Annual Report 2017

Executive CommitteeDr. Allan Ashworth, U.S.A., PresidentDr. Margaret Avery, South Africa, Immediate Past PresidentDr. Brian Chase, France, Secretary GeneralDr. Mariarita Palombo, Italy, Treasurer, resigned. Replaced by Dr. Freek Busschers , Netherlands Dr. Franck Audemard, Venezuela, Vice-PresidentThijs van Kolfschoten, Netherlands, Vice-PresidentAshok Singhvi, India, Vice-PresidentGuo Zhengtang, China, Vice-presidentCommission PresidentsDr. Mauro Coltorti, Italy, Stratigrahy and Chronology (SACCOMDr. Atte Korhola, Finland, Palaeoclimate (PALCOM)Dr. Alessandro Michetti, Italy, Terrestrial processes, Deposits and History (TERPRO)Dr. Craig Sloss, Australia, Coastal and Marine Processes (CMP)Dr. Nicki Whitehouse, U.K., Humans and Biosphere (HABCOM)Dr. Lyudmila Shumilovskikh , Early Career Researchers (ECR)

Personnel Changes.Dr. Mariarita Palombo resigned her position as Treasurer due to personal reasons and was replaced by Dr. Freek Busschers

Annual MeetingThe annual meeting of the INQUA Executive and Commission Presidents was held in early March, Budapest, Hungary. Dr. Enikő Magyari, Quaternary paleoecologist, in the Department of Physical and Applied Geology, Eötvös Loránd University hosted the meeting. Dr. Magyari and her students were the most gracious of hosts making available to us excellent facilities. Dr. Magyari and her colleagues on the Hungarian INQUA Committee also organized a half-day meeting highlighting Quaternary research in Hungary, including the development of a new specialists centre for isotope studies in geology. The meeting was held in the Natural History Museum where we were also given a guided tour of the extensive vertebrate collections by Dr. Mihály Gasparik and his staff.

Business

The Sir Nicolas Shackleton Award for the most outstanding young Quaternary Scientist

Five excellent nominations for the award were received. This year’s awardee is Dr. Amaelle Landais, Research Director, CNRS, LSCE, Orme des Merisiers, Gif sur Yvette, France. Dr. Landais, through her studies of isotopes in ice cores, is making major contributions to the understanding of the Earth’s Climate System. Dr. Landais will be presented a medal honoring her contribution at the next congress in Dublin, 2019.

Intercongress Activity Awards

INQUA provided awards to support groups of scientists to meet regionally and internationally to discuss larger research issues. The awards are considered to be seed funds used to attract additional funding.

Thirty nine (39) proposals were received for review. Of those, 26 were sanctioned as INQUA activities of which 19 received funding. Seven proposals were endorsed without funding. The total funds awarded was €105,000. The average award was €5,000. Details are appended in Table 1.

Table 1: Intercongress activities funded during 2017

Project No. PI's Project TitleCoastal and Marine processes (CMP)1701P Englehart, Heyvaert, Yu, Melnick Late Quaternary records of coastal inundation due to Earth surface

deformation, tsunami and storms1601P Khan, Horton, Kopp, Ashe HOLSEA: Geographic variability of Holocene relative sea level1602P Bjarnadóttir, Greenwood, Simkins, Winsbor1603P Vacchi, Biolchi, Harris, Scicchitano, Rovere1301F Carlson, Dutton, Long, MilnePalaeoclimate (PALCOM)1704P Prebble, Sear, Lorrey PALAEO-SPCZ-Vanuatu1705P Davis PC-MIP: Pollen-climate methods inter-comparison project workshop

Lorrey, Phipps, Rojas, ChaseBurrough, Singarayer PotASH Paleolakes of the arid southern hemisphere

1610P Hinojosa, Roop, Lorrey SWEEP Southern westerlies' evolution in environments of the past1611P Petherick, Shulmeister, Knight, Rojas, RyanHumans and Biosphere (HABCOM)1702F Morrison, Madella, Gaillard HoLa: Holocene global landuse: modeling anthropic environmental

1604F Rodriguez, Mateos, Hertler, Palombo

1605P Lombardo1606P Popova, Maul

1406P Anupama, Prasad, Premathilakeand paleoecology

Stratigraphy and Chronology (SACCOM)1709F Yanko-Hombach, Yanina, Kurbanov Ponto-Caspian stratigraphy and geochronology1710P Lowe, Suzuki, Smith, Jensen, Abbot, Veres EXTRAS: Extending tephras as global geoscientific research

tools: stratigraphically, spatially, analyticaly and temporally1612F Pieruccini, Fiebig, Danukalova1614P Talamo Cross checking of stratigraphic data (CROSSTRAT)Terrestrial Processes, Deposits and History (TERPRO)1711P Seddique, Hassan Understanding paleoclimate change and pathways to increasing

resilience in a changing climate among urban communities of Cox's Bazar municipality and its adjacent area, Bangladesh

