Plenary Speakers

Biography
Andrew Goudie, President of the IAG, obtained his Cambridge BA in 1967, his Cambridge Ph.D. in 1972 and his Oxford DSc in 2002.  He was at the School of Geography, Oxford University, from 1970 to 2003, and was appointed Professor of Geography and Head of Department in 1984. From January 1995 to October 1997 he was a Pro-Vice-Chancellor.  In 2003 he became Master of St Cross College. In 1991 he was awarded the RGS Founders' Medal and the RSGS Mungo Park Medal.  In 2007 he was awarded the Geological Society of America’s Farouk El-Baz Award for Desert Research. He has been Honorary Secretary and Vice-President of the RGS, Executive Secretary and Chairman of the BGRG, and President of the Geographical Association.      

His research interests include deserts, climatic change, environmental archaeology and the human impact. He has worked extensively in southern Africa, India  and the Middle East.  He was leader of the Kimberley Research Project (1988).

In addition to being author of nearly 200 scientific papers  he is the author or co-author of many books, including The Human Impact, Geomorphology of Deserts , Duricrusts of tropical and subtropical landscapes, Geomorphological Techniques, Chemical Sediments and Geomorphology, The Geomorphology of England and Wales, The Prehistory and Palaeogeography of the Great Indian Desert, Discovering Landscape in England and Wales, The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Physical Geography, The Physical Geography of Africa, Salt Weathering Hazards, Aeolian Environments, Sediments and Landforms, Great Warm Deserts of the World, Encyclopedia of Geomorphology, Desert Dust in the Global System, Global Environments through the Quaternary, The Oxford Companion to Global Change and Wheels across the Desert .

Abstract
Just Deserts
Since 1967 there have been a number of major developments in desert geomorphology and this personal view will discuss: the significance, sources and frequencies of dust storms; the role of salt in preparing desert surfaces and in creating hazards for engineering structures; the nature, distribution and origin of closed depressions (pans); the nature of wind fluted surfaces (yardangs); the diversity of dune types (especially barchans); the nature and timing of climatic changes; and the role of optical dating for establishing rates of dune accumulation.

Biography
Jonathan Nott is Professor in Geoscience at James Cook University, Cairns. He obtained his PhD from the University of Wollongong in 1991. Since then Professor Nott has held academic appointments at the Northern Territory University Darwin and The Australian National University Canberra before moving to James Cook University Cairns in 1995. Professor Nott’s main research interests involve the reconstruction of long-term records (century to millennial scales) of natural hazards from geomorphological and geochemical evidence. Part of this research also involves post-event surveys of extreme hazards such as major tsunamis, storm (tropical cyclone) tides and river floods in order to refine the understanding of the long-term evidence. His research on long-term trends in various natural hazards has implications for natural hazard mitigation, risk assessments and government policy and urban and regional planning.

Abstract
Politicians and Geomorphological Blunders
Policies and legislation often do little to protect citizens, properties and infrastructure against geomorphological events such as beach and dune erosion and consequential marine inundation, river bank erosion and avulsion and landslide to name just a few. At times such policies and legislation express good will in the sense of wanting to provide protection and mitigation but often the wording is ambiguous resulting in very little security for people and their environment. We as geomorphologists can and often do recognise the potential for such events occurring and can suggest ways in which they could be diverted. However, it can be difficult to convince authorities of the potential consequences of their decisions. The general public, unwittingly, often choose to live in geomorphologically hazardous areas because consent authorities either directly or indirectly suggest such areas are safe. These authorities often know the potential dangers but typically regard economic gain to outweigh risk. This talk will discuss examples of such events and the policies that allow them to occur. It is suggested that we as geomorphologists need to have a greater say in the formulation of policies and legislation along with being more vociferous publicly in order to help mitigate against such impacts.

