HUMAN SOCIETIES FACING RAPID CLIMATIC CHANGES IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN: DESINTENGLING CLIMATIC CONTROL AND HUMAN ADAPTED/UNADAPTED RESPONSES

Together with increasing evidence of global climate change on earth in the 1950s to 1970s, three to two decades still passed before the word “collapse” started invading the scientific literature. From then on, hundreds of papers studied the timing of societal collapses through the Mediterranean realm and in other parts of the world, with increasingly refined chronologies produced both in climate and archaeological sciences. As a result, interest in the relationships between climate, environment, and human societies during the Holocene, is rapidly increasing, with detailed reconstructions of relationships, in natures and processes, during time slices adapted to “crisis periods” (thought as short periods). Such episodes are now well known worldwide through space, time, and society. Examples presented concern the Eastern Mediterranean Region, from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia to northern Syria and Anatolia. These will allow discussing (1) capabilities to adapt to challenging environmental situations due to climate change, (2) forms that have taken these adaptations (e.g., population mobilities vs concentrations; technology advances; new resources), and (3) how economic specialization and political/social constraints have also intervened. Examples will cover a wide timing range through the Holocene in the Eastern Mediterranean:

1) From mobile to sedentary ways of life
2) Exploitation intensity of resources (economic specialization, specific lifestyles, technics)
3) Contrasting social (even/uneven distribution of resources)
4) Technical complexity of exploitation/production/distribution systems

These examples show that beyond crude climatic determinism, social and political changes often depend more (once climate or environmental context has started to change) on the societies themselves. Societies are thus responsible, whether positively or negatively, for the effects of climatic change on their future, i.e., on their resources, thus on their resilience vs collapse i.e., on their survival.

Catherine Kuzucuoğlu is an emeritus Directrice de Recherche at the Centre National for Scientific Research (CNRS), France. She is a geomorphologist working in Physical Geography, Geoarchaeology and Quaternary Climate/Environments/Volcanism. She is a member of the Laboratoire de Géographie Physique at Meudon (LGP, UMR 8591 of the CNRS, Paris 1 / U-Pec Universities). After a PhD Thesis (1980) performed in Turkey under the direction of professors R. Coque (Paris 1) and O. Erol (Istanbul University), and with the support of the Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration (MTA), she has developed several research programs within French-Turkish collaboration projects with MTA, The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) and various Turkish Universities. The topics she specialized in are (1) the recent geomorphologic evolution of river terraces, (2) the geomorphological impacts of volcanoes on landscapes and past human societies, and (3) the reconstructions of climate and environment since the LGM and their impacts on past civilizations (using lake and marsh records). Her researches concentrate on central Anatolia, also developing toward Mediterranean Anatolia and Eastern Anatolia. She has been the Deputy Director in charge of Archaeology at IFEA in Istanbul (French Institute for Anatolian Studies: 2000-2003) and the Director of the Laboratory of Physical Geography in Meudon, France (2009-2013).

Cengiz YILDIRIM received his Ph.D. (2008) from the Eurasia Institute of Earth Sciences at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. After his four years Post-Doc in Germany, Dr. Yildirim started to work as Assistant Professor in the same institute where he received his Ph.D. He has expertise in coastal, tectonic geomorphology, active tectonics, and paleoseismology. He is involved in several projects in Turkey, Germany, Balkan Countries, Cyprus, Algeria, Chile, and Antarctica. He has published about 40 papers in the high-ranking (Q1) refereed journals. Prof. Dr. Yildirim received the Outstanding Young Research Award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences and the Georg Foerster Experienced Researcher Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany.

From coastal Geomorphology to Earthquake Hazard in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

In his Plenary, Professor Yildirim will talk about geomorphological strain markers such as tidal notches, wave-cut platforms, strandlines, and emerged marine terraces, especially on the northern (Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus) and southern (Libya and Egypt) coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean. These regions represent up-riding (Eurasia) and down-riding (Africa) blocks of the plate boundary between Eurasia and Africa. The coastal geomorphology provides an opportunity for insight into earthquake hazards of both up-and-down riding regions. The mapping, dating, and modeling of these coastal landforms open new realms to understanding regional Earthquake Hazards. Prof. Yildirim will present examples of key areas from the Eastern Mediterranean.

