Overview and Rationale:
An international, interdisciplinary conference convened by the British Geomorphological Research Group.
Earth System Science (ESS) is a rapidly emerging paradigm within the geosciences, one of the principal implications of which is the need to understand the relationship between earth surface processes and global change resulting from climatic fluctuations, tectonics and human impact. The science of Geomorphology underpins the study of earth surface dynamics yet the geomorphological community has been relatively slow to engage with recent developments in cognate disciplines that are revealing how the earth system functions and how change is manifested (and propagated) regionally and globally. Conversely, exciting new work on the measurement and modelling of earth surface processes by geomorphologists is being significantly underused to help interpret or validate the results of the ESS community. Purpose:
This conference will, for the first time, critically review the position and role of Geomorphology within ESS with the intention of initiating a dialogue between geoscientists (including relevant social scientist), particularly those who are actively involved in managing and mitigating the effects of environmental change. One of the anticipated outcomes is an improved knowledge of how, and at what rate, climate change, tectonics and human impact signals are processed, propagated and recorded by geomorphic systems. Sessions will consider the relations between environmental change and geomorphic systems over instrumental, Holocene and longer timescales.
Programme:
The conference will be structured around a series of plenary sessions that consider different geomorphological systems (e.g. coastal, glacial) and cross-cutting, integrative themes (e.g. modelling, tectonics, geochronology, human-environment interactions). Each plenary session will include a keynote paper and additional oral presentations. There will also be a dedicated session for publication-quality posters. The Keynote Address will be given by Keith Richards (Cambridge) and invited speakers include Julian Dowdeswell (Cambridge), Rob Kemp (Royal Holloway), Alayne Street-Perrott (Swansea), Ian Shennan (Durham) and David Thomas (Oxford).
Publications:
We are negotiating publication of papers and posters in a series of journal special issues including the BGRG’s journal Earth Surface Processes & Landforms.
Abstracts:
Abstracts (not exceeding 250 words) should be e-mailed to Mark Macklin (email: mvm@aber.ac.uk ) stating whether an oral or poster presentation is preferred. There will be relatively few oral presentations and we therefore encourage authors to consider the benefits of a poster presentation. All presentations should explicitly consider the relationship between Geomorphology and ESS, and papers that adopt an interdisciplinary approach are particularly welcome. The deadline for abstract submission is Friday 23rd December 2005 and authors will be informed of decisions no later than 31st January 2006.
Information:
http://info.lboro.ac.uk/departments/gy/gess.html/
Click here to download the complete conference outline in pdf format.
