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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

Pacific Cell
Rocky Mountain Cell
Pacific Northwest Cell
Southeast Cell
Northeast Cell
Midwest Cell

Pacific Cell
February 17-19, 2001
Death Valley, California
The Pacific Cell FOP trip for 2000 (postponed) will be in Death Valley. Primary leaders include Ralph Klinger (University of Colorado-Boulder), Jeff Knott (University of California), Michael Machette (USGS-Denver) and Andrei Sarna-Wojcicki (USGS-Menlo Park).
    The preliminary itinerary includes a day looking at tectonics and Plio Pleistocene stratigraphy along the Furnace Creek fault zone in Northern Death Valley (Klinger), a day on the late Cenozoic deposits of the Furnace Creek area (Machette), and a day on late Pliocene and Pleistocene stratigraphy, slip rate of the Death Valley fault zone, and evidence for pluvial lakes (Knott).
    The trip will probably be limited to 150 participants owing to our field trip permit with the National Park Service. However, we will have use of the Texas Springs Campground (group sites and individual). Anticipated price is $30-40. We will use the last Pacific Cell FOP e mail list for our first notification this fall. If you want to be added to the list, contact Michael Machette, U.S. Geological Survey, MS 966, PO Box 25046, Denver, CO 80225; 303-273 8612; Fax: -8600; machette@usgs.gov

Rocky Mountain Cell
September 22-24, 2000
Capitol Reef National Park and vicinity
The Rocky Mountain Cell will be doing the "Red Gate to Blue Gate" (G.K. Gilbert's 1870's terms) tour of Boulder Mountain, Waterpocket Fold, the Fremont valley and vicinity. There will be an optional trip to the north (Hartnet and Cathedral valleys) the day after the field trip if there is enough interest.
    Topics: (1) Late-Wisconsin glacial moraines and drift on NE flank, Boulder Mtn. (2) Landslides off Boulder Mtn, Flat Top, and farther-north volcanic mesas, where some slides transform to debris avalanches; and down the Fremont valley and tributaries to great debris flows and thence to bouldery floods (analogous to cataclysmic avalanche-to-debris flows off Mount St. Helens volcano in 1980). (3) Whether diamicts of "Carcass Creek" (= Bull Lake) age, low on Boulder Mtn, are glacial drift (classic interpretation of RF Flint and CS Denny, 1958) or are they debris-avalanche deposits. (4) Similarly, are coarse-bouldery deposits of terraces extending far downstream in Fremont valley and tributaries outwash as traditionally supposed or debris flows and floods transformed from repeated wet debris avalanches. (5) Cosmogenic dating of some of these bouldery deposits from far upvalley to far downvalley. (6) Revisit and re-argue at least 2 topics and 1 site that GK Gilbert incorporated to his famous 1875 report on nearby Henry Mountains. (7) Possible auxiliary geomorphic topics (a) origin of some deeply incised meanders and (b) whether some "natural bridges" are genetic arches, but some "arches" genetic bridges. (8) Several examples of rock art and architecture from type region of Fremont Culture (Anasazi). (9) Summary of classic Permian through Miocene layered sedimentary rock stunningly displayed between Boulder Mtn and the Henry Mtns across Circle Cliffs anticline and Waterpocket Fold monocline.
    Co-leaders: Richard Waitt (USGS); Thure Cerling and Dave Marchetti (U. Utah); Lee Kreutzer and Adrienne Anderson (NPS). Contact: Richard Waitt; waitt@usgs.gov

Pacific Northwest Cell
Newberry Volcano, central Oregon
September 15-17, 2000
Since the creation of Newberry National Volcanic Monument in 1990, a number of exciting discoveries and puzzles in geology and archaeology have come to light at Newberry Volcano in central Oregon. This large Quaternary volcano has been active for at least a million years, and its flanks and caldera have hosted numerous Holocene eruptions including the 1300-year-old Big Obsidian Flow. Among the recent developments at Newberry is the discovery of a large Holocene paleoflood, Holocene uplift of the caldera floor, human use and occupation throughout the Holocene including the oldest known dwelling in western North America, drowned lake terraces 60 feet below the surface of Paulina Lake, giant bubbles in obsidian flows, numerous silicic tephras and their stratigraphy, high temperatures in deep geothermal drill holes, inflated basaltic lavas, and mappable basaltic lavas and their stratigraphy. Much work is in progress, so new discoveries and ideas may be discussed. Trip leaders will be Larry Chitwood (USFS) and Bob Jensen (USFS) with co-leaders Bob Reynolds (COCC), Steve Kuehn (WSU), Tom Connolly (U of O), and Julie Donnelly Nolan (USGS). A web site has been set up at http://www.geocities.com/pnw2000fop/ or e-mail pnw2000fop@ yahoo.com to communicate details of the trip. Larry Chitwood, 61644 Daly Estates Dr., Bend, OR 97702; 541-389-2373 chitwood@bendnet.com

Midwest Cell
June 1-3, 2001
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
47th Midwest Friends of the Pleistocene Field Meeting
To be held Friday, June 1st to Sunday, June 3rd, 2001 in Thunder Bay, ON. Hosted by Dr. Brian Phillips and colleagues, Lakehead University.

