The IUGG Electronic Journal

Volume 5 No. 9 (September 1, 2005)

This short, informal newsletter is intended to keep IUGG Member National Committees informed about the activities of the IUGG Associations, and actions of the IUGG Secretariat. Past issues are posted on the IUGG Web site. Please forward this message to those who will benefit from the information. Your comments are welcome.

Contents

  1. IUGG Web site to be updated September 12
  2. Report of the IAGA Scientific Assembly in Toulouse, France, July 18-29, 2005
  3. IGY+50 Developments
  4. First CAWSES Global Tidal Campaign and Second CAWSES Space Weather and Atmospheric Coupling Campaign
  5. IUGG-related meetings occurring during September – November 2005

1. IUGG Web site to be updated September 12

The IUGG Web site was designed by and is maintained by the University of Colorado Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). Kathy Zellers, our CIRES Assistant Web Coordinator, has worked with IUGG Assistant Secretary General Katina Rogers to restructure our home page and to update the content throughout the site, including a search engine. The release date for the new site is set for September 12. The French language site is still under construction, but will be completed soon. We trust that you will enjoy the improvements!


2. Report of the IAGA Scientific Assembly in Toulouse, France, July 18-29, 2005

The 'Comité National Francais de Géodésie et Géophysique' (CNFGG) and the Local Organising Committee under the leadership of Roland Schlich, Michel Blanc and Michel Menvielle organised a very good meeting in a most suitable Conference Centre: Pierre Baudis in central Toulouse. There were 61 scientific symposia covering all parts of the scientific fields of IAGA and of ICMA, which was a partner in organising the Assembly. In addition, a large number of planning and 'business' meetings were held. 886 persons attended.

Two of the most important decisions taken during the Assembly by the Conference of Delegates of the Member Countries were the following:

  1. The 11th Scientific Assembly of IAGA in 2009 will take place in Sopron, Hungary, preliminarily on August 23-29.
  2. Future IAGA assemblies will be one week long (6 full working days) and the preceding Sunday will be used for administrative meetings.

A number of Resolutions were passed by the Assembly Delegates. Only the titles of these resolutions are listed here, but the full text can be obtained from the IAGA Secretary General.

  • Resolution 1 Open access to scientific data
  • Resolution 2 Data rescue
  • Resolution 3 International Decade of Geopotential Field Research: availability of data and models
  • Resolution 4 Continuity and rapid production of auroral electrojet indices
  • Resolution 5 International Year initiatives celebrating the IGY
  • Resolution 6 Geomagnetic observations in Russia
  • Resolution 7 Resolution to maintain ground-based observatories to support magnetospheric/ionospheric dynamics research
  • Resolution 8 Resolution of thanks

Article contributed by Bengt Hultqvist


3. IGY+50 Developments

A joint meeting of the various Geo-Years (I*Y): IPY – the International Polar Year; IYPE – International Year of Planet Earth; IHY – International Heliophysical Year; and eGY – electronic Geophysical Year, will be held at the Villa Celimontana in Rome on 7 September. The Villa Celimontana is the Secretariat for the International Geographical Union, and representatives of all of the GeoUnions were invited to attend as well as a representative from the SCOSTEP program CAWSES – Climate and Weather of the Sun-Earth System.

International Year of Planet Earth
Procedures are in progress to modify the UNESCO Draft Resolution on the Proclamation of the Year of Planet Earth, passed unopposed by the UNESCO Executive Board in April, to change the effective year of the proclamation to 2008 instead of 2007. It is expected that this matter will be taken up at the UN General Assembly in October. Several new founding partners have joined the Management Team for the Year. These include the International Union for Quaternary Research, the American Geological Institute, and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. A Development Committee responsible for fundraising has been formed. Expressions of Interest (EoI) for the ten science themes (Climate Change, Deep Earth, Earth and health, Groundwater, Hazards, Life, Megacities, Ocean, Resources, and Soil), and the Outreach Programme are now invited. The Overview document (Planet Earth in our Hands) and brochures on most of the themes as well as the EoI forms may be downloaded from the website: www.yearofplanetearth.org or www.esfs.org.

electronic Geophysical Year (eGY)
A new eGY Working Group on Data Rescue and Preservation has been formed; Jeffrey Love (USGS, Golden Colorado) is the Chair. Those interested in this working group should contact Jeffrey at jlove@usgs.gov. A regional eGY Committee in India will be established. Prof. Aswathanarayana, Hyderabad, India, is the Chair. For more news about eGY including recent EPO (education and public outreach) activities, please visit the website www.egy.org and download eGY News No. 10 (August 2005), edited by Marissa Rusinek.