Syed E. Hasan received his Ph.D. (1978) from Purdue University in Engineering and Environmental Geology and joined UMKC in 1979. His expertise includes waste management, medical geology (geohealth), and geotechnics. He had introduced four new courses in waste management and designed and administered the Graduate certificate in waste management program. He retired after 35 years of teaching and research in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he also served as Director of the Center for Applied Environmental Research from 1998 to 2014. He has published about 50 papers in refereed journals and has authored a college textbook titled Geology and Hazardous Waste Management (Prentice-Hall, 1996) that received the Claire P. Holdredge Award from the Association of Engineering Geologists (October, 1998) as an “outstanding contribution to Engineering Geology profession”. In June 2002, he received the Educator’s Environmental Excellence Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7 as the 1999-2000 Outstanding Environmental Educator in the State of Missouri. In April 2005, the Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Purdue University honored him with its Outstanding Alumnus Award. He is an elected fellow of the Geological Society of America (GSA) and a senior member of the Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists (AEG). He is a registered professional geologist in Missouri, and is listed in several major bibliographic publications, such as American Men and Women of Sciences; Who’s Who in Science and Engineering; Men of Achievement; and Top 100 Scientists, International Bibliographical Centre, Cambridge, U.K. He is active in several professional organizations: served as chair, Environmental & Engineering Geology Division (2008-09), and the Geology & Health Division (2010-11) of GSA; and is serving as an Associate Editor for GeoHealth since 2007, and a Member of the Editorial Advisory Board, Environmental and Engineering Geoscience–a joint publication of GSA and AEG. He has been a two-time recipient of the Senior Fulbright Scholar Award from the U.S. Department of State, and taught courses in waste management and environmental science at Qatar University (spring 2016), and the University of Jordan (spring 2020). Besides writing scientific articles he mentors scholars from developing countries and advises them in application of geoinformatics in geotechnical site selection; and offers editorial tips to prepare papers for publication.

In his Plenary Professor Hasan will talk about ‘High Level Nuclear Waste Management, Why America Lost the Lead?’. Despite being the first country in the world to run a successful fission experiment, making the first atomic bomb, and taking the lead in finding a safe way to dispose of the high-level nuclear waste (HLNW), the U.S. failed to be the first country in the world to open a deep geological repository for its HLNW. A small country, Finland, that built its first nuclear power plant about 34 years later, has been recognized for being the first country in the world to build a deep geological repository for HNLW disposal. Unlike the U.S.A; which spent over 20 years and $13.5 billion to investigate and approve the Yucca Mountain repository, Finland spent one-fourth less money, and is ready to start emplacement of the HLNW at its Olkilouto repository in 2023. The presentation will review U.S. efforts to build the first atomic bomb, along with its commitment for safe disposal of the HLNW. The politics that led to the delay and suspending the Yucca Mountain project will be discussed in detail.

Prof. Hesham El-Askary is the 2015 recipient of the Chapman University's elite Senior Wang-Fradkin Professorship award. He served as the regional coordinator on a $3 million Euro grant from the European Union’s (EU) Horizon 2020. He is an Earth System Scientist with a major interest in studying natural hazards using different remote sensing technologies and data sciences. He is involved in studying extreme events, air pollution problems over mega cities, climate change and its impacts on sea level rise and coral reefs for coastal areas. He also employs earth observations in studying impact of severe dust storms causing anomalous chlorophyll outbreaks in the marine environment, hurricanes intensification as well as transport of microbes’ causing Kawasaki disease outbreaks. Recently Prof. El-Askary has been focusing on using earth observations for water resources management, precision agriculture along the sustainable development goals. He has published over 150 refereed research publications, conferences papers and book chapters in these research areas. Prof. El-Askary’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, United States Department of Agriculture and the European Union. Prof. El-Askary has received the Saudi Arabia award hosted by the Arab Administrative Development Organization (ARADO) affiliated with the League of Arab states for the best published article in Environmental Management among 150 articles in 2006. He is also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), AGU, EGU, COSPAR, and Phi Beta Delta Honor Society.

