2015 CIMP Meeting, Bergen, Norway, September 16-19

2015 CIMP Meeting, Bergen, Norway
Venue: The University of Bergen, Norway
Date: Wed, 16 September 2015–Sat, 19 September 2015

Important: Click here to download the CIMP Meeting 2015 Interest to Participate Form

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The next CIMP meeting will be held in Bergen, Norway in September, 2015.

This meeting is intended to bring together specialists in Palaeozoic palynology in order to present their work and to discuss various topics that are relevant to a wide range of scientific disciplines, but that cannot always be accommodated in larger, non-specialized, general conferences.

Some of the questions that will be addressed are: What is the current taxonomic status of Paleozoic organic-walled microfossils (acritarchs, chitinozoans, spores, scolecodonts and others)? What are the recent advances in our understanding of the biological affinities of acritarchs and chitinozoans? What are the best approaches to understanding global changes of palynological assemblages? How can we raise awareness of the societal impact of our science? What are the recent advances in industrial applications of Palaeozoic palynology? We think that this is an opportune time for the Paleozoic palynology community to reaffirm its role in the many and varied fields of modern Earth Science.

In order for people to take part in the optional one-day excursion in the Oslo area on Wednesday, September 16th, we recommend flying into Oslo Tuesday night. The excursion will be led by Professor Hans Arne Nakrem from the Natural History Museum in Oslo and he will guide us in the Lower Paleozoic sedimentary rocks of the Oslo area. The excursion will end at the Gardermoen/Oslo airport in time to catch a flight to Bergen, enabling us to take part in the ice-breaker in Bergen the same evening.

Thursday and Friday September 17 and 18th are devoted to talks and posters.

There will also be a gala dinner (additional charge) on Friday, September 18th.

The University of Bergen is a city campus and distances are short so it is easy to get around in the city. The University campus will provide a nice venue for the event, as will Bergen’s seven mountains surrounding the city center. Bergen provides many tourist sites, including the fish market and Bryggen wharf, the latter on the UNESCOs heritage list. The conference dinner (which will be optional) will take place on Fløien, one of the seven mountains. A funicular will take us there.

We will offer on Saturday, September 19th, an optional, full day excursion to Finse, the highest point on the railway between Bergen and Oslo. Professor Atle Nesje will be our guide and take us to the glacier to look at glacially derived deposits, glacial processes, and the glacier itself. We will thus be able to see the effects of recent glaciation and use that to compare to the many Paleozoic periods in the geological record when ice-sheets covered parts of the globe. Thus, this optional trip will combine scientific relevance with a beautiful tourist activity. In the distance we will also see the Hallingskarvet thrust sheet occurring as an elongate cliff on top of Lower Paleozoic rocks. We will return to Bergen late the same evening, enabling people to plan for their return flight any time during Sunday.

All information regarding costs and logistics will be available by March 15th, 2015and payment will be online. We will do our best to keep registration fees as low as possible, especially for students and researchers who are in need of financial support to participate.

Registration date and abstract deadline will be May 10th, 2015.

We hope to see all of you in Bergen next September!

The Organizing Committee: Gunn Mangerud, Gilda Lopes (co-organizers), Marco Vecoli (past CIMP president), Reed Wicander (CIMP president).