date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 11:59:56 +0000 from: Nick Brooks subject: Brief report back on Catastrophes meeting to: , Ian Harris , , Mike Leeder , Tim Jickells , Ute , Sue Turner , d023 , Roger Few , Nick Drake , Kevin White Dear all I've just returned from a very wet and green Sahara, having attended a meeting on "Rapid and Catastrophic Environmental Changes in the Holocene and Human Response", organised by Suzanne Leroy at Brunel and sponsored by the following bodies: IGCP 490 (The role of Holocene environmental catastrophes human history ICSU DARK NATURE - RAPID NATURAL CHANGE AND HUMAN RESPONSES IUGS - GEOIND Geoindicators Initiative INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Research) (IGCP is the International Geological Correlation Programme; ICSU is the International Council for Science - not sure where the "U" comes in!) The meeting dealt with a variety of topics including palaeoclimatic proxies (emphasising pollen records), climate modelling, palaeofloods, climate and solar variability, dust, indicators of geological hazards, coastal upwelling, tsunami detection, earthquakes, desertification, archaeology and human migration, and the role of environmental change in cultural development. The meeting emphasised processes relevant to northwestern Africa, but also dealt with wider issues. Several participants had links with UEA through CRU and Tyndall; Michel Crucifix from the Hadley Centre gave an interesting presentation on modelling vegetation climate interactions in the Sahel. Martin Williams of desertification fame was also there, along with Francoise Gasse, Henry Hooghiemstra and others looking at palaeoclimatic proxies. Francoise gave an interesting talk on correlations between solar variability and African lake levels, which may be of interest to some of you. The geoindicators element was interesting and relevant to the vulnerability, hazard and risk work going on in units such as Tyndall, and I gave an extra impromptu presentation on vulnerability and risk within this context. I have a book of extended abstracts if anyone wants to have a look at it, and have requested a couple more for the Tyndall library - the abstracts are quite detailed. Some of these will be published as full papers in a special issue of the Journal of the Geological Society of London. There will be some more meetings following on from this one, culminating in a "Catastrophes Congress" in Egypt in 2007. If anyone wants some more information, drop me a line and/or take a look at the following websites: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/geo/igcp490/igcp490home.html (IGCP) http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/ges/ICSU-DN/ICSU-DN.htm (ICSU) http://www.inqua.tcd.ie/ (INQUA) http://www.lgt.lt/geoin/ (Geoindicators) http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/ges/igcp490/maur2004.htm (Conference page) I'm sending this to Tyndall and to a few others who may be interested - feel free to forward to colleagues if you think there is anything here or interest to them. Cheers Nick -- Dr Nick Brooks Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ Tel: +44 1603 593904 Fax: +44 1603 593901 Email: nick.brooks@uea.ac.uk http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~e118/welcome.htm (personal site) http://www.tyndall.ac.uk (Tyndall Centre site) http://www.uea.ac.uk/sahara (Saharan Studies Programme) --