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Welcome to the QRA Postgraduate Pages
Group Photo Welcome The QRA currently has around 1000 members in the UK and overseas, of which about 200 are postgraduate members. The Quaternary Research Association provides valuable resources to support all its postgraduate members. A number of field trips are run each year to provide in-situ experience of field sites of global Quaternary interest. This allows postgraduates to meet and socialise with other QRA members and to discuss research topics with leading academics in these fields. The field trips are complemented by numerous local and international conferences, including the annual QRA International Postgraduate Symposium. Meetings The 2008 Postgraduate Symposium will be held at the University of Liverpool, UK. Awards Newsletter Publications Other Publications Benefits
Postgraduate representatives Christine Lane, University of Oxford (Email: christine.lane@rlaha.ox.ac.uk) Do you want to be the next postgraduate rep?? Are you on our mailing list - click here to subscribe and receive updates
QRA Meetings
Glacial landforms in the Brecon Beacons The Annual Discussion Meeting (ADM) is held over two days and involves the presentation of papers, progress reports and discussion on a particular theme and features keynote speakers . This is held at venues across the UK. The Annual Field Meeting (AFM) is usually held over four days and provides an opportunity to meet with fellow researchers and experts in your particular field of study, an opportunity to broaden your awareness of Quaternary research and field techniques and to see classic Quaternary sections in the field. Field meetings are always well attended by postgraduate students. Field meetings have been held in both the UK and Europe. Previous meetings have included visits to Brecon Beacons, Gallway (Ireland), Pass of Drumochter (Scottish Highlands) and West Runton (Norfolk). The QRA funds a number of grants to help postgraduates attend its meetings.
Every year a wide range of research themes are presented and discussed. Topics have included palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, dating techniques, ecosystem change inferred from stalagmites, rotating glacial sediments and even the woolly rhinoceros! In addition, keynote speakers are invited to talk on current and controversial issues within the Quaternary in order to stimulate debate. Such talks have included, “Why is South West England of little value for Quaternary Research?” by Prof Chris Caseldine (Exeter). The symposium provides an ideal environment in which postgraduates can present to their contemporaries at a conference but within a relaxed environment. This gives postgraduates the opportunity to hone their presentation skills (poster and oral) and it creates an arena for discussing their research. Debate and socialising are encouraged, not only throughout the lectures, but also through evening activities, such as the conference dinner, and on the symposium field day. No QRA meeting would be complete without a field trip and each symposium is completed with a day excursion exploring the local region. This gives postgraduates the opportunity to put on their walking boots and develop their skills of observation and debate within the field!
Postgraduates on Dartmoor An advantage of the QRA postgraduate symposium is that any institution is able to host this event. You simply have to express an interest in holding the next conference and, if your University passes the vote, you will be put in charge of organising the next year’s event! The QRA postgraduate symposium is the ideal place to meet fellow PhD students in your field and gain conference experience and to develop transferable skills, whether it be giving a talk on your research or organising the event itself!
Postgraduates at Hope’s Nose The 2007 Postgraduate Syposium was held in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark
Just an example of what we get up to.
Tom Hill (Postgrad Rep 02 - 04) talking about his research in the Gordano Valley'
------------------------------------------------------------------------ QRA Postgraduate Symposium Copenhagen, Denmark, 2007 The 6th Annual QRA Postgraduate Symposium (August 2007) was hosted by students from the Department of Geography and Geology at The University of Copenhagen. Around 30 students, many of whom travelled great distances, attended the meeting, which opened with an evening wine reception and guided boat tour around the city’s harbour. The first day of the conference opened with an extremely interesting and engaging talk by guest speaker Professor Jorgen Peder Steffensen, University of Copenhagen, who gave an introduction to atmospheric sedimentology, as recorded in the polar ice core records. Including new research on stratigraphical analysis of ice cores from Greenland. Over the following two days delegates presented their own Quaternary Ph.D research, which were divided into five sessions including Geochronology; Envrionmental Archaeology; Palaeoecology; Climate reconstruction; and Glaciology and Sedimentology. The final presentation titled “The rise of the continents – the awesome power of photosynthesis” was given by a second guest speaker, Professor Minik Thorleif Rosing, also from The University of Copenhagen, which covered exciting new research about the earliest evidence for life on Earth. Part of the aim of the QRA postgraduate symposium is to provide students with a friendly environment to develop important presentation and communication skills. This year, for around half of the delegates, this was their first opportunity to present their work at a conference. Yet despite this, the quality of the presentations was extremely high, engaging the audience and prompting some valuable discussions. At the close of the conference, votes were cast and Lorna Linch was awarded the prize for best presentation, following her dynamic talk titled, “A micromorphological investigation of iceberg scoured sediments”. (click here to see the abstract)
The symposium came to a close on the third day, which was spent out in the field exploring the wonderful glaciotectonised chalk cliffs at Mons Klint; “Denmark’s answer to The White Cliffs of Dover”, with Dr Stig Shack Pederson. Here a combination of an imbricate fan and antiformal stacks are responsible for the impressive superimposed tectonic complex, which was formed during the Young Baltic Ice-stream advance about 17 ka and subsequent readvance around 14 ka.
