The 2019 NORDQUA excursion will be held in the northwestern and middle part of Norway. The excursion will be organized jointly by the Geological Survey of Norway and the University of Bergen. The excursion will be made a Master- and PhD course from the University of Bergen, and we hope to have a good mix of students and professionals attending.
The main topics of the excursion are glacial and sea-level history, and records of avalanches, from quick clay slides to rock failures. We will start from the city of Ålesund on the coast of western Norway and end up in Trondheim in Norways middle part. The excursion will take us through beautiful coastal scenery of the strandflat, via dramatic alpine fjord and valley topography to the open, undulating landscapes of raised marine clays in mid Norway. Scientific highlights include:
- The Skjonghelleren cave that made history both in terms of glacial geology and palaezoology
- Marine to lacustrine sequences with Vedde ash
- Stacked raised deltas separated by till
- The Mannen rock avalanche cluster and unstable slope
- Rock avalanching onto ice and into ice free valleys
- Holocene rock slope deformation that lead to a partial catastrophic failure while large deformed parts today still threat the valley
- The Ivasnesen rock slope instability and the Norwegian system to classify hazard and risk of unstable rock slopes
- The 2012 Byneset quick clay slide within a marine terraced landscape
Information about registration, travel, costs etc. will be announced later. For now, set aside the dates June 9-12, 2019 for a scenic and scientifically interesting excursion with friends and colleagues. We hope to see as many as possible of you next year.
Reginald Hermanns, Paula Hilger, Eiliv Larsen, Inger-Lise Solberg and John-Inge Svendsen