Welcome to the website of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA). Learn more about INQUA.

The Quaternary Period in Earth History

The Quaternary Period spans the last 2.6 million years of the Earth's history.

The Quaternary is an interval with dramatic and frequent changes in global climate. Warm interglacials alternated with cold ice ages. The Earth is right now entering a time of unusually warm climate. Significant and potentially rapid environmental changes could pose major challenges for human habitability.
The expertise of Quaternary scientists is to interpret the changing world of the glacial ages and their impact on our planet's surface environments. Quaternary palaeoclimatic investigations play a key role in the understanding of the possible future climate change on our planet.

Click on the image below to download INQUA's current issue of it's newsletter, Quaternary Perpectives updated to Volume 17(2) December, 2009

Click HERE or on the image above to download INQUA's statement on climate change

The Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal for outstanding young Quaternary scientists

INQUA has established the Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal in recognition of the many contributions of Nick Shackleton, a giant in the field of Quaternary science. The medal will be awarded once every four years to an outstanding young Quaternary scientist, chosen by his or her peers and evaluated by a blue-ribbon committee of distinguished scientists. The medal, INQUA's first, honours Nick's distinguished career in Quaternary geochronology and paleoclimatology, which spanned 40 years and was based on isotopic studies of deep-sea sediment. Shackleton was showered with honours by his peers and the wider scientific community, thus a medal in his name seems appropriate and necessary. Nick served INQUA for 12 years, first as a Vice-President, then, from 1998 to 2003, as President, and most recently as Past-President.

INQUA PROJECTS:

The new project proposal, acceptance and report forms are now available at:

http://www.inqua.tcd.ie/forms.html

• Guidelines for the submission of project proposals and deadlines for INQUA Projects
• INQUA statutes and bye-laws

the deadline for new proposals etc. is 31st January 2010

The next (XXVIII) INQUA Congress will be held in Bern, Switzerland 20th July - 27th July, 2011. Further details are available here (CLICK HERE OR ON IMAGE ABOVE).

XXVII INQUA Congress The XXVII INQUA Congress was held in Cairns, Australia 28th July - 3rd August, 2007. A full report of the Congress is available here: congress report.doc or congress report.pdf

Back to Top