Dear TERPRO members,

this message is sent to all the contacts included in the INQUA TERPRO Commission mailing list, in order to draw your attention to the funding opportunities provided by INQUA for collaborative activities. The deadline for applications is the 7th January2012, using the approved form (available at http://www.inqua.org/forms.html ), which should be submitted by email to: alessandro.michetti@uninsubria.it . Please alert everyone in your Focus Area, as well as others interested in related terrestrial research, to consider applying. Please note that all activities should be associated with a research project; funding is not available for one-off meetings or fieldwork.

There is a required procedure, similar to previous years, which involves selected members of each Commission reviewing an application before recommending it to INQUA. In some cases, a proposal may be returned to applicants for revisions before TERPRO endorses it. On January 31st, 2012, funding proposals endorsed by TERPRO will be submitted to the INQUA Secretary; during the next Executive Committee Meeting, to be held on February 27 – March 2, 2012, in Bruxelles, the submitted projects will be then evaluated.

As part of the application process, you must verify that the project is relevant to TERPRO and, if relevant, establish whether your project fits within one of the International Focus Groups (IFG) and make contact with the relevant personnel. A preliminary list of IFG's can be found in the new TERPRO web page at:

http://www.terpro.org.ar/index.htm

please note that the web page is still work in progress, you are kindly invited to check and send your comments/ideas/suggestions for a better TERPRO page to the new Secretary and Webmaster, Daniela Kröhling (dkrohli@gmail.com); please note however that next revision of the TERPRO page will take place from February 1st, 2012 (...after the summer break in Argentina....)

The INQUA Congress in Bern was very successful, more than 3000 delegates attended and lot of them were young brilliant scientists; TERPRO played a major role in this success thanks to the great job done by the 2007-2011 Officers, Jim Teller (President) and Nick Lancaster (Secretary and Webmaster). At the TERPRO Business Meeting, attended by 34 delegates, we discussed future research activities that address key Quaternary issues for the next intercongress period; thanks to Jim Teller's leadership during the past 8 years, TERPRO is now a strong scientific community, with specific Quaternary interests which cover a broad spectrum of environmental disciplines of great societal interest. As new TERPRO President, I hope to be able to follow the road traced by Jim, and to lead the Commission towards increasing scientific excellence. A road that will bring us to the 2015 INQUA Congress in Nagoya.

It is now time to work on the new structure for 2012 – 2015; the list of TERPRO International Focus Group is not fully defined yet, and will be finalized in January 2012. Of course we can modify the new "Focus Areas" in the coming months, and of course TERPRO will remain open to supporting other leading- edge ideas, especially those in Developing Countries. However, several of the existing/new Focus Groups are already active and are preparing plans (and proposals) for 2012, as you can see on the new TERPRO web page.

The INQUA Executive and INQUA International Council requested that each Focus Group prepare a draft of their objectives and post it on the TERPRO web site for comment by TERPRO members. I hope all Focus Groups will encourage ideas not only from their own members but also from the broader community of Quaternarists, especially from other TERPRO Focus Groups and other Commissions. Communication is very important.

As we did during the previous intercongress periods, we need to select the leadership of TERPRO. The structure of other INQUA Commissions varies, but most have a small Advisory Council composed by 7 to 15 members, that includes 1-3 Vice Presidents. Leaders of the Focus Groups typically serve as members of the TERPRO Advisory Council. Following the TERPRO "tradition", I ask all the members to send me nominations for the other new Advisory Council members, and for the new Vice-Presidents. On January 7th, 2012, based on these nominations, the final list of TERPRO Officers will be defined. The first goal of the Advisory Council will be to revise the Proposals for INQUA funding.

I look forward to our continued interaction. In the next weeks or so I hope you will share your thoughts with me about the future of TERPRO. In the mean time, I take this opportunity to wish you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Alessandro Maria Michetti

President, TERPRO

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Alessandro Maria Michetti

Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia

Università dell'Insubria

Via Valleggio, 11, 22100 Como

tel: +39.031 2386631

fax: +39.031 2386630

personal: +39 3298977014

http://www.uninsubria.eu/research/chemenviro/cv_Michetti.htm