1617F Crouvi, Zerboni, Schepanski, Eckardt, Baddockemission from different geomorphic units

1618F Papanikolaou, Stepancíková, Grützner, Whitney, Stemberk, Wechsler

1623P Fontana, Toonen, Herget, Sinha

Capacity BuildingLejju, Kyazike, Andama, Nyiraciza Enhancing skills and local capacity in Quaternary science in eastern Africa

READY: Retreat dynamics of marine-based icesheetsMEDFLOOD-MOPP: Modeling paleo processesPALSEA2: PALeo-constraints on SEA-level rise 2

1608F  SHAPE: Southern Hemisphere assessment of palaeoenvironments1609P 

SHeMax The Last Glacial Maximum in the Southern Hemisphere 

modification and management METHOD: Modelling environmental dynamics and HOminin dispersals around the Mid-Pleistocene revolution Mapping pre-Columbian land use in Amazonia Ground squirrels on the march: expansion and speciation in the Quaternary of the Circum-Pontic area and surroundings Enhancing quantitative reconstructions skills in south Asia palynology

SEQS:A database of terrestrial European stratigraphy (DATESTRA)

GEODUST:GEOmorphology of DUST sources and dynamics of dust

EGSHaz:Earthquake geology and seismic hazards

EX-AQUA:Palaeohydrological extreme events: evidences and archives

ECR Activity

Planning is underway for a joint INQUA-PAGES meeting for ECRs in the late summer of 2018. Organizational meetings between ECRs and members of the INQUA Executive have been held at Utrecht and Delft Universities. The topic chosen for the meeting is ‘Rapid Sea-Level Rise’. The meeting will be held at the Geological Survey of the Netherlands for 100 ECR participants. The three-day meeting will include invited experts presenting talks on ice-sheet collapse, the probability for catastrophic sea-level rise, deltas and their especially vulnerable position due to subsidence, submerged lands and engineering solutions to combat sea-level rise. ECRs will contribute posters and flash talks, and participate in discussion groups with plenary speakers. A field trip to the North Sea coast is planned for the final day of the conference. INQUA will provide expert and financial support for the meeting of up to €10,000 Euros. PAGES is a co-sponsor and other organizations, IUGG, IUGS, SCAR, are considering sponsorship.

20th INQUA Congress in Dublin, Ireland, July 25th-31st

The subcommittees of the Local Organising Committee responsible for ECR, Scientific Programme and fieldtrips have met several times since our last report to the INQUA Executive (February 2017). We are awaiting further session suggestions and calls have gone out. Two plenary speakers have been asked to speak to date and have agreed (this process is being done gradually to ensure age, gender and topic balance).Mary Robinson 1 (https://www.mrfcj.org/about/mission-and-vision/ ) has agreed to speak at the Opening Ceremony on Thursday 25th July. The fieldtrip organisers and the LOC are meeting at the Convention Centre Dublin on November 23rd (the financing of this has used the monies loaned from the INQUA Executive for 2017/ 2018). Online information about the Congress is available at: http://www.inqua2019.org/

Report on INQUA 2019 Congress in Dublin, Ireland, submitted by Dr. Peter Coxon, November 10, 2017, pcoxon@tcd.ie)

Membership issues

Discussion of membership issues, especially dues paid by member nations in each of the fee bands, was initiated last year. The discussion this year focused on allotting members to fee bands. The fee structure of ICSU, IUGG and IUGS were examined. The fee banding in these organizations are based on GNP of a member country and in some cases on estimates of the active researchers in the organization. It was noted that various formulae can be applied none of them perfect. Because GNP has changed for some members since the last time membership dues were examined, we are recalculating all annual dues using a GNP model.

Other membership issues being discussed are annual increases to dues, voting privileges and the inability of some members to be able to pay their dues. There have been no increases to annual fees for at least four years. Under consideration is a proposal to request an automatic increase of 2% per year to account for inflation. Other GeoUnions have built in automated increases using an inflation index rather than a fixed percentage. INQUA’s dues to the newly formed ISC will increase at an annual rate of 2%.

Currently within INQUA voting privileges are simply one vote per member on all issues. As part of the membership discussions we are examining the use of proportional votes based on dues which is a system used 1 Irish Independent politician who served as the first female, President of Ireland from December 1990 to September 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002

by some unions. These are very different approaches with pros and cons on both sides.

In recent years, several members have defaulted on annual dues causing them to lose their memberships. Those nations can apply for Associate Membership but there doesn’t seem to be an incentive for them to do this. The result is that many Quaternary researchers are unrepresented in INQUA. A report on membership issues prepared by Drs. Guo and Singhvi will be discussed at the next executive meeting in Beijing in March 2018. All members will be consulted about proposed changes to membership before they are presented to the International Council in 2019.