Biography

Monique FORT (PhD in Quaternary Geology, State Doctorate in Geography) is Professor of Geomorphology and Environmental Sciences, Natural Hazards and Risks, at the Department of Geography of Paris Diderot - Paris 7 University. Former assignments include University of Paris-North and Dartmouth College (USA). She is in charge of the Programme of Master in Physical Geography, grouping together four Parisian Universities. Vice-President of the International Association of Geomorphologists, Member of the IGU Commission « Geo-diversity in Mountain systems », Member of the Scientific Committee of the French Alpine Club, she worked extensively in various active mountains of the world (Alps, Central Asia and Himalaya). Her main research interests evolved from the relations of landforms with respect to geological structures, then to glacial and climatic fluctuations and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions. Ongoing field work includes studies on current instabilities and natural hazards (large scale landslides, catastrophic floods) in the Himalayas and Pamir mountains, floods impacts and their prevention in various French areas. Her recent publications have appeared in Geomorphology, Zeitschrift für Geomorphology, Quaternary International, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift.

Abstract
The Himalayas: a unique natural laboratory for geomorphologists
The greatest relief on Earth, represented by the Himalayas, is a product of the ongoing collision between India and Asia. Thrust ridges alternate with intramontane basins infilled with deposits that can be deciphered to reveal the way landforms have evolved in the recent past, under the influence of tectonics and climate. High uplift rates, seismic activity and extreme monsoon precipitation promote river incision and landsliding, a major source of sediment and the potential cause of valley blockage and catastrophic flooding. In the last decades, population growth and infrastructure development have increased the impacts of natural hazards, whereas recent trends in climate threaten glaciation in the Greater Himalaya, and consequently water resources throughout the whole Range and its piedmont.

Biography

Emeritus Professor John Chappell grew up in New Zealand and studied at Auckland University, where he graduated in geology. After a summer season in Antarctica, in 1965 he became a graduate student at the Australian National University (ANU), under the guidance of Keith Crook and Joe Jennings. The subject of his PhD research – raised coral terraces at Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea that were virtually unknown at the time – proved to be a world-class archive of Quaternary sea level changes and tectonic processes, to which he returned many times over the next 40 years. In 1967 he was appointed lecturer in physical geography at the ANU, which enabled him inhabit arguably the most stimulating research environment in Australia. In 1979 moved to the Research School of Pacific Studies, and in 1997 to ANU’s Research School of Earth Sciences. In addition to Quaternary sea level studies from Huon Peninsula, he has contributed to studies of coral reefs, coastal dynamics, tropical estuaries and lowlands, and, more recently, landscape history and evolution in Australia and China, using cosmogenic nuclides. He was elected as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1992. He formally retired in 2006 and moved to Dunedin, New Zealand in 2008.

Abstract
Geomorphology on a fast plate – the New Zealand margin versus the Australian heartland
The geomorphologies of Australia and New Zealand are considered at three time-scales, megayears, kiloyears and human years. Owing to its extraordinary hydrologic variability at the human scale, Australia is subject to geomorphologic hazards associated with floods and droughts that can be more extreme than occur in New Zealand, despite that geomorphologic rates – especially rates of mass movement - are very much higher in the latter.

At the kiloyear scales of the Quaternary ice-ages, responses to climatic changes occurred on both sides of the Tasman Sea. Despite their very different tectonic regimes, landscapes were modified by glacial and periglacial processes, and mantled by aeolian dust, in both New Zealand and southeastern Australia; vegetation and hydrologic shifts were accompanied by changes of fluvial discharge and load.

It is at the megayear timescale that the two landmasses are most remarkably different. For example, prolonged rapid uplift and roughly equivalent denudation led to the shedding of about 20 km of rock from the Southern Alps of New Zealand in the last few million years; and, owing to thrusting and strike-slip, an even greater quantity has probably passed laterally through these mountains. Yet, the morphology of high alpine topography, with accordant summits and deep valleys arguably has changed little since these ranges were established. In contrast, over a similar period the Australian continent has shed only a few tens of metres; indeed, substantially less across much of central Australia. However, with deepening aridity since mid-Pliocene times, great tracts of land have changed profoundly, from soil-mantled landscapes to stony deserts, while alluvial systems initially waxed only to wane, fluctuate or die, and to be overtaken by continental dune-fields.

Assessments of the resilience of Australian and New Zealand landscapes to present environmental pressures and future climatic change can profitably draw on geomorphologic evidence at these three time-scales.