Tidalites Conference

The long-awaited Tidalites Conference was a huge success due to the immense efforts and dedication of lead organizer Sergio Longhitano, the Tidalites Organizing Committee, and a team of energetic talented student workers. The meeting was held in person with some virtual contributions, marking a great accomplishment in a world with COVID. Everyone was super happy to get out of zoom and back into the real world. The venue was in the beautiful ancient city of Matera, southern Italy. There were about 80 participants and the presentations were excellent, so it had a nice international small-meeting vibe where I was able to learn a lot and meet lots of people. Charlie attended all the sessions and continued growing his knowledge of geology. Kevin Gardner traveled here from Oregon and won an Early Career Researcher award for his poster on quantitative analysis of fluvial and tidal channel planform geometries. I gave an oral presentation in which we proposed that seismically active normal faults and interacting fault tips in a migrating conjugate relay zone exert a direct control on morphology, bathymetry, and tidally influenced transport processes in the modern Messina Strait.

The Gala Dinner on the last night was a festive event held in an amazing cave carved in Pliocene calcarenite with large-scale cross bedding. I met long-time geo hero, Albina Colella, whose papers on Gilbert deltas inspired me back in the 1990’s. She is a great scientist and a truly delightful person. Afterwards we went on another field trip, to the paleo-Siderno strait, co-led by Sergio and a new friend and colleague Valentina Rossi. They did a fabulous job and introduced me to more aspects of sedimentation and tectonics in Calabria. Now we are back in Potenza recovering from the excitement, planning future research projects, and getting ready for more adventures!