The Irish Quaternary Association (IQUA) is a voluntary organisation of academics, amateurs, governmental and industrial partners with interest in Irish landscape change during the most recent period of Earth history (the Quaternary). Its members have diverse interests including agriculture, archaeology, climatology, ecology, engineering, geography, geomorphology, geology and hydrology.

IQUA promotes Quaternary studies through its publications, conferences and symposia, awards and field meetings. It represents a unique pool of expertise in climate and landscape change capable of providing critical information on past and present Earth surface processes. It is an ideal forum for exchange of information between scientists, managers and interest groups concerned with the many contemporary issues associated with future climate change.

The full programme and abstracts booklet for the recent 2012 IQUA Annual Autumn Symposium is now available for download here.

The Sympoisum theme was: "Remote sensing: Applications in Quaternary Science, Archaeology and Landscape Management". For full details, see our Symposia page.

Thank you to all the participants and those who supported the symposium with their attendance.

IQUA 2013 SPRING MEETING & AGM

We are pleased to announce the call for abstracts for the Irish Quaternary Association's (IQUA) Spring Meeting and AGM, to be held on Saturday the 27th of April, 2013 hosted by the Palaeoenvironmental Research Unit, School of Geography and Archaeology, National University of Ireland Galway.

The meeting will comprise a series of short (20 minute) talks focusing on new and ongoing Quaternary research taking place in Ireland and abroad, and is open to all.

Registration will commence at 9.30am and is free to all. Tea/coffee will be provided.  Prof. Michael O’Connell (Palaeoenvironmental Research Unit, School of Geography and Archaeology, NUIG) will deliver the keynote address.

We invite abstracts for oral and poster presentations. Postgraduate and Postdoctoral members are especially welcome as speakers at the Spring Meeting, and are encouraged to take this opportunity to gain valuable experience and feedback in a friendly, informal setting.

Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be submitted to: Aaron Potito (Aaron.Potito@nuigalway.ie) or Karen Molloy (Karen.Molloy@nuigalway.ie). The deadline for abstract submissions is the 5th of April 2013.

The Spring Meeting will be followed by the IQUA AGM which will commence at 3.00pm.  The AGM is an important opportunity to get involved in arranging and influencing IQUA activities for the year ahead.

Update 15 Apr 2013: The venue for the IQUA 2013 Spring Meeting has now been set as Room 203, Moore Institute Seminar Room, National University of Ireland, Galway. Please see the new Spring Meeting poster. The full 2013 Programme is also available and contains a map of the NUIG campus with directions to the Moore Institute. IQUA thanks Karen Molloy and Aaron Potito for all their organizational efforts.

Update 13 Feb 2013: As an optional extra to the Spring Meeting and AGM, Michael Gibbons has kindly volunteered to lead a fieldtrip on Sunday 28th April. This will focus on a range of sites, including a group of cairns on Ballyvaughan Bay, a seaweed farm visible in the inter-tidal zone on Aughinish Island (the best preserved example in the country) and a complex of midden sites on Kinvara Bay. The middens stretch over hundreds of metres and are found on both sides of Kinvara Bay (for images see pdf, 1.44mb). Some contain bone. If the tides are right we will visit Mulrooney Island (a tidal inlet). Depart Galway 10.30; finish c. 15.00. This promises to be a fascinating trip that should be of interest to many IQUA members. Please contact Dr Karen Molloy (karen.molloy AT nuigalway.ie) if you wish to attend the fieldtrip.

IQUA proudly organises the Bill Watts 14CHRONO Awards, named in memory of W. A. Watts, a founding member of IQUA who passed away in 2010. The Awards are generously supported by the 14CHRONO Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. The Awards pay for a number of AMS radiocarbon dates for current postgraduate members of IQUA.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 Awards, which go to Marian McGrath of University College Cork, Donna Hawthorne of Trinity College Dublin and Philip Stastney of the University of Reading, each awarded two dates. Marian, Donna and Philip will describe their research and their use of their free radiocarbon dates in future issues of the IQUA Newsletter.

The opening of the 2013 Bill Watts 14Chrono Awards will be announced here in due course, along with application instructions.

WICKLOW IN THE GRIP OF AN ICE AGE - VIRTUAL TOUR

IQUA is delighted to announce the availability (as of January 2013) of Wicklow in the Grip of an Ice Age - A Self-Guided Tour of the Evidence of an Ice Age in Wicklow, hosted on the excellent Our Wicklow Heritage website, developed by the Wicklow Heritage Forum as an action of the County Wicklow Heritage plan (click here for the tour webpage).

The Virtual Tour retraces the May 2012 IQUA field trip to Wicklow, led by Profs. Pete Coxon, Fraser Mitchell and Patrick Wyse Jackson, which took place as part of the Dublin City of Science 2012. The trip comprised a tour to the northern Wicklow Mountains. There was a peat coring demonstration and an explanation of why the landscape now looks the way it does, considering the forests of the last 10,000 years and their clearance, and what the future may hold. Glacial features in the landscape including glacial corries, huge glacial lake basins and other features were explored.

The Virtual Tour locates and describes each of the key stops on the trip, with references to the IQUA field guide companion to the trip, which is available to buy in print for just €7 on our Field Guides page. Arguably the highlight of the Virtual Tour is a free interactive Google Maps tour (a version can also be downloaded and opened directly in Google Earth).

We thank the efforts and support of Benjamin Thebaudeau and Wicklow County Council in the produiction of the Virtual Tour.