Report from the Secretary

Dear Commission members,

As a responce to our request for confirmation, forwarded to all potential Commission members (more than 300 copies) we now have 181 active members (those who responded) with their amount continuosly growing.responc We decided to publish a list of active Commission members (p. 8) to help to establish links between individual members, especially within Working Groups. Unfortunately not many members indicated Working Group, in which they are particularly interested. That may also mean, that the majority of members are interested in a broad spertrum of items in a Commission activity. 105 members responded by e-mail. That means, that we managed to create an electronic audience.

For our electronic audience we opened mailing list "Paleosol" through which we distribute our Newsletter.The subscription procedure: send e-mail message containing a single line "subscribe paleosol" to the address: majordomo@fadr.msu.ru.

You can also read the Newsletter on our WWW server:

http://fadr.msu.ru/inqua

or retrieve it via FTP:

ftp://fadr.msu.ru/pub/INQUA/newsletter/nl-13.zip.

We would like to remind you Web-address of INQUA home-page:

http://inqua.nlh.no/

On page 4 you will find Circulars of Paleopedology Commission Inter-Congress Meetings. You are welcome to send your suggestions and comments on Conference programs and start to send your discussion points through our mailing list.

As we pointed out in a previous issue of Newsletter (NL12), we are trying to strengthen links between pedologists and Quaternary geologists to benefit paleopedological research and widen scientific and practical application of paleopedology. That is why we decided to keep you informed about cooperative actions of pedologists and Quaternary geologists.

Moscow University held on an International Working Meeting on Soil Micromorphology (Moscow, 3-16 July, 1996). This meeting united many paleopedologists and soil evolution researchers. One of the Conference sections was entitled "Micromorphology in paleopedology and archaeology". About 40 presentations were closely related to Paleopedology, so we desided to include an abstracts into this Newsletter (p. 12).

Another example of a fruifull cooperation of pedologists and geologists is VI National Conference on Soils and Geology of China, organised by Sub-Commission of Soil and Geology of Soil Science Society of China (SSSC), that is also Working Group 8a on Geopedology of Soils in China in Paleopedology commission (Chairman - Lu Jinggang). A brief report about this Conference see on p. 7

Please, indicate your full contact addresses in your responces, including fax and e-mail (if available).