News and Announcements

. The Local Organizing Committee of the Batsheva de Rothschild Seminar on Atmospheric Dust, Dust Deposits (Loess) and Soils in Deserts and Desert Fringe: The Sahara-Sinai-Negev as an Analogue for the Global Arid Regions, Jerusalem and the Negev Desert (14-19 October 2015), share a link to the EOS Earth and Space Science News on the article:
Seeking Knowledge in the Dust.
The link is: https://eos.org/meeting-reports/seeking-knowledge-dust.



. MINUTES OF THE TERPRO BUSINESS MEETING
TERPRO business meeting was held in the evening of 28 July, 2015, during the XIX INQUA congress in Nagoya, Japan. It was coordinated by Franck Audemard (INQUA Vice-President Responsible for TERPRO) and by A. Michetti (TERPRO President). D. Kröhling (TERPRO Secretary).

More than 40 specialists from 21 countries participated in the meeting, some of them as formal TERPRO members and other interested in being new corresponding members of TERPRO, that were contacted.

Each leader of the Int. Focus Group of TERPRO presented a short report related to the activities of the past intercongress period. Also the new Commission structure for the intercongress period 2015 - 2019 was presented. Some proposals for new IFG's and Projects were initially discussed there thinking on a broad interdisciplinary perspective, also involving early career scientists.

All existing IFGs and Projects will be terminated in 2015, as indicated in the INQUA Statutes and By laws. Therefore, in the coming weeks TERPRO will start preparing proposals for new IFGs and Projects for the next intercongress period. All TERPRO Members are strongly encouraged to contact the Commission Leaders in order to finalize this process.

The new TERPRO structure approved by the INQUA International Council Meeting in Nagoya is:

President:
Alessandro Michetti (alessandro.michetti@uninsubria.it; Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Universita dell'Insubria, Como, Italy).
-re-elected-

Vice Presidents:
- Takashi Azuma (takashi_azuma@mac.com;Geological Survey of Japan (GSJ) National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Tsukuba, Japan)
- Rivka Amit (rivka@gsi.gov.il; Geological Survey of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel)
-re-elected-

Secretary:
- Daniela Kröhling (dkrohli@gmail.com, dkrohling@santafe-conicet.gov.ar; Argentine Research Council (CONICET) and Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Santa Fe, Argentina)
-re-elected-

Early Career Representatives:
- Eduardo Alarcon (eduardo.alarcon@ucv.ve;Department of Earth Sciences, Central University of Venezuela (UCV)-FUNVISIS, Venezuela)
- Nadine Hoffmann (na-hoffmann@web.de; Leon Charney School of Marine Sciences, Haifa University, Israel).

It was proposed that a group of ECR TERPRO members will form an Executive Team for the Commission dealing with Communication and Information on TERPRO activity, for instance in order to reshape and maintain the TERPRO web page, and prepare and disseminate the Commission Newsletter; this TERPRO Ex Team will operate jointly with the President, VPs and Secretary, and is formed by the two ECR representatives, plus Christian Gruetzner, Joshua Larsen and Martine Van del Ploeg.

Advisory Board:
It is still to be renewed, the final composition will be communicated later.


  • ELECTION OF THE TERPRO PRESIDENT (2015-2019)

  • Commission Officers (President, Vice-Presidents, and Secretary) serve for an Inter-Congress period of four years and are eligible for re-election for a second term.The INQUA Statutes and Bye-Laws require each Commission to nominate officers. These nominees will then be considered by the Executive Committee and a final list of recommended names will be presented to the International Council (IC) for approval during the INQUA Congress (Nagoya, 2015).

    Call for candidates for Commission Officers of TERPRO was opened by INQUA few months ago and is now close. Two candidates have been proposed to run for TERPRO Commission President for the term 2015-2019.

    Following INQUA guidelines to the procedure of electing the Commission Officers, TERPRO officers undertook the work of contacting its mailing list of current members since early this year, to update the list of active TERPRO Commission members, since the active members are the voting body of the Commission. Dr. F. Audemard (Vice-President of INQUA) was appointed for this 2011-2015 term to be the supervisor, guide and link of TERPRO Commission. He contacted every single member of the TERPRO mailing list, inviting to participate in the ballot before May 20, 2015.

