New 46000-year record of the southern margin of the Indo-Australian Summer Monsoon just dropped from deadset legend Teresa Dixon at UQ.
#AusQuaternary #Monsoon #paleoclimate
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018226001410?via%3Dihub
The latest issue of Quaternary Australasia is fresh of the press and should have landed in members' inboxes. The QA Editors do a wonderful job, without fail. A highlight for me, as always, is the Quaternary Arts section - this issue features a brilliant poem by Colin Murray-Wallace, where he manages to rhyme 'hiatus' with 'frustrate us' - which is perfect on so many levels.
Proposed cuts at #ANSTO look very likely to affect the Australian Quaternary community - worryingly via ceasing expert support for 14C dating. I wonder what proportion of Australian quaternarists have leaned on ANSTO facilities? I'm going to guess all of us!
There is still oportunity to make comment, more details in this quite hidden press release:
Applications for the Leanne Armand award are now open. This award funds early and mid-career researchers based in Australia to access training in micropaleonotology. Applications are due 28th September, all details can be found on the AQUA website: https://aqua.org.au/sample-page/the-leanne-armand-travel-award/
Interesting paper out recently in ClimPast - subaquous speleothems record groundwater recharge in Mairs Cave, South Australia.
Abstract. As anthropogenic climate change enhances aridity across many regions of the globe, understanding drivers of aridification is more important than ever before. Unfortunately, arid regions globally tend to exhibit a paucity of palaeoclimate records, and the archives that are available typically comprise unconsolidated sediments prone to reworking, large dating uncertainties, and ambiguous climatic interpretations. This is certainly true of Australia's vast continental interior, which is dominated by harsh, arid conditions. Mairs Cave, in the southern Ikara-Flinders Ranges (South Australia), is located on the southern margin of the arid zone. In the present day, the cave is largely dry, and there is limited evidence of active speleothem growth. However, historical records and observations throughout the cave indicate that it was periodically flooded, suggesting the local water balance was once much more positive than it is today. The cave contains a curtain of hanging speleothems known as pendulites, which grow subaqueously when submerged in water that is saturated with respect to calcite. Geochemical evidence, including trace element concentrations, uranium isotope ratios, and dead carbon fractions (DCFs), indicates that a rise in the local groundwater during periods of enhanced groundwater recharge is the cause of the cave flooding events that trigger pendulite growth. Uranium–thorium dating of a pendulite retrieved from Mairs Cave has revealed two multi-millennial growth phases (68.5–65.4 and 51.2–42.3 ka) and two short bursts of growth (18.9 and 16.4 ka) during the Last Glacial Period (LGP). The absence of subsequent pendulite growth suggests that strong water deficits under warm Holocene interglacial conditions give rise to episodic, rather than persistent, cave flooding.
I missed this the first time 'round in THE last month - "Earth science is critical to national resilience – so why is it being gutted?" The AQUA executive asked ourselves a similar question a couple of years ago, leading to this open letter published in QA Vol. 40 (now OA, so no guillt about sharing the snip!)
QA Vol. 40: https://aqua.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/1968%20AQUA%20Quaternary%20Vol%2040%20December%202023.pdf
Reminder that the #AusQuaternary AGM is happening this Friday! A wonderful time to renew your membership if you haven't already...
AQUA runs a mentoring program, which is largely just a matching service and then mentors and mentees are expected to do the heavy lifting of actually meeting without much involvement from us. All this to say, that the excellent feedback I just read from mentors and mentees isn't a reflection on the mentoring program per se, but rather on the bloody excellent community we have, full of people willing to help one another just because. That really got me right in the feels.
Another excellent edition of Quaternary Australasia is out! I always enjoy the post-conference student reports, especially when the students seem to have really gotten into the 'AQUA vibe'!
#AusQuaternary #QuaternaryScience #Palaeoclimate #paleoclimate
Wonderful to see 11 ARC Discovery Projects awarded to Quaternary projects in Australia! This must be a record for recent years/rounds.
Sleuthing thanks to Prof Simon Haberle at the ANU via the aqualist.
Dr Micha Campbell