Aside from all the hard work, a number of social events took place during the evenings including a fantastic night out at Tivoli Gardens and an amazing conference dinner on a floating restaurant after the conference closed. Finally, The University of Liverpool was decided upon to be the venue for next year’s symposium, where we hope to see many familiar faces and new ones! The Postgraduate Symposium really is a lot of fun and is ideal for first time presentations in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. We hope that if you couldn’t make it this year, you’ll be able to attend next year! On behalf of all the postgraduates and the QRA we’d like to thank Jesper Olsen and Mikkel Ulfeldt Hede for a truly wonderful few days in Copenhagen and for looking after, and entertaining us so well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ QRA Postgraduate Symposium, 2007, award for best Presentation: Lorna Linch Department of Geography A micromorphological investigation of deformation structures beneath iceberg scours Iceberg scouring is a post-depositional mechanical process caused by free-drifting icebergs that periodically contact unconsolidated lake floor or seabed sediment when their draft exceeds water depth. Once grounded, if the iceberg continues to be driven forward by waves, currents and wind, its keel will plough through surficial sediments in an identical manner in both glaciolacustrine and glaciomarine environments. This action creates characteristically curvilinear or straight scour marks that consist normally of two raised embankments (berms) of sediment on either side of a central trough, hundreds of metres to several kilometres in length, tens of centimetres to hundreds of metres in width, and centimetres to metres in depth. The effects of iceberg scouring are of relevance to planning the construction of sea/lake bed structures such as telecommunications cables and oil or gas pipelines. As a result, great efforts have been made in understanding scouring and grounding processes from sonograph records and diving operations using submersibles. In turn, this has lead to a wealth of information on offshore iceberg scour surface morphology. What remains relatively poorly understood, however, is what iceberg scours look like in stratigraphic section where surface morphological characteristics are absent (e.g. through deterioration or burial) from both the Quaternary and pre-Quaternary geological record. The primary aim of this investigation is to establish a definitive set of diagnostic keys for identifying iceberg scours in the Quaternary and pre-Quaternary rock record by macroscopically and microscopically (2D, 3D and Metripol stress mapping) examining a) Late Pleistocene sub-scour sediments from former Glacial Lake Agassiz and the North Sea, b) actively iceberg sub-scoured sediments from cores previously retrieved from the Antarctic and, c) thin sections (already in the Queen Mary University of London collection) suspected of showing iceberg sub-scoured sediments. This analysis will in turn enable palaeoenvironmental reconstructions including glacial activity (e.g. ice margin extents, deglaciation etc.), the presence of large, deep water bodies, the presence of fast flowing outlet glaciers, palaeocurrent and palaeowind directions and reinterpretation of sediments previously interpreted as subglacial. In addition, all information from this project may eventually aid structural engineering on Arctic shelves, which could be of great value to oil and gas companies given the anticipated increase in number, size and frequency of icebergs within areas of petroleum exploration and extraction as a result of climate change. The project is funded by a NERC PhD studentship in the Department of Geography, Queen Mary University of London. Project supervisors are Professor Jaap van der Meer (QMUL), Dr Simon Carr (QMUL) and Professor John Menzies (Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario). Diagram summarising surface morphological features of a typical iceberg scour mark. Here a fresh scour cuts across an older scour (Woodworth-Lynas and Landva, 1988)
Aerial photograph of one of the study sites (Glacial Lake Agassiz) – iceberg scours show up as light grey tracks (Teller, 2003)
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