In his Plenary Professor El-Askary will talk about new advances in Earth observations and data sciences addressing climate change impacts on the Mediterranean and MENA region.

Giancarlo Della Ventura was born 06-January-1956 in Rome, Italy. He graduated in Geology at the University La Sapienza (Rome) and obtained his Ph.D. in Mineral Synthesis in 1992 at the University of Orléans (France). He spent several research periods in France, UK and Canada.
He was hired Researcher in Mineralogy in 1983 (University La Sapienza) and is currently Full Professor of Mineralogy and Georesources at the University of Roma Tre. He was elected Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2007, for his “outstanding contribution to mineralogy, crystallography and related disciplines”.
His research interests include: (1) Mineralogy and petrology of volcanic rocks from central Italy, with particular attention to the crystal-chemistry of Th, U, and REE-bearing minerals. (2) Synthesis and crystal-chemistry of hydroxyl-bearing silicates, with particular focus on the development and application of spectroscopic methods (FTIR, Raman, XAFS) and of X-ray structural analysis as a tool for the characterization of fine-grained silicates. (3) Use and calibration of FTIR spectroscopy for the study of light elements (H, C) in microporous silicates and potential applications for carbon sequestration. (4) High-temperature crystal-chemistry and crystal-physics of mixed valence silicates and geophysical bearings. (4) Mineralogy applied to Cultural Heritage materials.
Author of more than 300 scientific papers mostly on refereed journals, and more than 180 presentations to national or international meetings. H-index 37 (GS), total citations > 4700.

In his Plenary prof. Della Ventura will talk about modern spectroscopic methods for imaging chemical variations in rocks and minerals. After a brief outlook to the techniques, advantages and involved problems, some interesting examples where the imaging techniques may help solving experimental issues will be described. The focus of the talk will be however on the use of high-resolution FTIR imaging to track the substitution mechanism of Ti in the structure of an extremely well zoned Ti-rich phlogopite in a minette from Jersey Island (UK).

Lysandros Pantelidis is Associate Professor in Geotechncial Engineering at Cyprus University of Technology (CUT); he jointed CUT in September 2011. He was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy degree by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) in 2009, while the following academic year he worked as Research Assistant Professor at Colorado School of Mines (USA). He serves as Associate Editor the Springer’s Arabian Journal of Geosciences (Track 8: Geological Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering). He is also reviewer for more than 20 reputed journals while he acted as session chair in various international conferences. He recently delivered a Keynote Presentation in MedGU-2021 international conference. His research interests cover a wide range of subjects, among others, analytical and numerical modelling in geotechnical engineering, analytical and numerical probabilistic analysis of geotechnical engineering problems based on the theory of random fields, reliability of geotechnical engineering structures with respect of field investigation, landslide risk assessment, investigation of rockfall measures adequacy and cost-effectiveness and soil erosion risk assessment.

In his Plenary with title ‘One theory - Many applications in geotechnical engineering’ will present a general earth pressure theory for any soil state between the “at rest” state and the active or passive state, applicable to cohesive-frictional soils and both horizontal and vertical pseudo-static conditions. The same theory also provides expressions for the analytical calculation of the required wall movement for the mobilization of the active or passive state and the mobilized shear strength values at any soil depth; the latter are, apparently, the seismic shear strength values of soil. This theory is applicable to earth retaining structures of any type (including embedded, mechanically stabilized, and propped retaining walls), lateral loaded piles with either free or fixed head and axially loaded piles. Various application examples will be presented, comparing the analytically derived results with the respective numerical and centrifuge test ones. Regarding the shear strength values for the seismic situation, the application examples will refer not only to earth pressure problems but also to … slope stability problems.

