Rick Battarbee (RWB), Chair of the IPA, called the meeting to order at 5:20 PM (UK Time).

Chair’s Report

RWB provided the Chair’s Report, summarizing the history of the IPA and the IPA’s role in fostering the paleolimnology meetings, and other activities. Included in the report was recognition of our 5 new IPA Outstanding Service Award winners. These included Bill Last, Tom Whitmore, John Glew, Eric Grimm, Tamara Welschot and Judith Terpos. In addition, congratulations were also extended to our new 4 Lifetime Achievement Award winners (Françoise Gasse, Peter Appleby, John Birks, and Ingemar Renberg), who were awarded their medals on Aug 22, 2012.

RWB provided a summary of IPA’s funding incoming, and reported that IPA now has a bank account with NatWest in London. Money currently held by IPA is from a surplus from the Guadalajara meeting in 2009, approximately £8000 from the fees collected for the Glasgow conference, and about £360 from the book raffle. It was anticipated the Glasgow meeting would also have a small surplus that would be added to the account.

RWB reminded members that the funds are primarily for running the IPA activities (such as the IPA web site, paying for the Life Time Achievement Award medals and helping with Award winners’ expenses. He stated that the hope in future was to use funding to help pay for defraying some of the costs of IPA invited plenary speakers (not normal plenary speakers, which would be the responsibility of the local organisers) and for assisting students from developing countries to attend the symposia.

There were no further discussion or comments from the audience and so it was agreed to leave it to the IPA board to determine how best to use our finances.

RWB then asked the membership to ratify an executive decision taken by the IPA Board early this year to award Outstanding Service Awards at the Glasgow and subsequent IPA Symposia. Agreement was confirmed by a show of hands from the audience.

RWB then asked the membership to agree that organisers of future symposia should make clear that symposia are organised “under the auspices of the IPA”
Agreement was confirmed by a show of hands from the audience.

RWB asked the membership to agree that, should the IPA Board deem it necessary, the post of Treasurer will be created and the position will be filled by executive action.
Agreement was confirmed by a show of hands from the audience.

Note added after the meeting: The subsequent meeting of the IPA Executive, held immediately after the IPA Business Meeting appointed Helen Bennion as Honorary Treasurer and Rick Battarbee as “Honorary Keeper of the Die”, in charge of our IPA medals and with joint responsibility to manage the IPA Bank Account in London.

Springer Student Book Prizes

RWB then invited Dr. Carl Sayer (UCL), to announce the winners of the Springer Book Prize for the best oral paper and best poster presentation.

Dr. Sayer reported that the 70 student posters and 30 student talks were excellent and the committee had a very difficult time determining winners. After much deliberation, the committee came to the final conclusions:

Oral winner:
Mark Stevenson (S06-04) ‘Impact of forestry on net ecosystem production in upland lakes of north-west Ireland’
School of Geography, University of Nottingham, UK.

Oral runners up:
Jonathan Dean (S01-03), School of Geography, University of Nottingham, UK.
Jennifer Korosi (S14-06), PEARL, Dept. of Biology, Queen’s University, Canada.
Bronwen Konecky (S10-06), Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.

Poster winner:
Linda Randsalu-Wendrup (S04-P13) ‘Ecological regime shifts in Lake Kalksjön, Sweden, in response to abrupt climate change around the 8.2 ka cooling event’
Department of Geology, Quaternary Sciences, Lund University, Sweden.

Poster runners up:
Alexandra Rouillard (S01-P01), School of Plant Biology, The University of Western Australia.
Rong Wang (S06-P05), Palaeoecology Laboratory, University of Southampton, UK
Shyrete Shala (S09-P13), Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm, Sweden
Samantha Lee Allcock (S10-P09), Plymouth University, UK
Isabel Bishop (S14-P09), Environmental Change Research Centre, Department of Geography, University College London, UK

Paleolimnology Listserver Report

RWB invited Dr. Tom Whitmore to report on our Paleolimnology Forum list service system. Dr Whitmore encouraged the community to use the listservice more including its use as a forum for questions and discussion. Dr Whitmore was thanked for his important service to our community with his work on the listservice.

