Dear All, Vera Markgraf, Paul Baker and I are coordinating an AGU special session at the Fall Meeting in San Francisco, December 6 to 10, 1998, on "Large Lake Records and New Perspectives for Continental Paleoclimate Archives". The goal of the session is to share all aspects of recovery and analysis of sediments from large lakes throughout the world. We expect to have both ORAL and POSTER presentations on large lakes from North America, Central and South America (L. Nicaragua, L. Titicaca, Patagonian Lakes), from Africa (East African lakes, Madagascar) and Asia (L. Baikal, L. Qinghai). Here is the complete text of the session: Large lake records and new perspectives for continental paleoclimate archives One approach to determine the role of potential global climate forcing factors is to correlate high resolution proxy-archives. Ice cores and deep-sea records are traditional sources of paleoclimate information with long temporal and spatial resolution. Continental records from non-polar regions, however, yield information on environmental responses to climate changes that are most pertinent to human activities. By developing and integrating an interhemispheric network of long continental records, evidence will emerge on the character, rate, and spatial extent of global climate change and its forcing mechanisms. Modern limnogeology studies large lake basins in the same fashion as paleoceanography studies marine basins, applying similar methods and techniques. Today there is a growing interest within the paleoclimate community in linking marine and terrestrial records to obtain better regional and global paleoclimatic reconstructions. Recovery of long paleoclimate records from large lakes that cover in some cases several glacial-interglacial cycles, provide ideal archives to accomplish this link. Furthermore, these lake studies have recently become a major focus of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Past Global Change Program (IGBP-PAGES). Papers covering a wide range of aspects such as seismic surveys of lacustrine basins, neolimnology as well as paleolimnology of the recovered sediments are welcome from presently ongoing research projects in large lakes all over the world. Conveners Daniel Ariztegui, Geological Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Sonneggstr. 5, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland, Phone: +41 1 632 3673, Fax: +41 1 632 1030, E-mail: [log in to unmask] Vera Markgraf, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, BOULDER CO 80309-0450, Phone: 303 492 5117, Fax: 303 492 6388, E-mail: [log in to unmask] Paul Baker, Duke University, Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, 103 Old Chemistry Bld., Durham NC 27708-0227, Phone: 919 684 6450, Fax: 919 684 5833, E-mail: [log in to unmask] Information on how to submit an abstract, deadline dates, and policies can be found at the AGU Web Site (http://www.agu.org) and EOS. ______________________________________________________ Dr. Daniel Ariztegui Laboratory of Limnogeology Geological Institute Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Sonneggstr. 5, ETH-Zentrum 8092 Zuerich, Switzerland Phone: +41 1 632 3673 Fax: +41 1 632 1030 e-mail: [log in to unmask] Web Site: http://www.erdw.ethz.ch/~daniel _______________________________________________________