UPDATE: DUE TO THE CONTINUING NATURE OF THE PANDEMIC, WE ARE CONVERTING THIS WORKSHOP FROM HYBRID TO ONLINE ONLY. DETAILS TO FOLLOW. NEW REGISTRATION DEADLINE WILL BE NOVEMBER 1. 

The PAGES working group LandCover6k will hold its 4th General Workshop, titled “New Land-Cover and Land-Use Datasets for evaluation and improvement of Anthropogenic Land-Cover Change Scenarios”, from 2-4 December 2021. The current goal is to offer a hybrid workshop online and in-person in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Following several years of preparation and capacity-building, LandCover6k is now moving into a next phase of data collection, analysis and application. Following extensive and iterative consultation at a number of international meetings, the Land Use group has finalised the classification system and the geodatabase platform within which data will be collated, and we are now in the process of training members of our regional sub-groups in their use.

During Phase 1 of LandCover6k (2015-2018), pollen-based reconstructions of past land cover were achieved for most of the northern hemisphere North of 40 degrees. Since 2018 progress was made for the Mediterranean area, parts of Africa, southern China and India, and new reconstructions will be available for these regions by the time of the workshop. Until now, the two strands of data gathering (land use and land cover) have operated independently – this next phase of work generates products that synthesise these data to explicit assess past anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC), the stated goal of LandCover6k.

To this end, a PAGES-sponsored workshop held in Sitges, Spain, in September 2018, brought together members of the climate modeling community with paleoecologists and archaeologists working on land use and land cover (LULC) to design experiments that test how our products affect simulations of the climate-carbon cycle, in order to identify which data are most pertinent and refine our reconstructions accordingly. A Special Issue of the PAGES Magazine discusses these in detail.

This workshop will provide a forum for the wider LandCover6k network – archaeologists, paleoecologists, climate modelers – to evaluate and refine our data collection protocols, plan publications and other modes of dissemination and communication, and develop strategies for future products and experiments. These discussions will be essential for the continued success of LandCover6k and for that of the next generation of paleoclimate reconstructions.

Venue

Online Only

AND

University of Pennsylvania
University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Logistics

Numbers for in-person attendees will be limited based on the pandemic protocols, however there may be space for up 35 attendees. We will also hold a public keynote lecture one evening.