Dear Earth Scientists,

The 11th Quaternary Symposium of Turkey (TURQUA), held between November 6-8, 2024, has been completed!

In this meeting organized by the Istanbul Technical University Eurasia Earth Sciences Institute, researchers from various scientific fields such as ecology, climate, geology, geography, and archaeology came together. Our Rector Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal, in his opening speech, drew attention to the era of multiple crises we are in and emphasized that a sustainable future can only be possible with co-production and collaboration.

Our Organizing Committee Chairman Dr. Emrah Çoraman emphasized in his speech that climate change and the rapid deterioration of ecosystems threaten not only the natural world but also our socio-ecological structures, economy, and quality of life, and underlined that we are now in a period where we need to go beyond short-term issues and produce long-term solutions compatible with global priorities. Following the opening speeches, 10 different sessions were held in our symposium covering the Quaternary period studies. On the first day, our invited speaker, Professor Oliver Heiri from the University of Basel, presented different perspectives on paleoecological and paleoenvironmental studies with his talk titled "Biotic Remains in Lake Sediments - Indicators of Late Quaternary Environmental and Ecosystem Change". On the second day, our invited speaker, Professor Joel Saylor, focused on innovative approaches to sediment transport and provenance analysis with his talk titled "Tracking Sediment Movement Through Source-to-Sink Systems Using Mixture Modelling: Applications to Detrital Zircon Petrochronology". At the end of our event, the 11th TURQUA Oğuz Erol Best Poster Award was given to Melike Karakaş Gedik for her work titled "Use of Thermal Imaging in the Detection of Surface Fractures in the Kahramanmaraş Earthquakes", while the 11th TURQUA Sırrı Erinç Best Presentation Award was given to Onur Halis for his work titled "Reconstruction of Paleoglaciers and Paleoclimate in the Last Glacial Maximum Period in Northeastern Turkey".

We would like to thank all participants who contributed to our symposium! We would like to express our endless gratitude to everyone involved, particularly TURQUA-2024 Organizing Committee Chair Dr. Emrah Çoraman, academicians, research assistants, students, support team and our research assistant Tuğçe Uçar for the TURQUA-2024 poster drawing!

See you at TURQUA-2026!!!

For all symposium photos: http://www.turqua.itu.edu.tr