[Aqualist] Australasian INTIMATE project

[Simon Haberle]

Dear All,

Please find below details concerning the announcement of a new paleoclimate 
science project for New Zealand, Australia and the Southern Ocean: The 
Australasian INTIMATE project. All those interested in participating or 
further information please contact James Shulmeister 
(james.shulmeister at canterbury.ac.nz).....Cheers, Simon


Announcement of a new paleoclimate science project for New Zealand, 
Australia and the Southern Ocean: The Australasian INTIMATE project

At the recent International Quaternary Association Congress (INQUA) in Reno 
there was very significant interest in the chronology and nature of the 
deglaciation in the Australasia/Southern Ocean region. As a result a 
proposal was made that a group be formed to examine the extent to which 
regionally coherent climatic changes can be used to determine an event 
stratigraphy for Australasia and the Southern Ocean. A primary objective of 
the group will be to attempt to establish an event stratigraphy for the 
period spanning from the Last Glacial Maximum (c. 21,000 years ago) to the 
start of the Holocene (c. 11,500 years ago) and to examine its 
applicability across the Australasian region. We are forming a regional 
Australasian sub-project within the very successful INTIMATE (Integration 
of Ice Core, Marine and Terrestrial Records) programme which is a core 
project of the INQUA Palaeoclimate Commission. The purpose of INTIMATE is 
to integrate data sets from ice core, marine and land records to produce a 
series of palaeoenvironmental maps of the Atlantic Region (and now 
Australasia) for the interval between the Last Glacial Maximum and the 
Early Holocene and to study the ice-sea-atmosphere interactions and 
feedbacks during the last Glacial-Interglacial transition. Participation in 
the work of INTIMATE is open to any scientist with interests in, and/or 
data pertinent to, the aims of INTIMATE.

The interest ultimately focuses on global scale questions on the nature and 
timing of links between climate events in the Northern Hemisphere, 
Antarctica and Australasia as a means of improving our understanding of 
global climatic teleconnections and systems responses to climate change. It 
follows on from the recognition that records from this part of the world 
are critical for testing the global applicability of climate change 
scenarios. In order to actually derive useful answers we need very high 
resolution climate change records. The decision to focus initially on the 
Australasian region was taken at the Reno meeting essentially for reasons 
of pragmatism. Nevertheless we recognise the importance of ultimately 
extending the coverage to other regions of the Southern Hemisphere and 
would strongly welcome parallel or collaborative initiatives from workers 
in those regions, especially South America.
About 30 participants were signed up at INQUA in August with several 
additions since then. Dr Rewi Newnham (R.Newnham at plymouth.ac.uk) is acting 
as the link person to the main INTIMATE project, Dr Jamie Shulmeister 
(James.Shulmeister at canterbury.ac.nz) is the NZ local co-ordinator and Dr 
Simon Haberle (simon.haberle at anu.edu.au) is doing the same for Australia. 
The regional project is intended to run until at least 2007 when results 
will be presented at the next INQUA congress in Cairns (and a journal issue 
and/or summary paper/s will be derived).

The first meeting will be a demonstration workshop at the Geological 
Society of New Zealand Conference in Dunedin on the 4th December 2003. The 
first full meeting of the Australasian INTIMATE group will be at the 
Australasian Quaternary Association Biennial Conference in Tasmania in 
December 2004.

The way INTIMATE works is to have a series of warts and all presentations 
on critical data sets for erecting the stratigraphy followed up by work 
shopping the paper(s) to identify key findings and identify where the holes 
are. Critical issues that need to be resolved include 1) the establishment 
of universally applied procedures for establishing chronological control 
(e.g. how should C-14 ages be presented, which calibration will be used, 
how reliable are key markers like tephras?), 2) linking marine to 
terrestrial records, 3) distinguishing local site, ecological or 
hydrological effects from climate responses and 4) defining which Northern 
Hemisphere/Antarctic/South American climate events (if any) actually show 
up in the NZ record. The idea is that the presentations are informal and 
that the workshops are supportive.

Want to know more? Either contact any of the co-ordinators listed above or, 
for background, have a look at what has been done for the North Atlantic 
region by the original INTIMATE group in Europe and check out the European 
web site at http://www.geog.uu.nl/fg/INTIMATE/ and links therein. Please 
also respond if you are likely to attend the Dunedin workshop.

Jamie Shulmeister
Senior Lecturer
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
New Zealand
fax +64-364 2769
work phone +64-3-3642762
Home phone +64-3-3511244


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