Jim Bowler, Liu Tungsheng and the INQUA Loess Commission

 Professor James Maurice Bowler OA FRSV  b.1930    Geomorphologist/ Archaeologist/ Campaigner

Lakes & Loess.  Jim Bowler is best known for his discoveries of Mungo Lady(1968) and Mungo Man(1974) in the region of Lake Mungo (which he named), in the Willandra Lakes region of S.E.Australia. This was his PhD study area and he was essentially working on investigating the dried-up lakes as rain gauges for investigating the recent past. This is his region and he has had a long and productive academic life.  His great fame in this particular field of study has rather masked the contributions he made to loess scholarship, and this minor but important aspect needs to be investigated and recorded. He went to China in 1975 as part of of an Australian Academy of Sciences delegation and he encountered the loess, and began to develop his fruitful relationship with Liu Tungsheng. For a useful study of JB at Lake Mungo see the Billy Griffith book 'Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia' published by Black Inc. in 2018. This sets the JB studies in the context of the often complicated world of ancient indigenous people and the history of ancient Australia. 

Jim Bowler.  educated at The University of Melbourne BSc 1958; MSc in 1961; then on to ANU in Canberra for a PhD. To ANU in 1965; PhD 1970 (or 1971)

Bowler, J.M.  1971.  Late Quaternary Environments: A study of lakes and associated sediments in South Eastern Australia.  PhD thesis ANU Canberra

Bowler, J.M.  1973.  Clay dunes: their occurrence, formation and environmental significance.  Earth Science Reviews 9(4), 315-338.

PhD at ANU. He was directed towards the Willandra Lakes region by Joe Jennings. JJ was a reader at ANU; he moved to ANU from Leicester University in 1952. He left Leicester just around the time when Norman Pye was being appointed Professor of Geography and Head of the Geography Department. He had carried out some very successful studies on the Norfolk Broads but chose to abandon this wet region of Eastern England for the drier regions of Australia.  One day when he was flying from Broken Hill to Sydney he noticed some interesting aspects of the Willandra Lakes region- a series of dry lakes showing some interesting geomorphology. When JB turned up needing a PhD topic he was guided towards the Willandra Lakes region and, riding his motor-cycle there in 1968 he discovered the remains which eventually became known as Mungo Lady. Named after Lake Mungo- a name which JB bestowed on the critical lake. 

JJ went on the Australian Academy trip to China in 1975; one speculates that he was responsible for JB going as well; JB was a relatively junior ANU person but JJ was probably influential enough to request his presence.

Lake Mungo is in the Willandra National Park, 300+km from the Australian Capital Territory.

Australian Quaternary Studies: A tribute to Jim Bowler.  J. Magee, P. De Deckker eds Quaternary International 83-85, 1-292. 11 Sept 2001

J.Magee, P. De Deckker pp.1-4.  Jim Bowlers contribution to Australian Quaternary Studies.

Liu Tungsheng.(1917-2008)  Liu Tungsheng- the doyen of Chinese loess investigators. The 1975 encounter with JB and the rest of the Australian party had a major effect on the life and career of Liu Tungsheng. His interest in loess had been waning in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution but it was revived by the requirements of the visit. Liu, in preparing material for the loess excursions, found his interest rekindled and his life work re-energised.  Bowler was determined to spread the word on Chinese loess and to promote loess studies and for several years he and Liu cooperated on these projects.

Yuhong Zhang, Li Guan, Qiang Liu  2018.  Liu Tungsheng: a geologist from a traditional Chinese cultural background who became an international star of science.  Journal of Asian Earth Sciences 155, 8-20.

Bowler, J.M.  2009.  Interview with Professor Liu Tungsheng (conducted in October 2004 in Beijing). J.M.Han et al (eds) Memory of Tungshen Liu.  Commercial Press Beijing (in Chinese, original articles in English included) ISBN 978 7 100 06571 9)

"In a rare interview between two academic friends from two different countries, James Bowler (from Australia) and Liu Tungsheng, two great masters of science, conducted an intensive dialog about Quaternary Science, and its past, present and future prospects" (Zhang et al 2018)

A quote from Liu: "So 1975 was the turning point for renewing my (loess) studies, otherwise I may have continued to work on other environmental issues."

