La lettre du CNF-Inqua de novembre 2009 vient de paraitre!!
à télécharger ici

Le Comité National Français de l'INQUA encourage et subventionne la participation d'étudiants doctorants ou de post-doctorants contractuels à des manifestations scientifiques sur des thématiques concernant le Quaternaire.
La subvention, plafonnée à 500 euros, sera normalement attribuée deux fois par an, après évaluation par le conseil d'administration du CNF-INQUA.
Les candidats sont invités à remplir la fiche ci-dessous et l’adresser au Secrétariat du CNF INQUA,  avant le 1er mars 2010 pour les colloques du second semestre 2010 et avant le 15 septembre 2010 pour les manifestations se déroulant au premier semestre 2011.

Dossier de candidature à télécharger
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Dans le cadre de l'Année Internationale de la Planète Terre (AIPT), la CCGM (Commission de la Carte Géologique du Monde) vous informe de la parution de la nouvelleCarte géologique du Monde (3è édition), sous deux versions :
 
à 1/50 000 000 en deux feuilles :
                           - Feuille 1 :  Physiographie, volcans, astroblèmes  (125 x 58 cm)
                           - Feuille 2 :  Géologie, structure  (125 x 58 cm)
 
à 1/25 000 000 - une seule carte (Géologie, structure) en trois coupures, assemblable au choix (centrage sur l' Atlantique ou centrage sur le Pacifique) :
                          - Coupure légende et zones polaires : 108,5 x 78,05 cm
                          - Coupure "Ancien Monde" : 108,5 x 96,24 cm
                          - Coupure "Amériques" : 108,5 x 78,05 cm
 
De conception entièrement rénovée, elle prend en compte l'état des connaissances sur la géologie de notre planète à la charnière des XXe/XXIe siècles.  Elle est accompagnée de notes explicatives, en trois langues : français, anglais, espagnol. Cette carte vise à donner une meilleure visualisation globale des méga-structures et grands ensembles géologiques qui résultent des quelques 4,5 milliards d'années qui jalonnent l'histoire complexe de notre planète.
 
Conception, compilation et synthèse par Philippe Bouysse avec la collaboration d'experts internationaux.
 
Prix :
1/50 000 000 :  10 Euros / Feuille
1/25 000 000 :  20 Euros / Carte en 3 coupures
 
Disponible à la vente à la CCGM
77, rue Claude Bernard
75005 Paris
ccgm@club-internet.fr
www.ccgm.org
Tel. +33 (0)1 47 07 22 84
Fax +33 (0)1 43 36 95 18
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SUMMER SCHOOL Iceland in the central Northern Atlantic : Hotspot, sea currents and climate changes ECOLE THEMATIQUE –SUMMER SCHOOL CNRS-IUEM 11-14 Mai 2010 ECOLE THEMATIQUE –SUMMER SCHOOL
CNRS-IUEM
11-14 Mai 2010
Information, inscription et plaquette sur http://www-sdt.univ-brest.fr/news/iceland-in-the-central-northern-atlantic-celand-in

Volume des résumés, à télécharger ici

--The latest edition of The International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) Electronic Journal is available at:  <http://www.iugg.org/publications/ejournals>.
--The International Association of Hydrologists' "IAH Groundwater eNews" is available at online: <http://www.iah.org/news_enews.asp>.
--The "Earth Science India e-Journal" is now available on the web and can be viewed at <http://www.earthscienceindia.info/>. This open access quarterly e-journal is a not-for-profit website under the umbrella of The Society of Earth Scientists and is devoted to the development of Earth/Environmental Sciences of India.
--The International Erosion Control Association (IECA) has their official journal publication "Erosion Control" available at: <http://www.ieca.org>.
--UNESCO Global Geoparks Network - keep up to date with current activities at <http://www.globalgeopark.org/publish/portal1/tab59/>
--The Earth Portal <http://www.earthportal.org> website information includes a free weekly newsletter that you can receive at: <http://www.earthportal.org/news/> --Earthscan, has a new journal "Environmental Hazards" addressing the full range of extreme geological, hydrological, atmospheric and biological hazard events. For more information see: <http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=37213>. For Enquiries email to: journals@earthscan.co.uk.
--The International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) Bulletin 114 (May 2009) is now available on the website - both in high resolution (13 Mb) and low resolution (5 Mb). See: <http://www.iuss.org/index.htm>.
--ProGEO The European Association for the Conservation of the Geological Heritage publishes a quarterly newsletter ProGEO NEWS available online at <http://www.progeo.se/index.html>.
--The latest International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme NEWSLETTER of the can be downloaded at:http://www.igbp.net/page.php?pid=231.
--The National Ground Water Association (NGWA) of the USA hosts an ongoing series of events and educational courses. For information visit their website at <http://www.ngwa.org/DEVELOPMENT/index.aspx>
-- A new book "PaleoParks - The protection and conservation of fossil sites worldwide" by Jere H. LIPPS & Bruno R.C. GRANIER (Special Editors). This book is available free of charge see: <http://paleopolis.rediris.es/cg/uk-bookmarks.html#CG2009_BOOK_03>
--The Geological Society of North Africa September Newsletter is now available. Download Newsletters at: <http://www.geologicalsocietyofafrica.org/news/newsletter/>.Anyone who would like to be sent this online newsletter should email Dr. Abdelkader Saadallah at: kader@saadgeo.com. Geological Society of Africa <http://www.geologicalsocietyofafrica.org/>

