South American Climatology and Quantitative High-Resolution Climate Reconstructions in Paleoecology course

This is a pre-congress course as part of the activities to be held in Valdivia (Chile) next October and related to the II International Symposium âReconstructing Climate Variations in South America and the Antarctic Peninsula over the last 2000 yearsâ (LOTRED-SA). The course will take place in Valdivia before the symposium, so we expect that the attendees will also participate in LOTRED meeting.

Course poster: http://www.pages-igbp.org/calendar/2010/SAmericaCoursePoster.pdf

The primary intention is to impart a high level of first hand knowledge to post graduate students, post-docs and young researchers working on Paleoecology and Paleoclimatology in different countries from Latin America. Since most of this high-end research has been performed by researchers in northern Hemisphere countries, very little of it actually reaches developing nations in the southern Hemisphere. At the course, the participants will have the chance to learn from and discuss with large experienced researchers (professors) in climatology, palaeoclimatology and Palaeoecology.

Aims

The first course aim is:

-To offer a review of climate and climate variability over South America emphasizing on the year-to-year and longer fluctuations of rainfall and temperature at the continental and regional scales

-To describe how the leading modes of global atmospheric variability (e.g., ENSO, AAO) affect the regional climate including the seasonality and long-term stability of such forcings.

Resource person: Professor R. Garreaud (University of Chile)

The second course aim is:

-To provide the theory of quantitative palaeoecology, quantitative reconstruction of past environments from palaeoecological data, numerical methods for the handling and analysis of Quaternary biostratigraphical data and modern surface samples. This topic will include lectures and a short training session in statistical software.

Resource persons

Professor J. Birks (University of Bergen, Norway) Dr M. Tonello (University of Mar del Plata, Argentina) Dr Antonio Maldonado (CEAZA, Chile)