Workshops
The 1st ALDP-ELDP joint meeting was held on 20-25 March 2000 in Kyoto and Mikata, Japan, and was organised by Professor Yasuda from Kyoto. Seven ELDP members presented their scientific results at this meeting which was under the theme «Environmental Change in Eurasia». The results of this meeting have been published in an abstract volume (Monsoon Vol. 1) of 141 pages. In general, this workshop provided a very good overview about high resolution lake sediment studies in Asia to the ELDP members. The great potential for a better understanding of palaeoclimate variability by combining data and expertise of both, the European and Asian scientific community has been demonstrated. The Kyoto workshop was a first step towards a European – Asian transect of high resolution lake records in order to decipher the role of the Earth’s largest continental mass on climate change.
The 5th ELDP workshop was held on 7-12 October 2000 in Pallanza, Italy on the theme of «The record of human/climate interactions in lake sediments» and is organized by Professor Piero Guilizzoni from the Istituto Italiano di Idrobiologia. For this workshop 42 participants registered from twelve European countries and from Israel and Japan. An abstract volume for this workshop including 28 extended abstracts has been published as Terra Nostra 2000/7 and was distributed to the workshop participants.
The 6th and final ELDP workshop entitled “High-resolution lake sediment records in climate and environment variability studies” was organised by Professor J.F.W. Negendank & Dr. Achim Brauer (GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam) and held in Potsdam, Germany, on 11-16 May 2001. It brought together 45 participants from 13 European countries as well as from India, Israel and Japan, and 48 scientific talks including summaries of all five working groups were given. The workshop demonstrated the advances achieved in answering scientific questions which have been formulated as the main goals at the beginning of ELDP. In addition, two future research perspectives have been discussed in order to find answers to new questions which arose during discussions within ELDP in the last years. These are (1) a combination of palaeo (proxy) data with modern climate modelling as was implicated in 1998 in the German KIHZ project and (2) establishing a long West-East transect from Europe to Asia to fill the large gap of information from this large continental mass on climate evolution. This transcontinental transect has to be achieved together with colleagues from Russia, the ALDP (Asian Lake Drilling Programme) and other international research programmes.
Working Groups
The following working group meetings were held in 2001:
1) Northern Europe working group, Vaxholm near Stockholm, Sweden, 9-11 February 2001 (organised by Dr. Ian Snowball).
2) Atlantic Transect working group, Plymouth, UK, 10-13 January 2001 (organised by Professor Patrick O’Sullivan).
3) Central Europe working group, Bonn, Germany, 2-3 March 2001 (organised by Professor Thomas Litt).
4) Southern Europe working group, Girona, Spain, 17-19 February 2001 (organised by Professor Raul Julià).
5) Working group on cyclicities and astronomical forcing, Jülich, Germany, 16-17 February 2001 (organised by Dr. Gerhard Schleser & Dr. Heinz Vos).
An additional workshop discussing a new international research initiative on the Lake Van, Turkey, was held in Potsdam, Germany, on 9-10 May 2001 (organised by Thomas Litt).
Additional Activities
During the EUG XI (European Union of Geosciences biannual meeting) in Strasbourg, France, 8-12 April 2001, a special ELDP symposium with 12 oral and 6 poster presentations was held. The theme was “Correlation and Synchronisation of High Resolution Terrestrial Sediment Profiles (An ELDP-initiated symposium)”.
