South American GEC activities 1998-2010

IRIONDO, MARTIN; KRÖHLING, DANIELA

QUATERNARY PERSPECTIVES

Newsletter of the International Union for Quaternary Research

Lugar: Cape town; Año: 2010 vol. 18 p. 20 - 21

0965-1357

GEC South America (Grupo de Estudio del Cuaternario - Sudamérica) was officially recognized as Regional Member of INQUA at the XV International Congress held in Reno in 1999. In fact, this group was already active since several years before (see Quaternary Perspectives No. 129, year 2005). It is formed by colleagues actives in Quaternary in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela and also occasionally working in other South American countries. In order to interest the broad diversity of disciplines developed by quaternarists, a very basic and rationally sound objective was marked from the beginning: Correlation among countries and natural regions of the continent. Hence, a project entitled “Correlation Table of South America” was proposed and accepted in the SACCOM agenda. Yearly workshops were held in Santa Fe (Argentina), Maringá (Brazil), Salto (Uruguay), Anillaco (Argentina) and La Paz (Bolivia). A field workshop held in 1998 integrated several natural regions of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay. Local and foreign specialists from Chile, Germany, Mexico, Russia and USA participated in different events. INQUA founded partially the meetings. After several years of meetings and discussions, the Project began producing ordered results: Four numbers of QUATERNARY INTERNATIONAL and a series of books on regional Quaternary analyzing the regional stratigraphic columns of different regions and proposing correlations among them. The books are written in Spanish and published in Argentina. The first volume was “Environmental Changes in the Uruguay River Basin from 2 Million Years BP to Present” (Iriondo & Kröhling, 2008, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, 358 pag.). It covers an area of 365,000 Km2 in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. The second volume is entitled “The Quaternary of Bolivia and Neighboring Regions” (Argollo & Iriondo, 2008, Museo Provincial de Ciencias Naturales Florentino Ameghino, 378 pag.). “Neighboring regions” are natural regions which cross national borders, providing excellent conditions for correlation. Sectors of Perú, Argentina and Chile are described in the book, that covers from the Equator (Peruvian Amazonia) to 33 degrees South (southern Chaco in Argentina). The third volume (“Quaternary Geology of Argentina”; Iriondo, 2010, Museo provincial de Ciencias Naturales Florentino Ameghino, 530 p.) analyses the eleven natural regions and 267 sedimentary formations described in the country by dozens of authors. A complementary book, (not included in the GEC Series), is “The Middle Paraná River, A Subtropical Wetland” (Iriondo et al., 382 p.), published in English by Springer; it contains the last advances in Fluvial Geomorphology, Limnology, Geochemistry and sediment transport of the Paraná river, a collector of a 2,600,000 Km2 basin. The whole Project was originally projected to finish in 2011. As usual, projections were a little bit optimistic. The two resting volumes for covering the rest of the continent will take a couple of years more; among other ideas, it is foreseen to integrate the long-time disregarded Guayana countries (Suriname, Guyana and Cayena). Meanwhile, very large, continental-size scenarios are faintly appearing.