Loess Commission.  The INQUA Congress in 1977 was held in Birmingham UK. This was an important moment for the Loess Commission. The President, Julius Fink of the University of Vienna, handed over to Marton Pecsi of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the Commission took on a 'new look'. The Commission was founded as a full commission in 1969 (at the Paris INQUA Congress);up to then it had functioned as a sub-commission of the Stratigraphy Commission and had focussed its investigations mainly into Central and Eastern Europe. Pecsi wanted to broaden the scope so he determined that the new look Loess Commission should look at world-wide loess deposits and should extend the field of studies into applied regions; engineering geology and ground engineering were valid topics.  This expansion came at an ideal time for JB because he proposed that a 'Western Pacific Working Group' be founded which would concentrate on loess deposits in the Western Pacific region i.e. China, Australia and New Zealand. This was his way of promoting the loess deposits in China and supporting his friend Liu Tungsheng. The WPWG was announced in Birmingham in 1977 and functioned for about 10 years. In the INQUA system working groups were supposed to be set up to consider specific problems, and to run for limited periods.

Next, on to the ANZAAS conference in Auckland in early 1979. The Australia and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science met in Auckland and this was chosen as the official launching point for the WPWG. There were no Chinese delegates present but the Australian and New Zealand delegates decided on a programme and a plan of action.  Three field trips would be held- in China, Australia and New Zealand- these would be discussion trips like those Fink organised in the early days of the Commission. The first would be in Australia in 1980; the New Zealand group would organise a newsletter to record the activities and spread the word. 

The newsletter was to be Loess Letter, which was first published in 1979; to appear twice a year.  The early issues contain details of the setting up of the WPWG and give some details of the discussions which JB had in Beijing organising the Chinese involvement. Liu Tungsheng visited the NZ Soil Bureau in 1980 and wrote the title. Also in 1980 was the first WPWG field trip to S.E.Australia. Logically enough to the JB field area in the Willandra Lakes region, to see the aeolian landforms, to admire the'walls of China'- to actually fly in a light plane over Lake Frome and the edge of the Flinders range- and to have dinner in Broken Hill with Bruce Butler. The Chinese delegation should be recorded: Liu Tungsheng, Wu Zirong, Yuan Baoyin, Zheng Honghan, An Zhisheng & Wen Qizhong. A proceedings volume edited by Bob Wasson (mostly of CDU) was produced.

The next WPWG meeting was in China in 1985 and by then the whole world had changed. Chinese loess research had made a quick recovery and the first steps were being taken towards the huge effort and output of today. The meeting in China was a major conference; the proceedings volume contained 85 titles + a large book of 43 papers. The JB initiative had succeeded; there was indeed great interest in the Chinese loess.  New Zealand in 1987; the third and last of the WPWG meetings; starting in Christchurch and heading north to Auckland. A conference volume was produced- which was summarised in Loess Letter 21 and carefully reviewed by Ed Derbyshire in PPG. The Loess Letter timing was fortuitous, LL21 was the tenth anniversary issue, the WPWG had been running for just ten years. JB may not have been the 'onlie begetter' but he was largely responsible.

Derbyshire, E.  1990.  Book Reviews: Eden, D.N., Furkert, R.J. eds. 1989. Loess: its distribution, geology and soils. Balkema Rotterdam.  Progress in Physical Geography 14, 569-571.

Commentary. Rarther ironic that there is little loess in Australia; this remarkable loess based enterprise (the WPWG) was definitely aimed at China. Lucky that NZ was to hand to provide some real loess and to give the loess project a respectably loessic appearance. The granular landforms in S.E. Australia are great and granular but lacking in clastic material. This is the land of the clay-mineral-aggregate- the 'parna' which Bruce Butler described.  The CMA material can behave like loess,. and larger CMA can behave like sand- this is a region where ideas can come together. The rainbowbirds can show us where loess-like material is to be found.

Ian Smalley 1977.  New look for the Loess Commission.  Nature 270, 300 only.

Ian Smalley, Slobodan Markovic,  Ken O'Hara-Dhand  2010.   The INQUA Loess Commission as a Central European enterprise.  Open Geosciences 2(1), 3-8.