Journal of Paleolimnology Report

RWB invited Dr. Mark Brenner (co-editor-in-chief of the J. Paleolimnology, with Tom Whitmore) to provide a report on the journal. Dr. Brenner summarized the solid progress made with the journal, thanked the editorial board and their publishing colleagues with Springer, and then provided a useful 15 minute talk on advice to contributors for the journal.

IPA Elections

The IPA elections for the Executive Committee were conducted at 6PM local time for the new officers.

For the young scientist (under 35 years old) position, 2 candidates were proposed:

• Ginnie Panizzo (proposer: Sarah Metcalfe; seconder Sarah Davies)
• Keeley Mills (proposer: Peter Gell; seconder: David Ryves)

For the new position of Vice-chair, 3 candidates were proposed:

• Margarita Caballero (proposer: Dan Engstrom; seconder: Svante Björck)
• Jonathan Holmes (proposer: Steffan Mischke; seconder: Fahu Chen)
• Catherine Dalton (proposer: Helen Bennion; seconder: John Tibby)

And for the new Chair, one candidate was proposed:

• John Smol (proposer: Anson Mackay; seconder: Tom Whitmore)

Following a close election, Ginnie Panizzo and Catherine Dalton were elected to the positions of young scientists and vice chair, respectively. As J. Smol was unopposed, RB asked for a show of hands from the audience for support for the new chair and received a unanimous response. The membership approved the new slate of executive officers.

Venue for the 2015 International Paleolimnology Symposium

The venue for the next IPA Symposium 13 (in 2015) was discussed. The proposal prepared by Drs. Fahu Chen, Ji Shen, Jule Xiao and Liping Zhou and presented by Fahu Chen to hold the 2015 symposium in mid-August 2015 in Lanzhou, China was unanimously approved.

RWB thanked Fahu Chen and his colleagues for their invitation.

Other Business

RWB reported that, on behalf of the IPA, the SECC (The Conference Centre) have funded the planting of one acre of native pine forest on the Dundreggan Estate in Glen Morriston as part of a “Trees for Life” scheme to plant 1000 square miles of Caledonian Forest in the Scottish Highlands.

RWB then invited the two local co-chairs (Andy Henderson and Helen Bennion) to come to the stage to thank the student helpers. The audience expressed their appreciation for an excellent meeting with extended applause.

Margarita Caballero and Dan Engstrom then thanked the local organizers on behalf of the attendees, followed again by extended applause.

The meeting adjourned at 6:30 PM

Minutes recorded by John P. Smol (Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario)

New: Session titles and abstracts, keynote speakers, fees and excursions.
http://www.paleolim.org/ips2012

We invite you to look at our webpage (http://biology.mcgill.ca/PALS/) for registration and abstract submission guidelines. Please contact us to book your place for the symposium dinner on THURSDAY evening (May 26th).

He died peacefully at his home north of Kingston on Friday evening, June 18, 2010 at the age of 92, surrounded by close friends.

Ted is widely recognized for his seminal work on the study of fossil pigments in lake sediments.

His affiliation with the limnological and paleolimnological community, and with Queen’s University, has been a long one. After being born and raised in Nova Scotia, and following five years of decorated military service in the World War II, Ted went to Queen’s University to take his bachelor’s and master’s degree, working on the Lake Opinicon region. In 1954 he was accepted to work on a doctoral thesis with G. Evelyn Hutchinson at Yale University, to develop new approaches in the new field of “paleolimnology”. He returned to Queen’s University in 1959 as an assistant professor and the Director of the Queen’s University Biology Station.