4. First CAWSES Global Tidal Campaign and Second CAWSES Space Weather and Atmospheric Coupling Campaign

CAWSES – Climate and Weather of the Sun-Earth System - is a comprehensive international scientific program of the ICSU Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP) planned for 2004-2008.

One component of the program, the first Global Tidal Campaign, September 1 – October 31, 2005, is expected to identify and stimulate observations that will contribute to understanding the sources and propagation characteristics of migrating and non-migrating atmospheric tides throughout the atmosphere. Another component, the second Space Weather Campaign, is timed to coincide with the Incoherent Scatter Radar operations that combines the efforts of an ongoing Lower Thermosphere Coupling Studies campaign and a Mesosphere, Stratosphere, Thermosphere campaign. More information on these efforts can be found on the CAWSES web site at www.bu.edu/cawses under the campaigns tab.


5. IUGG-Related Meetings Occurring during September – November 2005

A calendar of meetings of interest to IUGG disciplines (especially those organized or sponsored by IUGG Associations) is posted on the IUGG Web Site [ www.iugg.org ]. Specific information about these meetings, including web links, can be found there. Individual Associations also list more meetings on their web sites appropriate to their disciplines.

September 12 - September 13, 2005
IUGG; Perugia, Italy; 2007 General Assembly Scientific Programme Committee meeting

September 12 - September 15, 2005
FIG; Qingdao, China; 12th International Symposium on Deformation Measurement

September 14 - September 16, 2005
CODATA; Berlin, Germany; ISGI 2005 - International CODATA Symposium on Generalization of Information

September 14 - September 19, 2005
IAHS; Belgrade and Kotor, Serbia; Water Resources and Environmental Problems in Karst - Cvijic 2005

September 17 - September 23, 2005
IAHS; Guangzhou and Three Gorges, China; International Conference on Reservoir Operation and River Management (ICROM)

September 19 - September 24, 2005
IAHS; Belgrade & Kotor, Serbia; Water Resources & Environmental Problems in Karst - Cvijic 2005

September 19 - September 25, 2005
IAHS; Irkutsk, Russia; 2nd International Conference on Fundamental Problems of Investigation and Use of Water Resources

October 2 - October 8, 2005
IASPEI; Santiago, Chile; Scientific Assembly

October 3 - October 5, 2005
IAG/FIG/ISPRS; Vienna, Austria; 7th Conference on Optical 3-D Measurement Techniques

October 3 - October 15, 2005
IASPEI/ICTP; Miramare-Trieste, Italy; 8th Workshop on Non-linear Dynamics and Earthquake Prediction

October 9 - October 12, 2005
IUGG/BGS; Bucharest, Romania; 4th Congress of the Balkan Geophysical Society

October 9 - October 13, 2005
IHDP; Bonn, Germany; 6th Open Meeting of the Global Environmental Change Research Community

October 17 - October 22, 2005
ICSU; Shanghai, China; 27th General Assembly

October 17 - October 22, 2005
ICSU; Shanghai, China; 27th General Assembly

October 23 - October 28, 2005
IAHS; Shanghai, China; 7th International Symposium on Land Subsidence

October 23 - October 28, 2005
IAG/BGI/ICET; Lanzarote, Canaries Archipelago; Summer School on Micro-gravimetric methods: static and dynamic aspects

October 23 - October 29, 2005
URSI; New Delhi, India; URSI General Assembly

October 31 - November 3, 2005
ASOVIG/LUZ; Maracaibo, Venezuela; 2nd International Congress in Geodesy and Cartography; 1st Iberoamerican Symposium on Recent Earth Crust Movements

November 1 - November 3, 2005
IASPEI; Lisbon, Portugal; International Conference on the 250th Anniversary of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake

November 3 - November 4, 2005
EMSEV; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; EMSEV 2005 Workshop

November 10 - November 12, 2005
UNESCO/ICSU; Budapest, Hungary; World Science Forum

November 20 - November 25, 2005
UN/ESA; Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates; Workshop on Basic Space Science with special emphasis on the IHY

November 22 - November 24, 2005
IAHS; Montpellier, France; International Seminar in the UNESCO-IHP-FRIEND program: Climatic and Anthropogenic Impacts on the Variability of Water Resources

November 25 - November 27, 2005
IASPEI; Tanta, Egypt; 4th International Symposium on Geophysics


End of IUGG Electronic Journal Volume 5 Number 9 (September 1, 2005)
J. A. Joselyn, Secretary General  [ http://www.IUGG.org ]
jjoselyn@cires.colorado.edu, fax:  1 303 497 3645.