American Geophysical Union Congress

The last two months of 2012 were exceptionally busy!

On the research front

Grants took centre stage for much of my time. First writing for the NERC December 1st deadline was pressured as usual, and second response to reviewers comments on the July submission was interesting.
Paper writing proceeded with reviewer and co-author comments on three manuscripts hopefully desitined for Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology (lead by Hayley), Palaeo3 (lead by Macrarena) and The Holocene (with Joe Williams) respectively.
Four scientifc meetings were attended by group members: 1) British Ecological Society winter meeting at University of Birmingham (myself), , 2) American Geophysical Union congress in Sanfrancisco (Lottie), 3) Dutch and Belgian palynology meeting at the University of Amsterdam (myself), and 4) the Palaeo50 workshop at Oxford University (Encarni).

On the teaching and administration front

Two tasks dominated the non-research activity: 1) teaching the Geological Record of Environmental Change (S369) exams assessment and assigment, and 2) as Post Graduate Tutor keeping up with NERC developments for the new Doctoral Training Partnerships.

PCRG members on filed work in Cayabe-Coca National Park (2012). Left to right: Hayley, Encarni, William and Frazer.

PCRG members on field work in Cayabe-Coca National Park (2012). Left to right: Hayley, Encarni, William and Frazer.
Encarni and Frazer have returned to Ecuador Jan-Feb 2013 to collect further sedimentary cores. More on the blog soon…

Finally all that remains is to say “Happy New Year” from the PCRG and on with 2013… 🙂

I am writing this August post from the Hotel Rincon Escandinavo (Quito, Ecuador) most of this month has been pretty hectic as we have been preparing for this field work trip and trying to get as many things out the way before hand.

We seem to have been quite involved in conference activity: Lottie presented “500,000 years of vegetation change from West tropical Africa” at the International Paleolimnology Association Symposium in Glasgow, Hayley had an abstract on “Pollen counting for diverse tropical ecosystems” accepted for the Linnean Society Palynology Group meeting (1 November) and group members also submitted abstracts for consideration to be presented at the American Geophysical Union Congress and British Ecological Society meeting (both in December); fingers crossed these will be accepted as well.

Regarding the field work. Preparation seems to have gone well and we have arrived in Quito with all out bags, despite a short (1 hour) connection in Madrid. Tomorrow we will meet up with Dr Patricia Mothes (Instituto Geofisico) and set out our detailed plans. As I have now been up for more than 24 hours I should probably get some sleep… Plan is to blog more about the trip as it happens.

Ecology of the past

PCRG November & December

PCRG August