    A statement of the experience of both candidates and their motivation for the position of TERPRO President is displayed by clicking on each name of the candidates below:
    Dr. Alessandro María Michetti (Universita dell'Insubria, Como, Italy)
    Dr. Nick Lancaster (Desert Research Center, Reno, Nevada, USA)

    To access to the letter sent to the INQUA EC members by the INQUA Vice-President regarding to the result of the election process please click here.

  • The Local Organizing Committe of the XIX INQUA Nagoya, JAPAN 27 July - 2 August, 2015 (http://inqua2015.jp/; https://www.facebook.com/INQUA2015), received 2546 abstracts by 2080 authors and 553 financial support applications.
    The congress includes 24 sessions of TERPRO (http://convention.jtbcom.co.jp/inqua2015/session/index.html#terpro)


  • The 2nd and 3rd Newsletters (2012) of the Groundwater@Global Palaeoclimate Signals Group (supported by INQUA, IGCP and UNESCO) can be downloaded here.

  • The President of the FG on Paleoseismology and Active Tectonics inform that the first version of the android-based application, called Earthquake Geo Survey 1.1, for documenting earthquake environmental effects (EEE) is available in Google Play ready to be installed in your smart-phone or tablet. The app has been developed and designed by George Papathanassiou and Vasilis Kopsachilis (University of Thessaloniki, Greece: gpapatha@geo.auth.gr) in the framework of the TERPRO INQUA Project 1299 EEE Metrics. The app displays an "easy to use" interface for EEE survey based on the INQUA ESI-07 Macroseismic Scale. One of the most important and useful functions of the app is the activation of GPS receiver and consequently the creation of waypoints and the geo-tagging of the acquired information and digital photos, which can be latter transferred to kmz files for their visualization and management in Google-Earth.

    The application will be formally presented in the next International Workshop on Paleoseismology to be held next October 2013 in Aachen (Germany). Further versions will be extended to iphone and apple-tablet users. To download the flyer that can be used for promoting Earthquake Geo Survey 1.1. click here. Please be free to distribute this information among your colleagues. The link for visiting and downloading the app is:
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.inquaterpro.seismicsurveyapp&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsIm9yZy5pbnF1YXRlcnByby5zZWlzbWljc3VydmV5YXBwIl0


  • The project application "G@GPS-Africa: Long-term Recharge of Large Groundwater Basins" (leader S.Haldorsen), presented on behalf of INQUA was awarded by ICSU (International Council of Science) funding for the year 2013. Congratulations to the TERPRO-INQUA project leader (S. Haldosen)!. It is a great success for the TERPRO Commission.


  • The 1st Newsletter (October, 2012) of the Groundwater@Global Palaeoclimate Signals Group (supported by INQUA, IGCP and UNESCO) can be downloaded here.


  • The preliminary report (May 29, 2012) of the earthquake environmental effects accompanying the May 20, 2012, Finale Emilia Earthquake was generated by DipSAT Universita dell'Insubria (Como, Italy) by A. Berlusconi, F. Livio, F. Ferrario, R. Gambillara and A. Michetti. To download this report please click here.


  • The website of the INQUA Scale project has been updated with the following documents: (a) Report of the INQUA Scale project meeting, occurred during the EGU General Assembly (Vienna, 06.04.2006), joined to the TS4.4 session "3000 years of earthquake ground effects reports in Europe: geological analysis active faults and benefits for hazard assessment". (b) Future trends in paleoseismology: Integrated study of the seismic landscape as a vital tool in seismic hazard analyses (Michetti A.M., Audemard F.A., Marco S.M.). Tectonophysics 408 (2005), 3-21. This paper is particularly focused on the background of the INQUA Scale project.


  • The INQUA Congress in Bern, Switzerland, was an excellent scientific meeting.
    2993 abstracts were received by the deadline, of which 816 (27%) were submitted for inclusion in TERPRO Commission presentations. "Oral blocks" were then assigned by the Scientific Program Committee for each session, and TERPRO received 47 blocks of time, which translates into 282 talks (27%), with the rest of the abstracts being placed in the poster sessions. Research into aspects of Terrestrial Processes, Deposits, and History is alive and well.
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