Quaternary Environments and Geoarchaeology (QEG)
News
FROM SOURCE TO SINK: THE PLIOCENE-QUATERNARY NILE
A one day conference at The University of Manchester on Thursday 21st June 2007 convened by Jamie Woodward and Rob Gawthorpe.
The meeting will be held at the Manchester Museum on Oxford Road. The Manchester Museum is No. 44 on the campus map.
This meeting is a joint venture between the Quaternary Environments and Geoarchaeology (QEG) research group in the School of Environment and Development (SED) and the Basin Studies and Petroleum Geoscience Group in the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences (SEAES).
This meeting will examine recent advances in our understanding of the River Nile sediment system over the past 5 million years or so. Papers are welcomed on the Pliocene, Pleistocene and Holocene River Nile and its delta. We hope to bring together researchers from a range of backgrounds with interests in global change and the factors controlling water and sediment fluxes and long-term catchment landscape evolution. Papers on seismic and sequence stratigraphy, palaeoecology, geochronology, sedimentary geochemistry and their application to understanding large river dynamics and environmental change are also welcome. We are especially interested in research that enhances our understanding of the response of the Nile basin to global climate change over a range of timescales and we hope to include papers from all of the major sectors of the basin including the headwaters of the Blue Nile and White Nile, the desert Nile and the delta and off-shore records. The use of strontium isotopes and OSL dating, for example, has led to important new insights into the dynamics of the Holocene Nile. The outcomes from geoarchaeological investigations and environmental records from lake basins in the catchment are also welcome, as are contributions from the study of industry 3D seismic data to understand the evolution of the Nile slope.
Preliminary Programme
10.00 a.m. onwards
Coffee and registration and posters.
11.00 a.m.
Pleistocene desiccation of Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile,
Henry Lamb, Richard Bates, Mohammed Umer, Mike Marshall, Sarah Davies, Harry Toland and Paul Coombes.
11.30 a.m.
Plio-Pleistocene climatic and tectonic evolution of the White Nile headwaters,
Michael R. Talbot.
12.00
Sediment load of the Nile in Ethiopia and Sudan,
Eduardo Garzanti, Sergio Andò, Giovanni Vezzoli, Ada Ali Abdel Megid and Ahmed El Kammar.
12.30 a.m.
Late Quaternary environments in the Blue and White Nile valleys, central Sudan,
Martin Williams.
1.00-2.30 p.m.
Lunch.
2.30 p.m.
Holocene river dynamics in the Northern Dongola Reach: progress and prospect,
Jamie Woodward, Mark Macklin and Derek Welsby.
3.00 p.m.
Mapping the Nile's course in archaeological time,.
John Hillier, Judith Bunbury and Angus Graham.
3.30 p.m.
Climate, Extreme Nile Floods and Famines in Medieval Egypt (AD 930-1500),
Fekri Hassan.
4.00 p.m.
Tea break.
4.30 p.m.
Palaeoclimate record in the River Nile catchment (0-25 kyr) as recorded by 87Sr/86Sr in a marine core under the Nile plume,
Matthew Box, Michael Krom, Robert Cliff, Ahuva Almogi-Labin, Miryam Bar-Matthews, Martine Paterne, Bettina Schilman and Avner Ayalon.
5.00 p.m.
3D-seismic geomorphology of Plio-Pleistocene submarine channel systems: Nile delta slope,
Vicky Catterall, Jonathan Redfern, Dorthe Moeller Hansen, Rob Gawthorpe and Gianluca Badalini.
5.30 p.m.
Closing remarks.
CALL FOR POSTERS
Please send titles and abstracts by email to Jamie Woodward and Rob Gawthorpe.
If you require accommodation, contact details for reasonable local accommodation are available.