[Aqualist] Summary of Australian hydroclimate - manuscript being prepared

[Kathy Allen]

Hi all,


At a drought workshop in Melbourne a few weeks ago, the small group of palaeo-proxy people present had a brief meeting. One outcome of that meeting was a feeling that we could put together a bit of a summary of existing Australian hydrological reconstructions and records from which hydrological conditions are directly inferred (precipitation, streamflow, drought indices, wet/dry etc). The idea is to capture variability across as much of Australia as possible, and to discuss any patterns (or lack of) that emerge, as well as to provide some commentary for those who use these reconstructions (e.g. dating error, other issues with records, seasonality, hydrological variables best captured by different proxy types/sites ). We would like to include as many relevant palaeo records as possible that have resolutions from sub-annual down to centennial that cover all or part of the past ~3000 years. I don't envisage any particularly sophisticated analyses, rather just looking an overall 'picture' at this point - as a segue into more sophisticated analyses later.  However, others may have some ideas or thoughts in this regard.


The intention is to include anyone who makes a substantive contribution as an author. We are looking for engagement across as wide a cross-section of the Australian palaeo-community as possible. Authorship criteria are loosely based on the Oceans2k model, in which simply contributing data with critical meta-data will not be seen as a contribution worthy of authorship (but will be acknowledged).  The following are just a few examples (there are no doubt plenty of others) of what will be taken as contributions worthy of authorship:

 - contribution of data and additional information about the data, how it is best used, how it should not be interpreted,

      comments on its interpretation where relevant, comments on common issues with archive/data type

- assistance with analyses/paper content/structure

- assistance with writing (beyond simplistic editing of grammar, sentence structure, spelling)

- Contribution/generation of figures/maps


If you're interested in being involved, please let me know so I can add you to an email list.  Also, if you have hydrological reconstructions and/or data from which hydrological conditions are inferred that you would like to contribute, please let me know and I'll send you a meta-data spreadsheet to fill in to accompany your data (I understand the AQUA list does not take attachments). This metadata will also be used to help guide future research efforts, and an additional aim is to contribute any new information to the palaeo-database being developed through CABAH.


We were thinking of a fairly tight turn-around time for this manuscript, say submit end of June/July.


Regards,

Kathy Allen

Helen McGregor

Cameron Barr

Tessa Vance

Ramona Della Pozza

Ben Henley

Danielle Verdon-Kidd

Mandy Freund

Natasha Ballis
Anthony Kiem