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The article provides information on the 5th Annual Workshop on Luminescence Dating and its Applications organized by the Association for Luminescence Dating (ALD), India, from 20 to 23 February 2024. It states that the workshop included a pre-workshop training program and sessions chaired by prominent researchers such as A. Bharadwaj and S. Chopra.

The article focuses on the fourth annual workshop on luminescence dating and applications, bringing together scientists and students from various disciplines. Topics include methodological developments, Earth surface processes and paleoclimate studies, and geoarchaeology, with discussions on issues faced by the luminescence geochronology community in India.

Streamlined subglacial landforms that include drumlins in three study areas, the upper Chandra valley around Chandra Tal, the upper Spiti Valley and the middle Yunam Valley of the NW Himalaya of India were mapped and studied using geomorphic, sedimentological and geochronological methods. These streamlined subglacial landforms include a variety of morphological types, including: (i) half egg-shaped forms; (ii) complex superimposed forms; (iii) dome-shaped forms; (iv) inverse forms; and (v) flat-topped symmetrical forms. Sedimentological data indicate that subglacial deformational processes are responsible for the formation of the streamlined subglacial landforms in the Chandra Tal and upper Spiti Valley study areas. In contrast, streamlined landforms in the middle Yunam Valley are the result of melt-out and subglacial erosional processes. In the Yunam Valley study area, 11 new cosmogenic 10Be surface exposure ages were obtained for boulders inset into the crests of streamlined subglacial landforms and moraines, and also for a bedrock surface. The streamlined landforms date to 8-7 ka, providing evidence of an early Holocene valley glaciation, and older moraines date to ∼17-15 and 79-52 ka, representing other significant valley glacial advances in the middle Yunam Valley. The subglacial landforms in the Chandra Valley provide evidence for a ≥300-m-thick Lateglacial glacier that advanced southeast, overtopping the Kunzum Range, and advancing into the upper Spiti Valley. The streamlined subglacial landforms in these study areas of the NW Himalaya highlight the usefulness of such landforms in developing glacial chronostratigraphy and for understanding the dynamics of Himalayan glaciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late Quaternary glacial history of the Nun- Kun massif, located on the boundary between the Greater Himalaya and the Zanskar range in northwestern India, was reconstructed. On the basis of morphostratigraphy and 10Be dating of glacial landforms (moraines and glacial trimlines), five glacial stages were recognized and defined, namely: (i) the Achambur glacial stage dated to Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 to 4 (38.7-62.7 ka); (ii) the Tongul glacial stage dated to the early part of the Lateglacial (16.7-17.4 ka); (iii) the Amantick glacial stage dated to the later part of the Lateglacial (14.3 ka, 11.7-12.4 ka); (iv) the Lomp glacial stage dated to the Little Ice Age; and (v) the Tanak glacial stage, which has the youngest moraines, probably dating to the last few decades or so. Present and former equilibrium-line altitudes ( ELAs) were calculated using the standard area accumulation ratio method. The average present-day ELA of ∼4790 m above sea level in the Greater Himalaya is lower than those in the Ladakh and Zanskar ranges, namely 5380 and ∼5900 m a.s.l., respectively. The ELA in the Zanskar range is higher than in the Ladakh range, possibly due to the higher peaks in the Ladakh range that are able to more effectively capture and store snow and ice. ELA depressions decrease towards the Ladakh range (i.e. inner Plateau). Peat beds interbedded with aeolian deposits that cap the terminal moraine of Tarangoz Glacier suggest millennial-time-scale climate change throughout the Holocene, with soil formation times at c. 1.5, c. 3.4 and c. 5.2 ka, probably coinciding with Holocene abrupt climate change events. Given the style and timing of glaciation in the study area, it is likely that climate in the Nun- Kun region is linked to Northern Hemisphere climate oscillations with teleconnections via the mid-latitude westerlies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]