Business meeting of the subdivision Soil as a Record of the Past

Program:

10.30-10.40 Sjoerd Kluiving, chair, Introduction, news, past and upcoming publications, research and future
10.40-10.50 Ian Simpson- secretary ‘Reading the Soil: Advances in analytical capabilities’
10.50-11.00 Daniela Sauer- vice-chair ‘Soils as records of past and present environments’
11.00 -11.30 Public discussion on Soil as a Record of the Past

The SSS subdivision Soil as a Record of the Past (SRP) encompasses all natural and cultural processes that affect landscape evolution and that are registered in the soil record.
Environmental change and human activity both have an impact on soil development making soils and palaeosols important and significant long-term geo-ecological and geo-archaeological archives. SRP sessions include relevant aspect of soils in various climatic zones including soil and sediment micromorphology to reconstruct palaeoenvironments and historical and more recent human impact on geo-ecosystems.
Can we identify the interplay between natural and cultural influence reflected in the soil changing over space and time? The aim of the SRP sessions is to present and debate cutting edge progress in knowledge and techniques, contributing new reconstructions of natural and cultural landscape evolution and enhanced geochronology of sequences of sediments and palaeosols. In doing so we offer new insights into the complex relationships between landscape evolution, climate change, human activity, resilience and sustainability. These sessions will be relevant to researchers working in a wide range of interdisciplinary areas including pedology, archaeology, geoarchaeology, anthropology, environmental history, Quaternary sciences, e.g. paleoclimatology, sedimentology, and landscape ecology.