Padova, Italy
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The EX-AQUA 2016 Palaeohydrological Exreme Events: Evidence and Archives workshop will be held 26 September to 1 October 2016 in Padova, Italy.
Floods and droughts are some of the most serious natural hazards and their catastrophic effects have attracted the global attention to warrant the assessment of their magnitude and frequency, also in relation with climate change. The quantification of the recurrence time and the magnitude of the hydrological extreme events is mainly based on direct measures, that are generally available only for the last decades. But the use of palaeohydrological tools, investigating floods and droughts occurred along the Quaternary, can extend the useful records for assessing present and future extreme events.
The EX-AQUA 2016 is a project supported by the INQUA Commission on Terrestrial Processes, Deposits, and History (TERPRO). The conference in Padova follows the work of the scientific group on Global Continental PalaeoHydrology (GLOCOPH) and, in particular, the international conference HEX 2014 “Hydrological EXtreme Events in historic and prehistoric times”, held in Bonn, with tens of researchers of different disciplines (e.g. geologists, physical geographers, geochronologists, historians, archaeologists, palaeobotanists, engineers, modelers ...).
The title EX-AQUA consists of the Latin words “ex” (meaning “from” but also “ancient”) and “aqua” (water) and it symbolizes the processes related to the lack or the abundance of water in the past.
The conference is organized by the Department of Geosciences of Padova University and AIQUA (Italian Association for Quaternary Sciences), with the patronage of AIGeo (Italian Association of Physical Geography and Geomorphology). The EX-AQUA project is sponsored by HEX (INQUA Focus Area on Palaeohydrology and fluvial archives - extreme and critical events).
Program
The meeting in Padova will consist of an afternoon welcome session, two full days of oral and poster presentations about palaeohydrological events, their archives and the methodology to recognize, describe and date their evidence. The conference will be followed by a three-day fieldtrip aimed at discussing methodology and results applied in selected case studies dealing with extreme events in the Venetian-Friulian Plain, the southern Alps, the Classical Karst and Istria Peninsula.
26 September: Arrival of participants and in the afternoon invited opening lectures followed by a guided tour of the city centre and the strong connections between fluvial of Brenta and Bacchiglione rivers and the story of Padova since the II millennium BC. In the evening, a simple ice-breaker party will follow.
27-28 September: Full day of oral and poster presentations at the Department of Geosciences of Padova. In the late afternoon of Tuesday the workshop of the Project EX-AQUA is planned. In the evening of Tuesday, social dinner in Padova (payment on site).
Venue
Padova is 30km west of Venice and is known also as the city of Sant’Antonio. It can be easily reached from other regions of Italy by train, but also from abroad by flights landing in Venice, Treviso, Verona and Bologna airports. Moreover, the city is connected also with Central and Eastern Europe by bus with rather cheap fares. Padova was a proto-urban centre already in 1000 BC and since its origin it had a strong connection with the Brenta and Bacchiglione rivers and their evolution. The city has been characterized by a dense network of canals until few decades ago. The university was funded in 1222 AD and Galileo Galilei joined it between 1592-1610. The research institution has also a long tradition in Natural History and Engineering and some of its scholars supervised the hydraulic works connected to the management of Venice Lagoon and the reclamation of its mainland.
Scientific Committee
Gerardo Benito (Madrid, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales)
Kim Cohen (Utrecht University)
Alessandro Fontana (University of Padova)
Juergen Herget (Bonn University)
Edgardo Latrubesse (Texas University)
Paolo Mozzi (University of Padova)
Andrei Panin (University of Moscow)
Nicola Surian (University of Padova)
Rajiv Sinha (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur)
Willem Toonen (Aberyswith University)
Organizing Committee
Alessandro Fontana, Paolo Mozzi, Sandro Rossato, Nicola Surian (University of Padova)
Abstracts
You can submit abstracts about oral or poster presentations related to the main following topics of suggested sessions:
- Holocene hydrological events and climate change
- Historical flood events and chronology
- Geochronology of palaeohydrological events: methods and results
- Events, phases or periods of flooding and drought: recognition and distinction
- Human impact and societal resilience: Geoarchaeology & Palaeohydrology
- Quaternary fluvial system evolution and flood/drought variations
- Weather, climate and chronicles: temporal series and archives
- Palaeoenvironmental analyses and palaeohydrology
- New techniques of relevance for palaeohydrological investigations
You are also encouraged to promote a session about a topic related to extreme palaeohydrological events not described above. Send your abstract and specify if you ask for an oral or poster presentation to: secretary.glocophgmail.com (secretary[dot]glocoph[at]gmail[dot]com) The abstract should be written in English, maximum 1 pages of A4 format, according with the format that you can download at www.aiqua.it.
Publications
We are planning to edit an issue of Quaternary International dedicated to the researchers presented in the EX-AQUA 2016 meeting. Particular attention will be devoted to papers dealing with interdisciplinary approaches. There is also the additional possibility to edit an issue of AMQ – Alpine and Mediterranean Quaternary (formerly Il Quaternario - Italian Journal of Quaternary Sciences).
Deadlines
15 July 2016: Deadline for abstracts submission.
15 July 2016: Deadline for payment of early registration and fieldtrip fees.
Registration
Online registration is available via website of MV Congressi: http://mvcongressi.onlinecongress.it/Cod1764 Registration fee for the conference is 140€ with reductions for students, early-career scientist (i.e. PhD and postdoc) and AIQUA subscribers for 2016.
The cost of the fieldtrip will be 350€ including field guide, transport, food and accommodation for the nights of 29 and 30 September. For logistic reasons, the number of participants to the fieldtrip is limited to 30 people and the places will be assigned on first-come first-served basis. The fieldtrip fee is all inclusive of transport from / to Padova, entrance tickets to museums and caves, and food and accommodation for the two nights during the excursion.
Funding
The workshop is organized as an official activity of the Project EX-AQUA 2016, funded by INQUA. INQUA sponsors some grants for early-career researchers (PhD students, postDoc or other young researchers without a permanent position and within 8 years from the PhD). The grants will cover travel and accommodation costs or part of them. If you are eligible for a grant, send a short Curriculum Vitae and an abstract of your proposed presentation to: secretary.glocophgmail.com (secretary[dot]glocoph[at]gmail[dot]com)