Philippe Claeys is a geologist, planetary scientist, and geochemist interested in documenting ancient and modern global changes and in particular the consequences of asteroid and comet impacts on the evolution of the bio-geosphere. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1993 at the University of California (UC) at Davis working on the discovery of the Chicxulub crater in Yucatan, the most likely cause of the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, with Walter Alvarez(UC Berkeley) as an advisor. He then carried out postdoctoral research using Neutron Activation to analyze Platinum group elements in sediments at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA, in the group of John Wasson. For several years, he was a researcher at UC Berkeley working again with Walter Alvarez on the KT boundary mass extinction. In the late nineties, Dieter Stoeffler convinced him to join the Museum of Natural History in Berlin as chief scientist in charge of establishing and managing the new analytical laboratories, composed of scanning & transmission electron microscopes, an electron microprobe, and several X-ray fluorescence instruments. In 1998, was a visiting professor at the “Ecole des Mines” in Paris. Since 2001, he is a professor at the “Vrije Universiteit Brussel” in Brussels, Belgium, where he established and directs the research unit “Analytical-Environmental and Geochemistry” (AMGC), which is composed of a multidisciplinary team of ~ 85 researchers, geologists, chemists, biologists, civil-& bio-engineers, as well as archaeologists. AMGC relies on a vast arsenal of analytical techniques such as Mass Spectrometry for trace elements and isotope determinations, Micro-X-Ray Fluorescence, Fourier Transform Infra-Red spectroscopy etc. He is also a visiting professor at Ghent University, the Catholic University Leuven (till 2021) and the University of Liège. In 2016-2017, he was invited as International Scholar by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia. Philippe also actively spreads science results to a large public audience via conferences, school visits, social media, vulgarization papers, active communication towards the written press, TV, radio, and internet (see Youtube), and participation in documentaries. When he is not traveling looking for clues to better understand the 4.5 billion years of evolution of planet Earth, he enjoys designing, writing, and obtaining new projects as well as guiding Ph.D. students and postdocs on a wide variety of topics ranging from Antarctic meteorites and impact crater formation to global environmental changes and cyclostratigraphy or bioarchaeology.

K-Pg Ir Positive Anomaly from Distal Ejecta to Chicxulub Peak-ring: Closing the Loop

A positive Ir anomaly (ppb) at the K-Pg boundary in Gubbio (Italy) supports the theory that, 66 million years ago, a ~10 km meteorite collided with Earth, inducing a major mass extinction. This platinum group element (PGE) enrichment is now identified at > 100 continental and marine K-Pg boundaries worldwide and unique within the late Maastrichtian and Lower Paleocene stratigraphy; it is also accompanied by low radiogenic Os value. PGE elemental distribution, together with Os & Cr isotope ratios constrain the nature of the impacting meteorite to a specific carbonaceous chondritic (CM or CR). These mm to cm-thick units represent the distal ejecta spread all over the world by the formation of the Chicxulub crater, in Yucatán. Closer to the impact site, Ir occurs at the very top of more expanded proximal K-Pg sequences. At the rim of the Gulf of Mexico, tsunami, and large debris flows induced a higher influx of sediments that diluted and vertically spread the PGE anomaly.

In 2016, the IODP-ICDP Exp. 364 recovered a ~830 m near-continuous core within the Chicxulub peak-ring containing a ~75 cm thick succession of post-impact sediments deposited on top of a ~130 m thick impact melt rock and suevite sequence, just below the appearance of the first Paleocene pelagic carbonates. This ‘transitional unit’, is composed of generally fining-upward, laminated dark brown to dark grayish brown carbonate-rich silty claystone to micrite. A clear positive Ir anomaly of more than 1 ppb is measured towards its very top, comparable in magnitude and pattern to other proximal K-Pg boundaries. Clearly, the ultrafine Ir-rich dust transported across the entire planet in the aftermath of the impact event also settled within the newly formed crater, placing strict and unprecedented time constraints (<20 years) on the deposition of the transitional unit, and its underlying proximal impactite sequence. The identification of the now world-famous Ir anomaly on top of the Chicxulub impactite sequence conclusively ties the impact event to the global Ir layer identified at K-Pg boundary sections worldwide and unequivocally connects the Chicxulub crater to sediments recording the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs.

