Soergel in Silesia

Wolfgang Soergel, noted loess scholar, was a professor in Wroclaw from 1926 to 1931. He was one of the noted pioneers of loess stratigraphy- his book 'Losse, Eiszeiten und Palaolithische Kulturen (Eine Gliederung und Alterbestimmung der Losse) was published in Jena in 1919- this book made a huge contribution to the development of loess stratigraphy, and is largely why Soergel is remembered and honoured. This small tribute is published on the occasion of the Loess Conference in Wroclaw 8-9 September 2014. A tribute to WS and to the University of Wroclaw.

Thermogravimetry: Homage to Honda

In 1915- the first thermobalance; we salute Kotara Hondo- the inventor. We should be better acquainted with thermobalances- thermogravimetric analysis is neglected in loess world..

SILC: The South Island Loess Cores project 1971

There is uncertainty here. The South Island Loess Project was a long time ago and only fragmentary records have survived. Here we try to pull together some useful material and indicate where the findings and the aims of the SILC might still be relevant and useful. In 1973 the INQUA Congress was in New Zealand and as part of the preparations for this Congress the New Zealand Soil Bureau set out to examine the loess deposits in the South Island. Now the NZ loess is interesting and fairly widespread but it definitely lacks signals to facilitate stratigraphic examinations, and there are not many good exposures. A coring progamme was undertaken to provide a set of samples on which careful stratigraphic examinations could be carried out- possibly using slightly unconventional methods. We think that Mike Leamy initiated this coring programme and that Ken Birrell had a major involvement; the start date is believed to be 1971. Eight sites were chosen:

1.  Barry's Bay  S94  234277  dated 051071

1A Barrhill  S82  305406

2.  Claremont  S111  683496

3.  Darling's Property  S111  766479

4.  Awamoko  S127  578132

5.  Romahapa  S179  518132

6.  Pukerau  S170  976415

7.  Stewart's Claim  S161 921619

Sites 2 and 3 were fairly close to Timaru, and sites 5,6 and 7 not too far from Dunedin/Gore. Site 4 was south of the Waitaki River, quite near to Oamaru. Sites 1 and 1A were the most northerly, in the vicinity of Christchurch.

Cyril W.Childs  1975  Distributions of elements in two New Zealand Quaternary Loess columns. in Quaternary Studies: Selected Papers from 9th INQUA Congress Christchurch New Zealand 2-10 December 1973. ed. R.P.Suggate and M.M.Cresswell, pp. 95 - 99.

Element distributions for K, Ca and Ti  in the Claremont no.1 column. Stratigraphic layer numbers and morphological horizon designations are given at the top of the figure. The error bars represent estimates of the uncertainty in the values for each element. Note that the Claremont column is in the loess near Timaru.