Quaternary Environmental Change – Emerging Issues

The French Institute of Pondicherry organized an international PAGES workshop and a training programme on "Late Quaternary Environmental Change – Emerging Issues". About 70 participants from 7 countries, including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Germany, France and America participated. An optimal mix of both young and established global change scientists with diverse specializations and an interest in the South Asian region made this meeting a scientifically useful event.

The programme comprised sessions in the format of plenary lectures, oral and poster presentations and a special symposium followed by the training programme. A one-day symposium on the theme Model specific data sets and data specific models – the South Asian context” was a specific highlight. This symposium comprised discussion on three themes, viz.: Global biome models and pollen based biomization Statistical methods for vegetation and climate inferences: neural networks, analogues… Regional climate models: state of art in the South Asian context Each discussion forum consisted of a plenary lecture by an expert (case study) followed by a workshop with data producers the kinds of models available.

The training at the Geomatics Laboratory were also provided.This meeting was planned in tandem with another important national meeting organized by Anna University, Chennai on understanding dry land soils and early quaternary paleoclimate (under the aegis of UNESCO sponsored International Geological Correlation programme).

This scientific meeting captured the attention of the popular media with a curtain raiser including several public events (painting competition on the theme for school children, a photographic and poster exhibition and popular multimedia presentations to introduce overall science, economics and politics of climate change).

IGBP - PAGES, the French and German Embassies in India, DST (Department of Science and Technology, India) and ISRO-GBP (Indian Space Research Organization’s Geosphere Biosphere programme) funded the meeting.