PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT

SYMPOSIUM ON “TIME IN KARST”

You are cordially invited to a symposium on “Time in Karst” to be held in Postojna, Slovenia, March 14 to March 18, 2007. The meeting will be held at the Karst Research Institute ZRC SAZU in Postojna, and participants may stay at the nearby Hotel Jama and Hotel Sport. Registration details will be available in September of 2006 at www.karstwaters.org. The registration fee will be $350 US ($200 for students).

The idea of the symposium is simple one—to examine what we know and what we can infer about the ages of caves, of karst landscapes, and of the organisms that inhabit them. This work is often scattered in the literature of different disciplines, and we think that there is much to be gained by bringing together leading researchers who work on time processes in karst.

The symposium will have two parts. The first part will be presentations by invited speakers. The presentations will be grouped around six themes, which have strong interdisciplinary character:

• · Age of karst landscapes
• · Age of animal lineages
• · Cosmogenic dating methods
• · Historical biogeography
• · Paleokarst
• · Sediment records

The second part will be an extensive contributed poster session. All participants are invited to present posters and to submit abstracts for publication in the conference proceedings.

The symposium is sponsored by the Karst Research Institute ZRC SAZU in Slovenia and the Karst Waters Institute in the United States. Both organizations have a history of sponsoring important meetings with an interdisciplinary character, and we are excited to be joining forces in this endeavor. As part of the Marie Curie programme sponsored by the European Commission, the Karst Research Institute ZRC SAZU is leading the project SMART-KARST, which provides grants for researchers in early stages of their careers. Participants in the symposium on “Time in Karst” will be able to apply to the Karst Research Institute ZRC SAZU for this grant (see http://odmev.zrc-sazu.si/instituti/izrk/), which covers travel, living allowance, and registration fee. We hope you will participate in “Time in Karst” in March of 2007.

Papers and abstracts of the posters presented at the conference will be published in conference proceedings, simultaneously published as an issue of Acta Carsologica and a Special Publication of the Karst Waters Institute.

The deadline for submission of abstracts of poster presentations is November 1, 2006. The deadline for registration is February 15, 2007.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE AT www.karstwaters.org/timeinkarst/

Conference Co-Chairs

Tadej Slabe

Head

Karst Research Institute ZRC SAZU

David Culver

Executive Vice President

Karst Waters Institute

Scientific Committee

Tadej Slabe (Slovenia)

Franci Gabrovšek (Slovenia)

Tanja Pipan (Slovenia)

David Culver (U.S.A.)

Oana Moldovan (Romania)

Philippe Audra (France)

Mehmet Ekmekci (Turkey)

Publication Committee

Andrej Kranjc (Slovenia)

Ira Sasowsky (U.S.)