A Celebration of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Fluvial Archives Group (FLAG)
Résumé
The Fluvial Archives Group (FLAG) was founded in 1996 to bring together researchers looking at the development of fluvial systems over multiple timescales and global spatial scales. Fluvial archives of various types are important not just because they provide insights into past landscape dynamics, e.g., driven by climate or crustal processes, but also because they frequently contain fossil or archaeological material for which they provide stratigraphic control. Since 1996, FLAG has evolved from a research group of the British Quaternary Research Association into an organisation with around 500 members in over 20 countries. The research group held 12 biennial meetings, comprising both presentations and field excursions, as well as multiple themed sessions at international conferences. These had resulted by 2017 in 19 journal special issues, all fully detailed by Cordier et al. (2017). The goals of FLAG are: provision of a community for discussion of key issues concerning fluvial archives, including organising the aforementioned biennial discussion/field meetings, sessions at relevant international conferences, and special issues of journals; continued promotion of the value of fluvial archives by means of readily accessible published information; and coordination of activity with other research groupings with overlapping interests, e.g., by co-convening sessions and collaborating on publications.