Nature  Vol 459|4 June 2009

Redefinition rescues once-threatened
terminology from extinction.

 In 2006, astronomers reached a decision on the planetary status of Pluto; now, geologists may have done the same for the status of the Quaternary, the time period in which humans evolved and live today. But, as was the case with Pluto, resolving this long-standing controversy has left some researchers feeling alienated.
The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) has elected to formally define the base of the Quaternary at 2.6 million years before present, and also to lower the base of the Pleistocene — an epoch that encompasses the most recent glaciations — from its historical position at 1.8 million years to 2.6 million years ago. The decision, finalized on 21 May, will now be passed to the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) for ratification, which is expected in the next month or two. The vote shifts an 800,000-year slice, formerly part of the Pliocene epoch, into the Pleistocene. “It’s kind of a land grab,” says Philip Gibbard, a geologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who has fought for the redefinition since 2001. “But we see it as just putting straight a mistake that was made 25–30 years ago.” In 1985, the beginning of the Pleistocene was defined at 1.8 million years ago, calibrated to an outcropping of marine strata in southern Italy. But some geologists have long felt that was a localized, arbitrary boundary that did not reflect worldwide changes — and argued instead for the 2.6-million-year mark, when the entire planet cooled. The term Quaternary was adopted in the early 1800s, when geologists divvied up fossil records of Earth’s history into four periods: the Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quaternary. The first two terms were discarded long ago, and although Tertiary is still sometimes used,
in recent decades some geologists came to consider the Quaternary an outmoded relic. In 2004, a major publication left the Quaternary out of the ICS timescale altogether, making it vulnerable to extinction from scientific nomenclature. In place of the Quaternary, it extended the prior ‘Neogene’, which began 23 million
years ago, up to the present. The Quaternary community went into open revolt. “The geologic timescale is fundamental for expressing the history of the Earth,” says Stan Finney, a geologist at California State University in Long Beach and chair of the ICS. “This is our clock — we need the units of our timescale
and their boundaries to be precisely defined.” Finney inherited the debate when he took his post at the ICS in 2008, and he vowed to come up with a democratic process to resolve it. After several months of open discussions and formal proposals from the Quaternary and Neogene communities, two rounds of voting took place, in April and May. The redefinition proposal passed with approval from 16 of the
18 voting members. Although for some the debate is settled, others are not pleased. “We don’t take a metre stick in Paris and add a foot-and-a-half to it,” says Lucy Edwards, a marine geologist with
the US Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. “You can redefine it by being more precise, but you don’t increase its size by 40%.” Edwards has practical concerns as well: in the 1980s, the USGS reworked all of  ts maps and terminology to reflect the decision to place the Pleistocene at 1.8 million years ago. Now that
the international standards have changed, it will have to do so again. Marie-Pierre Aubry of Rutgers  University in Piscataway, New Jersey, who lobbied against the change, says that the rules of science are
being violated. Whereas other major boundaries in Earth’s history are associated with faunal extinctions and turnover, she says, “you come to the Neogene–Quaternary boundary, and there is nothing there”.  he notes that the term Neogene, not Quaternary, is used widely in textbooks to describe the current period. The Neogene community has already responded by petitioning the IUGS to suspend the vote. Others are moving on. “In the end, it is only a shift in nomenclature,” says Martin Van Kranendonk, a geologist at the Geological Survey of Western Australia in East Perth, and one of the two voting members who voted against the Quaternary proposal. “The rocks and time itself haven’t changed,” he says. “It’s just what we have chosen to call them.” ■
Amanda Leigh Mascarelli

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• !! Consultez le Rapport d'Activités 2003-2008  du CNF-INQUA (par Jean-Philip BRUGAL, Président 2003-2007) 
  

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