ISC Member, the INternational Union for QUAternary Research (INQUA) invites you to their XXI Congress in Rome from 13 – 20 July 2023. The in-person conference will provide unique opportunities for networking and collaboration; therefore, despite the uncertainty linked to the circumstances related to the future pandemic in summer 2023, an in-person meeting with a full scientific program, including keynotes, symposia, courses, and abstracts is planned.
The theme of our congress is “Time for Change” to emphasize the critical role of Quaternary sciences in contributing the knowledge we need to face current societal and climate challenges. In fact, the understanding of the global changes cannot be achieved without the scientific knowledge of how Earth has changed during the recent geological past. As such, it is very appropriate to convene the international Quaternary community in Italy; the Mediterranean region is so geologically young and active, it is the ideal location to discuss the process and events that shaped the landscape, environments and ecosystems over the last 2.58 million years.
From the glacial systems in the Alps .to the desert facing the southern shore, from the large coastal plains and deltas to the rocky coasts where the mountain ranges reach the sea, from the karst to the lacustrine to the volcanic environments – numerous Quaternary features are present in the region. From early humans in Durban, the view from the Alps in Bern, the geohazard in Nagoya, and the life on the edge in Dublin, in Rome we will have the opportunity to deepen discussions about all these subjects together, and to discuss their mutual interactions at a Quaternary scale. For instance: did the climatic/eustatic changes in palaeogeography and palaeoenvironment influence the early humans’ dispersal and the Neolithic revolution from east-to-west or from south-to-north? How did changes in tectonic activity, climate and eustasy (and in some cases massive volcanic inputs) interact in determining the stratal architecture of high-order depositional sequences? Are the long-lasting historical archives the clue to fill the gap between the instrumental data and the geological record in defining climate, seismic, volcanic cyclicality and/or evolution?
Photo by Luke Ellis-Craven on Unsplash