Minnesota Association of Professional Soil Scientists

Please hold September 22-25, 2016 on your calendar. On those dates, a meeting sponsored by the INQUA Loess Focus group will be held on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA. This meeting will be the first "LoessFest" on American soil. Please plan to attend. More information will follow in a second email, in a few weeks.

Details

Website: http://www.loessfest2016.msu.edu/

Focus: The meeting has two main themes: (1) thin loess deposits, and (2) spatial variation of loess across landscapes, and the research challenges that this approach presents. Related themes include (3) Loess sources - traditional and other types, (4) Dating of loess deposits, (5) Loess on slopes, (6) Loess and paleoenvironments, (7) Soil development in loess, and (8) Systems of loess generation and transportation. Nonetheless, all reasonably written abstracts on loess and related eolian landforms/processes/landscapes will be accepted.

Format: Posters and 15-20 min oral paper sessions on Thursday-Friday, Sep 22-23; Two, one-day field trips on Saturday-Sunday, Sep 24-25

Location: Davies Conference Center, on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire (UWEC), USA ( http://www.uwec.edu/centers/facilities/davies/index.htm)

Organizers: Randall Schaetzl ( http://geo.msu.edu/extra/schaetzl), Michigan State University. Co-organizers: Doug Faulkner, Garry Running and Harry Jol (Geography, UWEC), Kent Syverson (Geology, UWEC), and John Attig (Wisconsin Geological Survey)

Costs: Information on registration protocols, costs and deadlines will be sent out shortly

Lodging: Information on lodging recommendations, options, and costs will be sent out shortly

Travel: Most participants will fly into the Minneapolis-St Paul airport, which is a hub of Delta-KLM airlines. From there it is a 90-minute drive to Eau Claire. We hope to provide shuttle service to and from the airport to the conference. United Airlines also offers a direct flight from Chicago (its hub) to Eau Claire.

Keynote speakers: Ian Smalley, University of Leicester, England, Art Bettis, University of Iowa, USA, Slobodan Markewich, University of Novi Sad, Serbia, Kathryn Fitzsimmons, Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, Alida Timar-Gabor, Babes-Bolyai University, Romania, and Shiling Yang, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Awards: Monetary awards will be given for the best student poster and paper

Social events: From an ice-breaker on Weds evening, to an evening tour of a local brewery, to a bicycle tour of the city of Eau Claire, we plan to offer many social events and networking opportunities

Linkages to the Geological Society of America (GSA) meetings: The LoessFest partially overlaps with the annual GSA meetings in Denver, Colorado (Sep 25-28). Participants have the unique opportunity to piggy-back the LoessFest with the GSA meetings. Denver is a 90-minute flight from Minneapolis. I have proposed two Topical Sessions (LoessFest Part II) on loess (one oral, one poster) at the GSA meetings. LoessFest participants may request that their GSA papers be placed in these special sessions. I have also asked the GSA to place the sessions on Monday afternoon or Tuesday, so that LoessFest participants can fly to Denver on Sunday or Monday and participate fully in all or most of the eolian sessions. Lastly, GSA headquarters has agreed to give all LoessFest attendees member-pricing for registration.

Support: Pending successful reviews of outstanding proposals, we hope to be able to offer support for early career scientists, students, and international scholars who present at the LoessFest. Details will follow.

We anticipate a stimulating, enlightening, and fun meeting, with a good mix of research presentations and field experiences. Please pass this notice along to anyone who you feel may be interested, and feel free to contact Professor Schaetzl with questions.

All the best,

Randall Schaetzl

Professor

Department of Geography

673 Auditorium Rd, Rm 128

Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI 48824-1117