New Varves special issue

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Published: Tuesday, 03 March 2020 12:53

Seven papers are now available in a Quaternary special issue organized by the PAGES-endorsed Varves Working Group.

Edited by Bernd Zolitschka and Wojciech Tylmann, the special issue aims to present the diversity within the field and the state-of-the-art research on lake varves at all timescales and environments.

The papers are:

> Annually Laminated Lake Sediments—Recent Progress (Tylmann W and Zolitschka B)

> Modern Analogue Approach Applied to High-Resolution Varved Sediments—A Synthesis for Lake Montcortès (Central Pyrenees) (Vegas-Vilarrubia T et al.)

> Varve Distribution Reveals Spatiotemporal Hypolimnetic Hypoxia Oscillations During the Past 200 Years in Lake Lehmilampi, Eastern Finland (Salminen S et al.)

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LULC LandCover6k paper

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Published: Tuesday, 03 March 2020 10:35

A new paper from LandCover6k members presents the overall strategy of the working group plus the products and their current and potential uses.

Sandy Harrison et al. published "Development and testing scenarios for implementing land use and land cover changes during the Holocene in Earth system model experiments" in Geoscientific Model Development.

Anthropogenic changes in land use and land cover (LULC) during the pre-industrial Holocene could have affected regional and global climate. Existing scenarios of LULC changes during the Holocene are based on relatively simple assumptions and highly uncertain estimates of population changes through time. Archaeological and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions have the potential to refine these assumptions and estimates.

LandCover6k is working towards improved reconstructions of LULC globally. In this paper, authors document the types of archaeological data that are being collated and how they will be used to improve LULC reconstructions and propose a protocol to evaluate the revised scenarios using independent pollen-based reconstructions of land cover and climate.

This paper is also a contribution to the group's special issue "Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project phase 4 (PMIP4)". Access the special issue here.

Read the latest e-news

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Published: Wednesday, 19 February 2020 15:30

Read about the latest PAGES' news, meetings and opportunities from around the world in this month's e-news.

Highlights include the call for sessions for PAGES 6th Open Science Meeting, a reminder to check your People Database details are up to date, the deadline for new SSC member applications, the deadline for new working group and workshop support applications, extensive PAGES working group news and products, meeting information and deadlines, ECN updates, plus Future Earth, WCRP and WDS-Paleo information, and other opportunities.

New PlioVAR paper

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Published: Tuesday, 18 February 2020 14:30

Members of PAGES' former working group PlioVAR recently published the paper "Late Pliocene Cordilleran Ice Sheet development with warm northeast Pacific sea surface temperatures" in Climate of the Past.

Led by Maria Luisa Sánchez-Montes, authors present alkenone-derived sea surface temperature analyses alongside ice-rafted debris, terrigenous, and marine organic matter inputs to the Gulf of Alaska through the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene.

All records show a high degree of variability in the early Pleistocene, indicating highly efficient ocean–climate–ice interactions through warm SST–ocean evaporation–orographic precipitation–ice growth mechanisms.

Access the paper here.

Find out more about PlioVAR here.

Land-cover change in China

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Published: Tuesday, 18 February 2020 10:46

The LandCover6k working group recently released the first pollen-based REVEALS reconstruction of Holocene land-cover change in temperate China.

Authors, led by Furong Li, published "Towards quantification of Holocene anthropogenic land-cover change in temperate China: A review in the light of pollen-based REVEALS reconstructions of regional plant cover" in Earth-Science Reviews.

In an attempt to quantify Holocene anthropogenic land-cover change in temperate China, they applied the REVEALS model to estimate plant-cover change using 94 pollen records and relative pollen productivity for 27 plant taxa, reviewed earlier interpretation of pollen studies in terms of climate- and human-induced vegetation change, and reviewed information on past land use from archaeological studies.

Access the paper here.

Find out more about LandCover6k here.

Call for sessions - OSM 2021

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Published: Thursday, 13 February 2020 15:30

PAGES' 6th Open Science Meeting (OSM) will take place from 18-22 May 2021 in Agadir, Morocco.

The Scientific Program Committee (SPC) invites you to take an active part in organizing the scientific program of the conference. The OSM program will be comprised of plenary, parallel and poster sessions.

The plenary sessions will host keynote talks intended to stimulate discussions on the role of past global change science by providing information about strategies for a sustainable world, on the engagement of stakeholders in active cutting-edge research, and on the added value of interdisciplinary approaches. The parallel and associated poster sessions will accommodate top-level ongoing research.

Up to five sessions will be run in parallel at the OSM, allowing accommodation of a total of 40 sessions.

The SPC will prepare the program based upon your input, aiming for a fair balance between the topics. Please note that the SPC could merge sessions with similar topics (before abstract submission) or with a small number of abstracts (after abstract submission).

Scientists from African institutions are strongly encouraged to submit session proposals. Please inform your colleagues about this opportunity.

You are invited to suggest sessions until 1 April 2020. Please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (clickable link with correct subject line) and include a provisional title, potential conveners, and a brief description of the session.

We look forward to receiving your suggestions and thank you in advance!