European Geosciences Union General Assembly
Dougal Lichtman
NOC/Bangor University
2014 European Geosciences Union General Assembly
From 27 April to 2 May the 2014 European Geosciences Union General Assembly was held in Vienna. This year’s conference attracted 12,437 participants from 106 different countries, with 14,895 presentations in 568 sessions. Topics covered all aspects of the earth sciences and extended to include space, planetary and solar system science as well.
Presentations were divided into talks, posters and PICO sessions. The PICO sessions were a new concept to me and were meant to be combination of talk and poster. Each PICO presenter has two minutes to show slides to an audience, then later the slides were displayed on interactive screens so that smaller interested groups can talk with the authors. Also, the poster sessions allowed for more than just a static display, as the boards had tables next to them for the use of a laptop. This meant that I was able to display an animation of changing ripple bed morphology, to help catch people’s eye, and bring up presentations to help answer more in depth questions.
The main session relevant to me that I attended was the ‘Advances in Physical Estuarine Processes’ and my poster, about ripple dimensions of muddy and sandy beds on tidal flats, formed part of this session. However, I also managed to attend sessions on: general estuarine processes, ocean circulation, informatics, coastal and shelf oceanography, operational oceanography, remote sensing and geosciences education. The wide range of material gave me new ideas on how to approach the data analysis for my own project and meeting other scientists from different institutions will hopefully lead to future collaboration. I am very grateful to the Challenger Society for supporting my attendance of this conference.
Latest News
Potential Availability of NERC Ship Time During the 25/26 Programme Year
The NERC Marine Facilities Programme for 2025/2026 for the RRS Discovery and the RRS James Cook has been published on the Marine Facilities Planning website.
The RRS Discovery programme currently contains a 79 day alongside slot between the 2nd of November 2025 and the 19th of January 2026, which is available for science delivery if funded science projects can make use of this time. Due to the location of the vessel, the ship is most likely to be able to deliver fieldwork in the North and East Atlantic regions. Some support for science capability within the National Marine Equipment Pool is potentially available, although there is no capacity for use of autonomous vehicles or remotely operated vehicles. Any fieldwork within Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) will need the appropriate diplomatic clearance submitted to coastal states at least 6 months in advance, and to NMF with sufficient lead time for processing via the FCDO.
If interested in making use of this ship time, please contact NERC Marine Planning (marineplanning@nerc.ukri.org) ASAP to start discussions.
THE MARINE FACILITIES ADVISORY BOARD – CAN YOU HELP?
The Marine Facilities Advisory Board advises the National Oceanography Centre on marine facilities and services, including the Natural Environment Research Council’s National Marine Equipment Pool (NMEP), the British Oceanographic Data Centre and the British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility.
NOC Association AGM 2025
NOC Association (NOCA) AGM 2025
The 14th AGM of the NOC Association will be held on Thursday 15th and Friday 16th May 2025. This free, on-line event will take place on Zoom, across two consecutive mornings, each starting at 10:00 and ending at 12:30. Although discussion topics are being finalised, we will focus on national capability (NC) science, ships, and autonomous vehicles, and how the community can engage. There will be an update on AtlantiS and on the new marine science scoping group. All are warmly welcome to join. To participate, please complete your registration here. For enquiries: Jackie Pearson, Secretary to NOCA: jfpea@noc.ac.uk