Conference: An International Conference Focusing on Loess and Related Topics

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

This award will provide support for an international conference sponsored by the Loess Focus Group of the International Quaternary Union (INQUA) to be held at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in September 2016. The conference will foster networking and collaboration among an international assemblage of geologists, geographers, and soil scientists whose research interests focus on loess, which is an eolian sediment largely consisting of wind-blown silt. Because of its distinctive character and origin, loess has been the topic of considerable research in geography, geomorphology, and soil science. The conference will bring together scholars from around the world to share results from recent research, discuss topics and issues of mutual interest, and provide opportunities for scholars to explore possibilities for new collaborative relationships. Although a series of conferences focusing on loess have been convened periodically since 1999, this will be the first such gathering in North America. The conference will provide an opportunity to highlight much of the loess research in the mid-continental U.S. being done by U.S. researchers to an international audience, and it will provide a venue within which many Americans, who often do not interact directly with loess scholars in Europe and China, to meet, network, and collaborate. In addition to facilitating interactions among scholars from different nations, the conference will catalyze advances in loess science that will enable better mapping and use of the distinctive soils associated with loess, and it will promote research in loess areas that have received little research attention in the past. Many of the soils in the richest agricultural parts of the world are formed in loess, which means that research about the geology and spatial properties of loess provides important information about past geologic and climatic conditions wherever it is found. The conference is expected to attract between 125 and 150 scholars, and it will be one of a number of gatherings preceding the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver. The conference will be conducted over four days, with two days in meeting rooms and two days at field sites where scholars will be able to examine representative loess-based features firsthand. Topics of special emphasis during indoor and field-based discussions will be on fluvial and glacial systems as loess sources; on the role of loess in regions with only thin veneers of wind-blown sediments; and on loess landscapes, eolian transportational systems, and the concept of loess transport surfaces.