Proceedings of Project Ecostratigraphy Plenary Meeting, Gotland, 1981

When the Swedish National Committee for the International Geological Correlation Program submitted the proposal on Project Ecostratigraphy to Unesco in 1973 it was formalizing the work of the Baltic-Scanian Silurian Project which had its geological roats on Gotland. So it may well be said that Project Ecostratigraphy was launched on Gotland. Hence, the Swedish group of Project Ecostratigraphy felt it appropriate to invite toa fully international Project Ecostratigraphy Plenary Meeting on Gotland. The indoor parts of the Plenary Meeting will take place at Allekvia - the geological research station east of Visby operated by the national Ecostratigraphy group and sponsored by the Swedish Natural Science Research Council, the Gotland Commune and the Geological Survey of Sweden. The indoor scientific program will be followed by four days in the field. The indoor scientific program has four main topics: (1) Crossing the boundaries of the facies realms (2) Basin analysis of the Silurian 11 Baltic Gulf" (the Lithofacies subproject, final reports) (3) Downtonian - Podlasian - Pridolian Correlation (4) Ecostratigraphy in theory and practice More than 40 papers will be presented within the first three main topics. The fourth main topic will be dealt with in a panel discussion with the audience. Papers will be presented by the members of the panel A.J. Boucot (USA), A. Hoffman (Poland), D. Kaljo (USSR), and A. Martinsson (Sweden). The plenary meeting also includes presentations of activities of national Project Ecostratigraphy groups by J.D. Lawson (UK), B.S. Sokolov (USSR) and S. Laufeld (Sweden) and meetings with the progress reports of, e.g. Project Ecostratigraphy and the IUGS Subcommission on the Silurian System. The present publication contains the abstracts of almost all papers presented at the Project Ecostratigraphy Plenary Meeting on Gotland 22-28 August, 1981. These Proceedings reflect the tremendous amount of work that is put into Project Ecostratigraphy and towards its goal, 11 biochron correlation at the ecosystem level, using the Wenlockian- Gedinnian as a test sequence". Finally, attention is drawn to the abstract at the end of the publica- tion. This paper by G. Elaine Beane is but apart of the non-geological activities at the Project Ecostratigraphy Plenary Meeting but its out- standing quality merits its inclusion here since it reflects the motto of the A11ekvia research station "a free-port of Science between East and West".