Ian Smalley,  Ken O'Hara-Dhand  2010.  The Western Pacific Working Group of the INQUA Loess Commission: expansion from Central Europe.  Open Geosciences 2(1), 9-14.

Ian Smalley,  Sue McLaren, Ken O'Hara-Dhand  2015.  Loess and bee-eaters 4: Distribution of the Rainbowbird (Merops ornatus Latham 1801) in Australia.  Quaternary International 399, 230-235. 

salute JB!

Professor Derbyshire encounters the Loess in China

This is ED with Grant McTainsh at the Dirtmap meeting in Jena in 2000: ED is one with beard.

 Professor Edward Derbyshire:  b.18 August 1932:  Physical Geographer/ Loess Scholar

Encounter.  This is the story of a fateful encounter; an important moment in an academic life- which had considerable geoscientific consequences and affected many careers. The encounter took place in 1977 when ED went to China with a delegation from the Royal Society. The purpose of the visit was to re-establish scientific contacts which had been degraded during the Cultural Revolution in China. The Cultural Revolution lasted roughly ten years, from 1966 to 1976; by 1977 moves were afoot to restore some of the damage which had been caused.  The Royal Society party visited the Loess Regions and ED encountered the Loess. He was impressed. A similar party from the Australian Academy of Sciences also visited the loess regions and Jim Bowler was similarly impressed. Both Bowler and ED, being people of action, set about developing their relationships with this amazing material/landscape. Bowler set up the INQUA Western Pacific Working Group to promote loess research in China, Australia and New Zealand, and ED developed a close relationship with workers in Lanzhou, particularly Wang Jing tai and set about planning a project to investigate landslides in the loess in the Lanzhou region. 

ED 1983   The loess at Jiuzhoutai, Peoples Republic of China - a note.  Loess Letter 9, 10-13 [see www.loessletter.msu.edu]-  one of the first responses to the encounter.

ED address given as: Soils Research Laboratory, University of Keele, Keele, Staffs. ST5 5BG, England. Some of the very early ED loess literature belongs to Keele but most of the loess activity is associated with Leicester University.

Keele.  In 1977 ED was reader in the Geography Department at the University of Keele; he had a long relationship with Keele University and possibly, when the ossified structure in the Geography Department at Leicester was proving difficult to shift, regretted leaving. ED was a student at Keele: BA 1954, and he returned, after various adventures in Canada and Australia as a Lecturer in 1966. He remained as a lecturer until 1970 and was then promoted to senior lecturer; then to reader in  1974. He stayed as reader until 1984 and was then (belatedly he thought) promoted to professor. But he had decided to leave (feeling unappreciated) and moved to Leicester in 1985.

Leicester.  Norman Pye had been Professor of Geography and Head of Department at Leicester from 1954 to 1979; it had become a very Pye-like department, a certain Pye-crust had developed- essentially the old style traditional geography so the Pye successor was going to face multiple tasks.  ED was appointed in 1985 and set about developing a modern department, and setting up the Loess Landslides in Lanzhou project. The key co-developer was Wang Jingtai at the Disasters Research Institute in Lanzhou and on a visit to York University in Toronto he met Ian Smalley who agreed to come to Leicester and join the enterprise. A certain symmetry here; Smalley had worked with Jim Bowler setting up the Western Pacific Working Group and was publishing Loess Letter so it was fitting that he moved to Leicester to work with the other China inspired operative on another aspect of loess research.

A great setback early on; the landslides project depended on soil mechanics testing and the Leicester University Engineering Department was due to provide access to their well equipped soil mechanics laboratory to cover this aspect of the work. The Leicester Engineering Department  was a combined department, it included Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and in the mid-1980s the Electrical Engineering section was perceived as performing rather badly, and the strange response to this was to close the Civil Engineering Section so that resources could be concentrated on Electrical Engineering, which was seen as being more important and promising for the future. So, at a stroke, the soil mechanics laboratory was lost and the project appeared to be mortally wounded.