Ted retired from teaching and active research in the late 1980s, but maintained a keen interest in paleolimnology, and was genuinely pleased with our field’s tremendous advancements. The last scientific conference that he attended was the 8th International Paleolimnology Symposium, held at Queen’s University in August 2000, where he was the guest of honour. He maintained an interest in paleolimnology throughout his later years and took a keen interest in the lives of his colleagues.

A short summary of his career, which was part of a special session dedicated to his retirement at the International Paleolimnology Symposium, held in Austria in the 1980s, and written by John Smol, was published as part of the proceedings from that conference: Smol, J.P. 1986. A biographical sketch of Seward R. (Ted) Brown. Hydrobiologia 143: 9-11 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00026638).

Download PDF with permission from Springer

The winners of the student prizes were Frederike Verbruggen (best oral presentation) and Alexandra Rouillard (best poster presentation). Both received Springer book tokens for $250.00.

Lifetime Award Recipient Citations

Herb Wright
Herbert E. Wright, Jr. is among the world’s most productive and highly recognized Quaternary scientists. He has lead a remarkable scientific career that has touched on many of the pivotal questions of recent earth history, he has mentored and inspired more than 70 graduate students and numerous visiting scholars from around the globe, and he has been the recipient of many of the highest awards in his field.

Herb continues to be actively engaged in science and to write and publish, and his home still serves, after almost 50 years, as the venue for Wednesday evening seminars in Quaternary paleoecology at the University of Minnesota. 

So I’d traveled the globe, not heeded nor aided,
To seek out a lake of my own,
Only to find, a world perforated
Like Swiss cheese by Herb’s Livingstone.

J.E. Almendinger

Herb’s paper can be found here http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10933-010-9431-7

Walt Dean
Walter Dean is one of the world’s most cited authors in the field of geochemistry of both lacustrine and marine sediments deposited from the Permian to modern times. Walt was launched into both palaeolimnology and palaeoceanography by his doctoral work on the Permian Castle varved anhydrite of the Delaware Basin of west Texas and New Mexico, a “saline lake” on the western edge of Pangea. He has published well over 200 papers, mainly in leading journals, including Science and Nature. His most important lake research-related contributions are related to the carbon cycle, Holocene records of palaeoclimate, and continental drilling. Walt was one of the driving forces of the Elk Lake project that led to a milestone publication of interdisciplinary lake research. Besides his scientific excellence and diversity, Walt impresses by his enthusiasm for collaboration, his humour, his willingness to share knowledge and experience, and his support of young scientists.

Walt’s paper can be found here http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10933-010-9430-8

Frank Oldfield
Frank Oldfield has made outstanding contributions to palaeolimnology. In collaboration with Roy Thompson, he discovered the potential value of mineral magnetic properties of lake sediment cores, first as a rapid and non-destructive method of core correlation, and second as a powerful technique for environmental reconstruction. His research created the entirely new field of Environmental Magnetism and he defined its scope through pioneering work applied to studies of climate change, soil erosion, and pollution history. Separately, having realised the deficiencies of contemporary models for deriving ²¹⁰Pb chronologies for lake sediments, he developed and, with Peter Appleby, refined new methods of calculating ²¹⁰Pb ages, methods that are now used routinely by ²¹⁰Pb labs throughout the world. His early insights into the potential role of recent lake sediments as an environmental archive inspired his many graduate students and it laid the foundation for the explosion of studies in recent palaeolimnology that has occurred over the last forty years. He has published over 200 scientific papers and he is still actively involved in palaeolimnological research.

Frank’s paper can be found here http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10933-010-9432-6

Please send nominations by email with a paragraph of justification for the nomination to Rick Battarbee or any member of the IPA Executive Committee.

Please note you need to be a registered member of the IPA for your nomination to qualify.

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Student Prize

The publishing company Springer, who publish the Journal of Paleolimnology, have agreed to sponsor a book award for the best student oral and poster presentations at the 11th IPA Symposium in Guadalajara, Mexico. They will also arrange for a certificate to be presented to the two winning students.

• Visit the website for more details.