Mark Leckie earned his Ph.D. in geology at the University of Colorado. He has been a Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst since 1985. He is a specialist in Cretaceous and Cenozoic planktic and benthic foraminifera. Mark has been very active with scientific ocean drilling since 1981. He has sailed as a shipboard scientist on 7 DSDP/ODP/IODP scientific expeditions, most recently IODP Exp 374 to the Ross Sea, Antarctica. He served as Co-Chief Scientist of ODP Leg 165. His deep-sea research has included a wide range of projects including Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs), Cretaceous and Cenozoic biostratigraphy and paleoceanography, Miocene sea level reconstruction, and Neogene glacial history of the Ross Sea. In addition to sea-going research, he has conducted field work on Upper Cretaceous rocks of the U.S. Western Interior for forty years, with much of his research focused on the Cenomanian-Turonian interval and OAE2. He has served as an associate editor for the journals Geology, Paleoceanography, and the Journal of Foraminiferal Research. Mark is a member of the international working groups for Cretaceous, Oligocene, and Neogene planktic foraminifera, and deep-sea benthic foraminifera. He co-led the initial JOI/IODP School of Rock (SoR) expedition in 2005, and has participated in multiple shore-based and shipboard SoR teaching workshops since. He has taught at the Urbino Summer School for Paleoclimatology. Mark is a co-author of Reconstructing Earth’s Climate History, Inquiry-Based Exercises for Lab and Class (St. John et al., 2021, 2nd ed.; Wiley-Blackwell). Mark is a UMass Amherst Distinguished Teacher. He teaches courses in Oceanography, History of the Earth, Geological Field Methods, Micropaleontology, and Paleoceanography.

In his Plenary (planned at the Special Sessions) Mark Leckie will review the planktic and benthic foraminiferal record across the U.S. Western Interior, with a focus on how these microfossils inform us about the paleoceanography of the Western Interior Seaway (WIS) during Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE2). He will present data from sections spanning the seaway; from Texas and New Mexico in the south to Montana in the north, Utah and Arizona in the west and Kansas in the east. The Turonian GSSP is near Pueblo Colorao in the central axis of the seaway. This well-studied section is a key reference section that anchors the unique WIS OAE2 record. Correlation across the seaway is afforded by widespread volcanic ashfall deposits (bentonite beds) that are well dated radiometrically and reliably corrlated by a well-established molluscan biostratigraphy. Cyclical deposition during late Cenomanian transgression created alternating limestone-marl couplets that have been orbitally tuned. In additon to this astrochronology, ≏13Corg profiles provide another reliable means of correlation between sections.

"Orographic effects in the atmospheric processes of the Mediterranean area"

Weather and climate characteristics of the regions surrounding the Mediterranean are strongly affected by marine effects associated with sea-atmosphere exchanges. However these areas are also characterised by a series of major mountain ranges, such as the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Apennines, the Dinaric Alps, the Pindhos, the Taurus, the Atlas, and many others. The combination of marine and orographic effects is conducive to a series of phenomena, either dynamically or thermally driven, which are reviewed in the talk. Climatic changes in the frequency of occurrence and in the intensity of the above phenomena, either observed or projected, are reviewed and discussed.

Dino Zardi is full professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Trento (Italy), where he works since 1995. He got a degree in Physics cum laude from the University of Bologna (1991) and a PhD in Hydrodynamics from the University of Genova (1995).
He is author or co-author of 86 articles published on international peer-reviewed scientific journals.
His research interests focus on boundary layer processes over mountainous terrain and their implications on air quality, agriculture, renewable energy resources, and climate change impacts.
He is also Director of the MSc programme in Environmental Meteorology, President of the Italian Association of Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (AISAM) and Co-Chief Editor of the Wiley and Royal Meteorological Society journal Meteorological Applications.

Leveraging Petroleum Engineering in Subsurface Energy Exploitation

Oil and gas will not only continue to be the dominant source of energy globally for at least another half century based on current outlook, but also it will provide petrochemical products contributing to our daily quality of life. Greater energy will be required inevitably in the world with population growth. To meet the consequent rise in demand, the oil and gas industry has strived to ensure greater supply. As shallower reserves are running out and more technical complexities in petroleum activities would emerge in deeper more challenging geological formations. This challenge has been handled only by developments made in exploration, drilling, completion, production and reservoir engineering. The oil and gas industry, and related professional organizations and technical journals have played a crucial role in leveraging the supply of energy through subsurface resources.

