The IUGG Electronic Journal

Volume 6 No. 11 (November 1, 2006)

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. Brief report of the IUGG Bureau meeting
2. Brief report of the SCOPE meeting
3. Postage stamps honor the International Polar Year
4. Awards and Honors
5. IUGG-related meetings occurring during November 2006 – January 2007

1. Brief report of the IUGG Bureau meeting

The IUGG Bureau met from 16-18 October in beautiful Melbourne, Australia, at the invitation of the Australian Academy of Sciences. We very much appreciated the hospitality of the Melbourne Convention + Visitors Bureau, the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, and Melbourne Ambassador Tom Beer. Items of discussion included the current state of arrangements of the 2007 General Assembly; the International Lithosphere Programme (now positioned as a Joint Scientific Program of IUGG and IUGS); the Union Commissions; ICSU matters including the Regional Offices, the suspended Grants Programme, and the strategic initiative on data and information; IUGG Membership and the 2008-2011 budget; and reaching out to young scientists and developing countries, with an emphasis on Africa. Following the meeting on October 19, IUGG President Uri Shamir delivered the 2007 CSIRO Priestly Lecture, a series of annual lectures begun in 1995 in honor of Bill Priestley, founding Chief of CSIRO’s former atmospheric research division. His topic was Water: Management under Uncertainly and Risk.

2. Brief report of the SCOPE meeting

Norman (Jake) Peters, IUGG liaison to the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) attended the Open 52nd Executive Committee meeting in Rome, Italy, from 2-6 October. The theme of the scientific symposium on Monday and Tuesday was Air Pollution and Human Exposure Complexity. SCOPE ongoing scientific activities are grouped into 3 clusters: Managing Social and natural Resources, Ecosystem Processes and Biodiversity, and Health and the Environment. These activities were reviewed and a number of new projects and project proposals were presented. SCOPE projects all involve extensive international networks of outstanding scientists.

Related to SCOPE, Jake has copies of all SCOPE volumes published since 1999, and he is willing to loan them to IUGG scientists as requested. As a service, he has been working on scanning the non-electronic (and often out-of-print) volumes for posting under Publications on the SCOPE website (www.icsu-scope.org). He has processed about 36 volumes thus far.

3. Postage stamps honor the International Polar Year

In 2007, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a souvenir sheet of two 84-cent (international letter rate) stamps to commemorate the International Polar Year 2007-2008. They are images of photographs of the aurora australis and aurora borealis. This souvenir sheet will be issued as part of a booklet of similar sheets jointly issued by eight countries: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and the USA. To see the U.S. stamps, visit the website: www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2007stamps/welcome.htm

4. Awards and Honors

Roger Barry, director of NSIDC and the World Data Center for Glaciology, is the recipient of the 2006 Goldthwait Polar Medal, given in recognition of his outstanding contributions to polar research. The Byrd Polar Research Center (BPRC) at Ohio State University awards the medal in honor of Dick Goldthwait, the Center's founder. Barry presented the Goldthwait Lecture, "Arctic Ocean-Ice-Atmosphere Interactions," on October 13, 2006, in Columbus, Ohio.

5. IUGG-Related Meetings Occurring during November 2006 - January 2007

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.

November 3 - 11, 2006
GSDI; Santiago, Chile; Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI) 9th International Conference; Spatial Information: Tool for Reducing Poverty

November 6 - 8, 2006
IASPEI; Santiago, Chile; International Conference Montessus de Ballore- Centennial of the Valparaiso 1906 Earthquake

November 6 - 8, 2006
ESA-ESRIN; Frascati, Italy; 3rd International GOCE User Workshop

November 7 - 8, 2006
START; Beijing, China; Young Scientists’ Global Change Conference

November 7 - 10, 2006
IASPEI; Bangkok, Thailand; 6th General Assembly of Asian Seismological Commission Symposium On the Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster Preparedness and Mitigation

November 9 - 12, 2006
ESSP; Beijing, China; Global Change Open Science Conference on Global Environmental Change: Regional Challenges

November 20 - 22, 2006
IAGA/EMSEV; Agra, India; International Workshop on Electromagnetic Studies related to Earthquakes and Volcanoes

November 20 - 22, 2006
IAG; Johannesburg, South Africa; Building Geospatial Capacity and Infrastructure in Africa (Principal sponsors CSIR South Africa and Department of Land Affairs)

November 27 - December 1, 2006
IAHS; Havana, Cuba; 5th World FRIEND Conference: Water Resources Variability: Processes, Analysis and Impacts

December 7 - 10, 2006
IAHS; St. Moritz, Switzerland; 7th International Workshop on Precipitation in Urban Areas: Extreme Precipitation, Multisource Data Measurement and Uncertainty

End of IUGG Electronic Journal Volume 6 Number 11 (November 1, 2006)
J. A. Joselyn, Secretary General  [ http://www.IUGG.org ]
jjoselyn@cires.colorado.edu, fax:  1 303 497 3645.