Welcome to the website of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA). Learn more about INQUA.

The Quaternary Period in Earth History:

The Quaternary Period spans the last 2.6 million years of the Earth's history.

The Quaternary is an interval with dramatic and frequent changes in global climate. Warm interglacials alternated with cold ice ages. The Earth is right now entering a time of unusually warm climate. Significant and potentially rapid environmental changes could pose major challenges for human habitability.
The expertise of Quaternary scientists is to interpret the changing world of the glacial ages and their impact on our planet's surface environments. Quaternary palaeoclimatic investigations play a key role in the understanding of the possible future climate change on our planet.

Click on the image below to download INQUA's current issue of it's newsletter, Quaternary Perpectives updated to 19(1) June 2011

Click HERE or on the image above to download INQUA's statement on climate change

TWO INQUA MEDALS:

The Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal for outstanding young Quaternary scientists

INQUA has established the Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal in recognition of the many contributions of Nick Shackleton, a giant in the field of Quaternary science. The medal will be awarded once every four years to an outstanding young Quaternary scientist, chosen by his or her peers and evaluated by a blue-ribbon committee of distinguished scientists. The medal, INQUA's first, honours Nick's distinguished career in Quaternary geochronology and paleoclimatology, which spanned 40 years and was based on isotopic studies of deep-sea sediment. Shackleton was showered with honours by his peers and the wider scientific community, thus a medal in his name seems appropriate and necessary. Nick served INQUA for 12 years, first as a Vice-President, then, from 1998 to 2003, as President, and most recently as Past-President.

The Liu Tungsheng Distinguished Career Medal for distinguished service to the international community in Quaternary science

INQUA is pleased to announce the inauguration of the Liu Tungsheng Distinguished Career Medal. Professor Liu was a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a research professor at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Beijing, China. He has been recognized by awards from numerous international and national organizations for his paleoenvironmental research on Chinese loess sequences.

The Nomination Forms for the INQUA Medals are located by clicking this line of text.

Bidding process for the 2019 INQUA Congress
(The 2015 Congress will be in Nagoya, Japan)

INQUA CONGRESS 2019: Bidding and Selection Procedures Bids are invited for application by member national associations of INQUA to host the INQUA Congress in the year 2019. This note specifies (i) the time-table for submission and the decision process, (ii) guidelines on the nature of the submissions, and (iii) other relevant information.

Click on the text above to download a document explaining the process

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