Considering the current exhaustible nature of oil and gas reserves, the world has, particularly recently, tended to pay great attention to renewable energy sources. This presentation strives to share some thoughts on how petroleum engineering can contribute to a renewable energy emerging world. It introduces several grand challenges that multidisciplinary teams of engineers and geoscientists must together research, design, and implement.

The Exploration and Production(E&P) industry faces numerous challenges as it addresses growing energy demand, the need for sustainable operations, declining production from older reservoirs, and new resources in harder to reach and harsher environments. Such technical and scientific topics as Higher Resolution Subsurface Imaging, Challenges in Reusing Produced Water, In-Situ Molecular Manipulation, Increasing Hydrocarbon Recovery Factors, Carbon Capture, Storage and Sequestration, Geothermal Energy, and Unconventional Subsurface Resources are among the most promising and challenging energy prospects that the subsurface technical and scientific community should consider. Attention to renewable energy sources, if not too excessive, could have some advantages which consist of providing alternative or complimentary sources of energy, reducing greenhouse effect (notwithstanding the diversity of opinions).

In summary, petroleum engineering will not only continue to technically support provision of energy or petrochemical products, but also it will contribute to the development and expansion of renewable and unconventional energy sources.

Prof. Ali Ghalambor, who is currently an international consultant, has 45 years of industrial and academic experience in the petroleum and minerals industries. He held engineering and supervisory positions at Marlin Drilling, Tenneco Oil, Amerada Hess Corporation, and Occidental Research Corporation. He previously served as the American Petroleum Institute (API) Endowed Professor, Head of the Petroleum Engineering Department, and Director of the Energy Institute at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He was also the Technical Director and a Program Manager at the Qatar National Research Fund of Qatar Foundation. Dr. Ghalambor has performed consulting and training services in 45 countries. He has authored or coauthored 17 books and manuals and more than 250 technical papers. His technical contributions on fundamental and applied research on formation damage control, well drilling, well completions, and production operations are internationally recognized.

He has received many of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and the API prestigious awards, including the Production and Operations Award, the Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty, the Distinguished Member Award, and the DeGolyer Distinguished Service Award. Furthermore, he is the recipient of the Robert Earll McConnell Award, which is a joint SPE and AIME Award that recognizes beneficial service to mankind by engineers through significant contributions that advance a nation’s standard of living or replenish its natural resource base. He served as a commissioner on the Engineering Accreditation commission of ABET and was Director of the Central and Southeastern North America Region on the SPE International Board of Directors and is the founding chairman of the SPE International Conference and Exhibition on Formation Damage Control. Dr. Ghalambor holds BS and MS degrees in petroleum engineering from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and a PhD from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the U.S. State of Texas and the District of Columbia and an elected member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and recipient of its Nobel Laureate Physicist Kapitsa Gold Medal.

Mark Leckie earned his Ph.D. in geology at the University of Colorado. He has been a Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst since 1985. He is a specialist in Cretaceous and Cenozoic planktic and benthic foraminifera. Mark has been very active with scientific ocean drilling since 1981. He has sailed as a shipboard scientist on 7 DSDP/ODP/IODP scientific expeditions, most recently IODP Exp 374 to the Ross Sea, Antarctica. He served as Co-Chief Scientist of ODP Leg 165. His deep-sea research has included a wide range of projects including Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs), Cretaceous and Cenozoic biostratigraphy and paleoceanography, Miocene sea level reconstruction, and Neogene glacial history of the Ross Sea. In addition to sea-going research, he has conducted field work on Upper Cretaceous rocks of the U.S. Western Interior for forty years, with much of his research focused on the Cenomanian-Turonian interval and OAE2. He has served as an associate editor for the journals Geology, Paleoceanography, and the Journal of Foraminiferal Research. Mark is a member of the international working groups for Cretaceous, Oligocene, and Neogene planktic foraminifera, and deep-sea benthic foraminifera. He co-led the initial JOI/IODP School of Rock (SoR) expedition in 2005, and has participated in multiple shore-based and shipboard SoR teaching workshops since. He has taught at the Urbino Summer School for Paleoclimatology. Mark is a co-author of Reconstructing Earth’s Climate History, Inquiry-Based Exercises for Lab and Class (St. John et al., 2021, 2nd ed.; Wiley-Blackwell). Mark is a UMass Amherst Distinguished Teacher. He teaches courses in Oceanography, History of the Earth, Geological Field Methods, Micropaleontology, and Paleoceanography.