Budget and Income

The balance at the start of 2017 was €294,187.25 (Table 2). In considering the balance, it needs to be kept in mind that INQUA needs to maintain a reserve of about €300,000 to provide travel awards for graduate students, ECRs and DCRs to attend the next Congress in 2019 in Dublin.

2016 € BalanceEXPENDITURE INCOME

Opening balance 1st January 2016 192425.14Membership fees 2016 109940.51Membership fees 2015Quaternary International (Elsevier) 125744.26Meeting ExecComm –Washington 33086.54INQUA membership in ICSU 3602.00Project funding 101500.00Bank cost/interest 544.42Others 1719.74

Table 2. Summary Budget in Euros (€) at the close of 2016

Budget and royalty income from Quaternary International

The royalties INQUA received from Elsevier for Quaternary International (QI) are about €16,022 lower in 2017 compared to 2016. We had anticipated some decline because of the need to invest in publishing more pages in QI to help reduce the backlog of special issues. The amount that we had talked about with Elsevier was about €5000 Euros for each of the next two years but for 2017 the royalty reduction was significantly larger. Elsevier pays royalties to INQUA in pounds sterling. The drop in value of the British pound appears to be the major reason for the loss of income. The issue of reduced income from Elsevier will be discussed at the QI editors annual meeting in Keelung, Taiwan, in November, 2017.

Good news from QI is that Dr. Min-Te Chen (Chief Editor)and his team of associate editors have reduced the publication backlog making the journal more desireable for ECRs to publish their research. Also, the impact factor is increasing and is now >2, slightly higher than in 2016.

Web page development

The UK company Focal Strategy, Inc., was hired to redesign the web page. A major feature of the new web page is that each commission will be able to highlight its activities. The design phase is over and currently, content is being revised and new pages populated. The expectation is that the new site will be launched in the near future.

Registration of INQUA as a non-profit organization

INQUA, since its inception in 1928, has never been registered as a legal entity. In the world of today, revisions to banking laws are making it difficult to be a non-registered organization. Discussions with the Amsterdam Law Company of Van Doorn determined that the simplest way to achieve this is through the formation of a foundation, which will be legally registered as a non-profit organization in the Netherlands.

The INQUA Foundation

The INQUA Foundation will essentially be responsible for all INQUA financial transactions The operation of the Foundation will be inseparably linked to INQUA through changes to the bye laws e.g. all elected members of the Executive will be board members. In the future, INQUA will be able to accept gifts and donations from individuals and from corporations in addition to receiving national member fees and royalties from Elsevier. Gifts will be tax-exempt, and when the paperwork with the government of the Netherlands has been completed, INQUA will not pay taxes. It will require a small annual payment of no more than a few hundred euros to maintain tax-exempt status. The registered status of the Foundation will provide some legal protection for its officers. Documents have been drawn up by the attorneys but we will seek approval from members by email before starting to finalize the formation.

The INQUA Bank

INQUA currently does its banking through a small branch bank in Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium. The reasons for this are historical but a problem is that the Treasurer and other INQUA officers that access the accounts have to present themselves in person at the branch bank in order to obtain the necessary permissions. For convenience, the plan is to move the INQUA accounts to Amsterdam which is a larger and more accessible commercial centre. This move will be facilitated by the registration of the INQUA Foundation as a legal entity in the Netherlands.

GeoUnion and International Science Council activities The GeoUnions http://www.icsu-geounions.org are an active group of nine scientific unions within the recently formed International Science Council (ISC) (formerly the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC). GeoUnions meetings provide a forum to discuss issues arising from membership in ISC such as the recent merger between ICSU and ISSC. Acting collectively, the GeoUnions have more political leverage than unions acting individually. For 2017-18 the group will be co-chaired by Dr Lena Halounová (ISPRS) and Dr. Allan Ashworth (INQUA)

Education

INQUA is a co-lead partner with the International Union of Biological sciences (IUBS) on an ISC-funded project to develop teaching modules for climate change. Other partners in the project are the ISC Unions and programs (IUSSIMUIUGSIUGG IUHPST IUFROAUC IMAGINARY- CODATA ICSU-ROA), scientific representative organizations from Australia, India, Mongolia, South Africa, Ecuador and Egypt and UNESCO. The project

entitled “TROP-ICSU: Trans-disciplinary Research Oriented Pedagogy for Improving Climate Studies and Understanding” is led by Dr. Shashidhara (IUBS) and Dr. Fomproix (IUBS), and is funded by a €300,000 grant from ICSU (now ISC) for the period 2016-2019. INQUA is providing input on the temporal dimension of climate change. The partners met in Paris to lay out plans and agreed that teaching modules would be based on climate change simulators accessible through the web.

Allan Ashworth, President