On a morning in November 1989 Tom Dijkstra and Ian Smalley drove north from Leicester heading for Loughborough. The purpose was to visit Loughborough University and make contact with the soil mechanics people and possibly enlist their help- to replace what had been lost by the Leicester Civil Engineering closure. The key person in Loughborough soil mechanics turned out to be Dr.Chris Rogers, and he agreed to cooperate. By a lucky chance Dr Rogers had been a student at Leeds University and had been taught ground stuff by Ian Smalley- so a link already existed. And the timing was good; Loughborough CED wanted a bit more exposure and the prospect of joint papers was attractive; thus was initiated a fruitful Leicester-Loughborough link which did in fact lead to some useful and much cited papers. A direct result of the loess cooperation was the default paper on hydroconsolidation and subsidence in loess:

Rogers, C.D.F., Dijkstra, T.A., Smalley, I.J.  1994.  Hydroconsolidation and subsidence of loess; Studies from China, Russia, North America and Europe.  Engineering Geology 37, 83-113.

Landslides in Lanzhou.  Government of Gansu Province/  Commission of the European Communities: Research & Control of Landslides and Debris Flows in the Loess Region of Gansu Province, China; Contract no. CI.1.0109. U.K.(H)

ED, Wang J T  1988.  EC launches project on landslides and debris flows in Chinese loess.  Episodes  11, 131-132

NATO: Collapsing Soils at Loughborough. A spin-off from the main loess project was the meeting in Loughborough in 1995 to discuss loess and other collapsing soils.  Support from NATO enabled several very important scholars to attend- including George Kukla, Richard Handy and Jaroslav Feda. A very handsome book was published by Kluwer in 1995, and reprinted in paperback by Springer in 2012..

ED,  Tom Dijkstra,  Ian Smalley (eds) 1995. Genesis and Properties of Collapsible Soils.  NATO ASI series C Math.& Phys.Sci.  v.468.  Kluwer 424 p.  ISBN  9780 7923 35870: reprinted Springer 2012  ISBN 9789 4010 40471.

LoessFest 1999.   Ludwig Zoeller suggested that a loess conference be held to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the description and naming of the loess by Karl Caesar von Leonhard in Heidelberg in 1824.  This idea was taken up by ED and eventually a great conference, a LoessFest, was held in Heidelberg and Bonn in 1999. 

Begin in Heidelberg; visit Haarlass- the locus typicus for loess, this is KCvL country. Samples distributed and certificates of authenticity. On to Bonn for the papers and presentations. Most of the delegates stayed at a hostel out in Venusberg  (this could be the Venusberg where Tannhauser met Venus and they enjoyed some quality time in each others company). 

ED (ed) 1999.  LoessFest 1999 Proceedings.  Loess: Characterization, Stratigraphy, Climate and Societal Significance. 272p.

People at LoessFest: thats Ludwig Zoeller on the extreme left, he sets one limit; thats Ed Derbyshire on the extreme right sitting on the pillar, he sets another limit. Ian Smalley is more or less in the middle, bald head, beard, light coloured jacket -on his right with blue shirt and offering profile is Tom Dijkstra. Behind the TD right shoulder is Andre Dodonov.  One day we will contrive a proper outline and numbering system and get everyone identified. Steve Porter in front of the ED pillar; we are all standing outside the Geographical Institute of the University of Bonn.

Two special issues for LoessFest:

ED (ed)  2001. Recent research on loess and palaeosols, pure and applied.  Earth Science Reviews 54, 1-260.  This contained a variety of interesting papers including what may be the first moderately significant history of loess scholarship:

Ian Smalley,  Ian Jefferson,  Tom Dijkstra,  ED  2001.  Some major events in the development of the scientific study of loess.  Earth Science Reviews 54, 5-18

and also the drafting document for the DIRTMAP project (which was discussed at the Fest):

Karen Kohfeld,  Sandy Harrison DIRTMAP: the geological record of the loess.  Earth Science Reviews 54, 81-114.

ED (ed)  2001  Loess and Palaeosols: characterization, chronology and climate.  Quaternary International  76/77

this contained the paper by Vaclav Cilek which set out a realistic set of conditions in which the contentious process of loessification could occur

Vaclav Cilek  2001  The loess deposits of the Bohemian Massif: silt provenance, palaeometeorology and loessification.  Quaternary International 76, 123-128.

