Dear colleagues and friends,
The host for the next Loess Fest meeting in 2026 will be Bulgaria, in which almost half of the territory is covered by loess and loess like sediments of the Lower Danube area. This realm is an important paleogeographical area, linking western European loess with Eurasian loess steppes and being at the core of global interactions between North Atlantic circulation, Mediterranean cyclones paths and Siberian high pressure circulation cell. To reveal the full potential of the loess palaeosol sequences as recorders of past global environmental changes during the Pleistocene glacial – interglacial cycles, it is critical to understand their genesis and the processes, involved in the acquisition and preservation of the environmental proxies. Thus, we would like to encourage an interdisciplinary discussion on loess palaeosol sequences as palaeoenvironmental archives at different scales in space and time.
Lower Danube loess also hosts key archeological sites, which reveal precious information for the reconstruction of human evolution starting from middle Palaeolithic and extending towards recent times.
Loess Field Trip 2026
Field trip, which is traditionally organized during the Loess Fest meetings, is planned in North Eastern Bulgaria, showing two important loess sites in this area – outcropping sequences in active open quarries for kaolin extraction near Kaolinovo / Kolobar and an outcrop at the Black sea coast near Bulgarian / Romanian border.