The meeting will focus on the deglaciation of the borderland region and the associated paleoindian presence. The interplay between Rainy River ice, the ice of the Marquette readvance, eastern outlets of  Lake Agassiz and the sequence of lakes in the Superior basin will be highlighted. The Saturday Field trip will explore the Arrow Lake / Whitefish corridor west of Thunder Bay. The Sunday morning field trip will go down the north shore to end in Grand Marais, MN.

Accomodations will be in residences and townhouses on campus. Towards the end of January please visit the Department of Geography web site at http://bolt.lakeheadu.ca/~geogwww/geoghp.html for further details.

Meanwhile, to ensure that the Midwest FOP database is up to date, please send any recent changes of e-mail or street address to bandjp@air.on.ca if you are interested in being on the e-mail / mailing list for the First Circular. Thank you.
Brian A. M. Phillips
Dept. of Geography
Lakehead University
Thunder Bay, ON

Southeast Cell
October 21-22
James River Basin, Lexington, Virginia Landscape evolution in the upper James River Basin. We will be examining
landscape responses to incision by the Maury and James Rivers. Topics include: pediment/fan incision history, fluvial terrace chronosequences, intra basin capture, abandoned meanders, and stream knickpoints. 
Contact: David Harbor, Geology Department
Washington and Lee University
Lexington VA 24450; 540-463-8871; fax: -8142; harbord@wlu.edu

Northeast Cell
2000 NE Cell Report
A New Drainage History for Glacial Lake Hitchcock: Varves, Landforms, and Stratigraphy
    Julie Brigham-Grette (U Mass Amherst), Tammy Rittenour (University of Nebraska), Janet Stone (USGS ­ Water Resources Division), Jack Ridge (Tufts University), Al Werner, Laura Levy (Mt Holyoke College), Dena Dincauze, Kit Curran (UMass-Amherst), Ed Klekowski, (UMass-Amherst), and Richard Little (Greenfield Community College).
As with every FOP trip, we provided the 85 faithful followers of this annual field conference with a stimulating look at new research and field data regarding the regional Quaternary history of New England. This year the trip revisited the history of Glacial Lake Hitchcock with a focus on new evidence for the timing of deglaciation, processes influencing lake sedimentation, and factors influencing the drainage sequence of Lake Hitchcock. In this context we reconsidered how the drainage history may be related to the rate and timing of glacio-isostatic rebound. The fundamental challenge of this work is to evaluate changes in sub-basin varve history relative to the sequential incision and evolution of the Connecticut River. New AMS-14C age estimates were presented to further anchor the Antev's varve chronology. These new ages and revisions to the regional varve sequence now provide new opportunities for evaluating the varve record as a proxy for high resolution paleoclimate (including teleconnections with El Niño events) in comparison with changes in North Atlantic thermohaline circulation and rapid environmental change over the Greenland Ice Sheet (c.f., Ridge et al., 1999; Rittenour et al., 2000). We also took advantage of newer geochronological techniques including the optical luminescence dating of dune complexes on geomorphic surfaces of different relative age. Not to be overlooked was the work of Ed Klekowski and grad student Sean Werle discovering the underwater world of the Connecticut River related to the special habitat offered by eroding submerged varves. Ed showed us a video of this experience!
    This trip occurred some 12 years after the last FOP in this region which had a similar theme. Though some may have assumed we once had it all figured out based on the work presented at the 1987 FOP, it is the axiom of science that the more we learn, the more we realize just how little we know. The notion that Glacial Lake Hitchcock along its entire length drained as a result of the erosion of a single dam at Rocky Hill gave way on this trip to a new paradigm involving the northward sequential drainage of the lake as a broken series of sub-basins controlled by local dams. We strongly challenged a once robust feature of the valley history, i.e., the observation that most of the ice-contact deltas all projected onto a smooth straight line ("Koteff's curve", Koteff and Larson, 1989) suggesting uplift progressed without warping of the regional lake shorelines. The apparent lack of restrained rebound during deglaciation and the need to invoke delayed post-glacial rebound until glacial ice was out of the Connecticut valley is now especially difficult to maintain given revisions in lake drainage presented on this trip.
    The guide book (North Eastern FOP Field Conference, U Mass Department of Geosciences Contribution No. 73) is available from Julie Brigham-Grette, Dept. of Geosciences, Morrill Sciences Center, Univ of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003; 413-545-4840; Fax: -1200; brigham-grette@geo.umass.edu

References:
Koteff, Carl, and Larsen, F.D., 1989, Postglacial uplift in western New England; geologic evidence for delayed rebound, in:, Earthquakes at North Atlantic passive margins; neotectonics and postglacial rebound: Norwell, Mass., Kluwer Academic Publishers, 105-123.

Ridge, J.C., Besonen, M.r., Brochu, M., Brown, S.L. Callahan J.W., Cook, G.J., Nicholson, R.S., and Toll, N.J., 1999, Varve, paleomagnetic, and 14C chronologies for Late Pleistocene events in New Hampshire and Vermont, Geographie physique et Quaternaire 53, 79-106.

Rittenour, T.M., Brigham-Grette, J., and Mann, M.E., 2000, El Nino-like Climate Teleconnections in New England during the Late Pleistocene, Science 288, 1039 1042.