“The World of Elephants”

Hot Springs, South Dakota, USA September 22-25,  2005


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Conference Report

Paleoclimate and
Human Responses

June 6-9, 2000
Fort Burgwin, New Mexico

This truly multidisciplinary workshop held near Taos, New Mexico, included two days of field visits and two days presenting papers, discussing research, and meeting new colleagues. The field trip was along the Rio Puerco (of the East) drainage where the USGS is conducting basin-wide investigations integrating the linkages between changing Pleistocene and Holocene climates, and the responses of the biological, geomorphic, and human systems. Sites ranged from late pueblo period Chaves-Hummingbird and Guadalupe Ruins, to early sites such as a recently discovered Folsom site. Dated Holocene alluvial stratigraphy provided a geomorphic context for discussing landscape changes over time and climatic causes of regional abandonment. During possibly decades of drought and increased environmental stress, where did they get their water?
    The workshop brought together paleoclimate folks, with a keynote address by Jim White (INSTAAR); discussed modern climates interpreted from dendroclimatic, ocean, and ice core records; paleoecology and archaeology records from the Great Basin, southwest USA, north American Pacific Coast, Alaska, and north east Asia.
    The conference conveners, Milan Pavich, Larry Benson, and Curt Larsen from the USGS kept the meeting moving smoothly, and Mike Adler from SMU presented research from Chaves Hummingbird, Pot Creek Pueblo, and generally hosted the group at SMU's Fort Burgwin facility outside of Taos. Perhaps the most important results of the workshop were: (1) a better understanding of the needs and complexities of the various disciplines, (2) a heightened appreciation of the difficulties in correlating climatic, biologic, geomorphic, and human records with differing temporal and spatial resolutions, and (3) exchanging ideas with new colleagues with different perspectives on the same problems. To learn more about the workshop, obtain the abstracts, field guides and addresses of the attendees, and for other interesting links, log on to the web site at: http://geology.er.usgs.gov/eespteam/workshop/
Kirk Anderson
Northern Arizona University