In his Plenary (planned at the Special Sessions) Mark Leckie will review the planktic and benthic foraminiferal record across the U.S. Western Interior, with a focus on how these microfossils inform us about the paleoceanography of the Western Interior Seaway (WIS) during Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE2). He will present data from sections spanning the seaway; from Texas and New Mexico in the south to Montana in the north, Utah and Arizona in the west and Kansas in the east. The Turonian GSSP is near Pueblo Colorao in the central axis of the seaway. This well-studied section is a key reference section that anchors the unique WIS OAE2 record. Correlation across the seaway is afforded by widespread volcanic ashfall deposits (bentonite beds) that are well dated radiometrically and reliably corrlated by a well-established molluscan biostratigraphy. Cyclical deposition during late Cenomanian transgression created alternating limestone-marl couplets that have been orbitally tuned. In additon to this astrochronology, ≏13Corg profiles provide another reliable means of correlation between sections.

The Hercynide/Cimmeride/Alpide transitions in the Mediterranean realm: shedding the old prejudices

The frame of the Mediterranean is formed from the products of three major orogenic complexes: Hercynides, Cimmerides and Alpides. The Hercynides are the products of the collision of Laurasia with Gondwana-Land during the medial Carboniferous to the late Permian interval and extend from northern South America via the Huastecan/Marathon/Ouachita/Appalachian/Mauretanian (the ‘Greater Appalachides’ of Stille) to European Hercynian orogenic areas and end somewhere around the Moesian Platform. From the Moesian platform eastwards, the Palaeozoic deformations continue uninterrupted into the Cimmeride deformations, which characterise much of the frame of the Black Sea and continue into Iran, where they are separated from the Scythides by the main Palaeo-Tethyan suture between the Talesh Mountains and Mashhad. The Hercynides and the Cimmerides began evolving along the late Proterozoic to Jurassic Prtogonos continental margin magmatic arc along the northern edge of Gondwana-Land after the termination of the Saharide deformations and the completion of the formation of Gondwana-Land. The Protogonos collided with Laurasia during the late Palaeozoic only in the Americas, Africa and Europe, thus creating the Hercynide orogeny. Its activity continued farther east until the collision of the Cimmerian Continent with Laurasia during the early Jurassic. The Alpide evolution began only during the Cretaceous around the Mediterranean, and its products were superimposed onto the Hercynides in the west and the Cimmerides in the east. That is why it is a fundamental mistake to talk about ‘Hercynian’ (or ‘Variscan’) events east of Bulgaria, although late Palaeozoic orogeny continued into Mesozoic orogeny. Thus the Cimmerides have both Palaeozoic and Mesozoic deformations. Confusing the Hercynide deformations with those of the Cimmerides has given rise to much confusion in the past and even led to some bizarre earth-expansion theories. Calling any old late Palaeozoic orogeny ‘Hercynian’ or ‘Variscan’ is a left-over from Bertrand’s and Stille’s ‘worldwide, simultaneous orogeny interpretation’ conceived within the framework of the thermal contraction theory.

A. M. C. Şengör was born in İstanbul, Turkey, in 1955. He obtained, from the State University of New York at Albany, a BSc in 1978, an MSc in 1979 and a PhD in 1982, all in geology. Since then he has been a professor of geology at the İstanbul Technical University and a former chairman of the History of Geology Division of the Geological Society of America. He is the author, editor, co-author or co-editor of 20 books and more than 320 research papers on diverse aspects of geology. Şengör is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Leopoldina German National Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and arts. He also received numerous awards and medals for his work on geology, including the Bigsby Medal of the Geological Society of London, the Lutaud Award of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, the Gustav-Steinmann Medal of the Geologische Vereinigung, the Arthur Holmes Medal of the European Geosciences Union and the Eduard Suess Medal of the Austrian Geological Society.