EGU Blogs - Highlights from the EGU blogs https://blogs.egu.eu Blogs hosted by the European Geosciences Union Fri, 31 Jul 2026 09:45:41 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.2 <![CDATA[GeoRoundup: the highlights of EGU Journals published during July!]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/31/georoundup-the-highlights-of-egu-journals-published-during-july-2026/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/31/georoundup-the-highlights-of-egu-journals-published-during-july-2026/#comments Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:00:10 +0000 Each month we feature specific Divisions of EGU and during the monthly GeoRoundup we put the journals that publish science from those Divisions at the top of the Highlights section. For July, we are featuring the Planetary and Solar System Sciences (PS), Seismology (SM), and Tectonics and Structural Geology (TS). They are represented by the journals Solid Earth (SE), Geoscientific Model Development (GMD),and Annales Geophysicae (ANGEO).
Geoscientific Model Development A global high-resolution hydrological model to simulate the dynamics of surface liquid reservoirs: application on Mars - 29 July 2026 In this paper, we present a global high-resolution hydrological model to investigate how water may have once flowed and accumulated on Mars. Using detailed topography, the model tracks how lakes and seas form, grow, merge, overflow, and dry out over time. It reveals how a vast northern ocean could emerge from smaller bodies of water. This approach links surface landforms to past climates, offering new perspectives on Mars' watery history and its potential habitability.   Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

From continental to street scales: climate change impacts on atmospheric composition over Europe and London - 21 July 2026

Atmospheric Measurement Techniques The added value of new ground-based observations in improving China's methane emission quantification - 24 July 2026 disdrodb: an open-source Python package for standardized processing, sharing, and analysis of disdrometer data - 30 July 2026 Biogeosciences In-depth characterisation of organic matter thermal lability and composition from Arctic Permafrost thaw slumps - 03 July 2026 Livestock grazing, plant community and abiotic factors shape blue carbon stocks in Nordic coastal marshes - 06 July 2026 Ocean alkalinity enhancement reduces silica ballasting during export due to amplified dissolution - 08 July 2026 Biosignatures of microbial mats in Pleistocene coral reef cores from IODP Expedition 389 (Hawaiian Drowned Reefs) - 09 July 2026 Heterogeneity of tropical diversity and ecosystems: reefal meiofaunas in equatorial western and eastern African islands - 15 July 2026 CO2 and H2O isotope exchange and flux partitioning in Amazonia - 28 July 2026 Earth Surface Dynamics Valley longitudinal profiles record the fluvial landscape evolution and geological structure of the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, East Antarctica - 29 July 2026
Wildfire-induced disruptions to evapotranspiration, runoff, and water-balance closure across California's water supply watersheds - 15 July 2026
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Beyond the 100-year flood: probabilistic flood hazard assessment for King and Pierce Counties under future climate scenarios - 13 July 2026 Europe's transport infrastructure is not ready to face climate change - 22 July 2026 Assessment of seismicity and risk from gas injection in the Groningen gas field - 28 July 2026 The Cryosphere Review article: The Foundation-Patuxent-Academy ice stream system, Antarctica - 01 July 2026 Contrasting dynamics of lake- and marine-terminating glaciers under same climatic conditions - 13 July 2026 Brief communication: Temperature-driven shrinkage of a disappearing Himalayan glacier - 21 July 2026 EGU in the news: ]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/31/georoundup-the-highlights-of-egu-journals-published-during-july-2026/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Reflecting on fifty years of Mars through Viking 1’s lens]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/30/reflecting-on-fifty-years-of-mars-through-viking-1s-lens/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/30/reflecting-on-fifty-years-of-mars-through-viking-1s-lens/#comments Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:00:35 +0000 On July 20, 1976, a machine of steel and titanium dropped through a thin atmosphere and touched the dirt of Chryse Planitia. Scientists at NASA held their breath, since five years earlier, the Soviet Union's Mars 3 probe had died less than two minutes after touchdown. To mitigate this nightmare, engineers programmed Viking 1 to scan its own footpad first. If the lander sank into oblivion, humanity would at least understand the mechanism of its failure.

Instead, the line-scan camera did send back some data. Just a few minutes after Viking 1 landed, an alien landscape emerged on television screens across Earth. There stood the footpad, and for the first time, humanity looked at the surface of another world from the ground up.

As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of those first images this July 20, 2026, the emotional resonance of that moment remains undiminished. It shifted our place in the cosmos which traded science fiction fantasies for a harsh, beautiful reality.

First things first: Why is humanity interested in Mars in the first place?

The short answer is: we look to Mars because it is similar to Earth’s own history and potential future. In our solar system, Mars can be described as our closest environmental relative. It possesses a solid surface, an atmosphere, polar ice caps, and a day-night cycle that mirrors our own. To study Mars is to investigate how planetary bodies evolve, how atmospheres erode, and how climates collapse. In other words, studying Mars means we can maybe, just maybe, learn about what turned what may have once been a habitable environment to a barren land, and hopefully prevent Earth from a similar demise. In addition to learning, there is an existential yearning that drives the entire mission: the search for our cosmic origins. The main objective of the Viking program was to answer a question that has haunted human philosophy for millennia: Are we alone in the universe? Scientists tested the Martian soil because they sought to learn whether life is a miraculous anomaly unique to Earth, or a natural, inevitable consequence of chemistry when given the right planetary conditions. