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The Swedish Quaternary Association (SWEDQUA) is an organization of professional scientists, mostly from Sweden, that are devoted to the study of the Quaternary Period in Sweden, the last 2.6 million years of Earth history. It is SWEDQUA’s mission:
- to encourage broad interdisciplinary cooperation and communication among Quaternary scientists and others who have interest in Swedish Quaternary sciences,
- to raise public awareness in Sweden of the importance and need for Quaternary sciences,
- to organize conferences and excursions that seek to highlight aspects of Swedish Quaternary sciences,
- to ensure that Swedish Quaternary sciences are well presented internationally in research collaborations, at conferences and in journals,
- to support graduate students within Quaternary sciences by compiling information on graduate courses at universities and research institutes, primarily in Sweden but also in the other Nordic countries,
- to communicate with other national Quaternary science associations and to participate as the Swedish representative organization in the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA)
Solid and multi-faceted knowledge of the Quaternary Period is essential because the Quaternary has been a time of frequent and dramatic environmental changes, exemplified by growing and decaying continental ice sheets and associated sea-level fluctuations. The astronomic, cosmogenic, oceanographic, atmospheric, biologic, and geologic driving forces behind Quaternary climate change are becoming better understood, but still imperfectly. To evaluate potential effects of anthropogenic climate change it is necessary to increase our knowledge of the whole array of processes. Continued research on Quaternary climate, its natural amplitudes and variability, associated landforms and deposits and the proxies that record these parameters is essential to help inform decision makers on future climatic and environmental changes. Understanding of the Quaternary is also important because this was the time of large global changes in floral and faunal communities, and for the evolution of modern humans and their dispersal throughout the world.
Among the major questions addressed by Quaternary scientists in Sweden are the following:
- the Quaternary history of Sweden,
- the causes of the ice ages and rapid local and global environmental changes,
- the linkages among the ocean, atmosphere, and cryosphere systems,
- the environmental and climatic modelling of glacial and interglacial times,
- the character and impact of climate change as recorded in landforms and deposits,
- the process geomorphology of glacial landforms,
- the sedimentology and stratigraphy of Quaternary deposits,
- the history, impact and causes of sea-level changes,
- the nature and timing of changes in plant and animal communities,
- human palaeoecology,
- Quaternary isostatic and neotectonic history,
- the role of Quaternary geology in understanding environmental geology,
- using past climate change to evaluate future anthropogenic climate change,
- evaluating natural hazards such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, and landslides and their impacts.
- Major academic and applied disciplines represented by the SWEDQUA include anthropology, archaeology, botany, climatology and palaeoclimatology, ecology, geochemistry, geochronology, geography, geology, geomorphology, geophysics, glaciology and palaeoglaciology, human geography, hydrology and hydrogeology, limnology and palaeolimnology, meteorology, neotectonics, oceanography, palaeontology, palynology, soil science, urban and regional planning, and zoology.
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