Big Book 2000.  The climax of the Loess Landslides in Lanzhou project:

Landslides in the Thick Loess Terrain of North-West China.  eds. ED, Xingmin Meng, Tom Dijkstra. John Wiley Chichester 288p.  2000. [Library of Congress gives 1999, but the copyright mark is 2000] ISBN 0471 97349 1.

ED@80. A tribute to ED's loessic endeavours- particularly in China

Loess in China and Europe: a tribute to Edward Derbyshire.  2014.  eds.Slobodan Markovic,  Shiling Yang,  Norm Catto,  Tom Stevens.  Quaternary International 334-335.  17June 2014

Loess and dust dynamics, environments, landforms, and pedogenesis: a tribute to Edward Derbyshire.  eds. Slobodan Markovic,  Lewis Owen.  Catena 117,  157p.

Commentary.  A beginning and an end.  A definite, easily defined beginning, and an arbitrary end. The ED@80 meeting in Novi Sad in 2012 was a very substantial marker of the progression of ED on the great loess journey. Of course he went on to do many useful and significant things but ED@80 was a neat indicator of a remarkable project carried out with great skill and determination and producing some excellent results.

Meeting John Hardcastle [not in Timaru, in Lower Hutt]

 John Hardcastle, encountered on 19th January 1979, a warm summer day in Lower Hutt. The meeting took place in the library of the NZ Soil Bureau on Eastern Hutt Road, Taita, Lower Hutt NZ. Present JH, Jewel Davin, Ian Smalley.

That was a Friday, only three days before the start of the 49th ANZAAS Conference in Auckland, where there were more encounters: Jim Bowler, Jane Soons, Alan Pullar and various other noteables. Bowler was on site to kick start the Western Pacific Working Group of the INQUA Loess Commission- so it was an important meeting.  JH was there in spirit.

JH was revealed by the initial searches for material for BR28- the NZ Loess Bibliography. Up to 1979 he had been an obscure provincial scholar- after 1979 he was revealed as a significant loess thinker, one of the key investigators in NZ into matters loessic; in fact he became a world figure as the inventor of loess stratigraphy- the person who described loess as a 'register of climate change'.

John Hardcastle 1908.  Notes on the Geology of South Canterbury. Timaru Herald, Sophia Street Timaru 62p. New edition published as Loess Letter Supplement ns2 June 2014  Leicester University

Roger Fagg 2001  John Hardcastle (1847-1927)  -a gifted amateur.  Geological Society of New Zealand Historical Studies Group Newsletter 22, 21-25.

Roger Fagg  Ian Smalley  2019  Loess in New Zealand: Observations by Haast Hutton Hardcastle Wild and Speight  1878-1944.  Quaternary International 502A 173-178.

Roger Fagg  Ian Smalley  2018   'Hardcastle Hollows' in loess landforms: closed depressions in aeolian landscapes- in a geoheritage context.  Open Geosciences 10, 58-63.

JH  1899  Origin of the loess deposit of the Timaru plateau.  Transactions and proceedings of the New Zealand Institute 22, 406-414   [reprinted in Loess Letter 71 www.loessletter.msu.edu ] 

JH   1890  On the Timaru loess as a climate register.  ibid  23, 324-332  [reprinted in LL71]

Ian Smalley  1983   John Hardcastle on glacier motion and glacial loess.  Journal of Glaciology 29, 480-484  [reprinted in LL71]

Ian Smalley  Roger Fagg  2014   John Hardcastle looks at the Timaru loess; climate signals are observed, and fragipans.  Quaternary International 372, 51-57.

Ian Smalley  Ian Jefferson  Tom Dijkstra  Edward Derbyshire  2001.  Some major events in the development of the scientific study of loess.  Earth Science Reviews 54  5-18  [section on JH].

Christchurch Star 3 October 1890:

An ordinary meeting of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury was held in the Public Library last evening. There was a moderate attendance, the President, Mr.J.T.Meeson, in the chair. .. The Secretary read a paper by Mr.J.Hardcastle of Timaru, on "The Loess of Timaru as a Climate Register". He stated his conclusion that the loess is a formation of wind-blown dust belonging to the second glacial period, and contains bands, which mark pauses in the process of deposition, which are interpreted as registers of considerable variation of climate within that period.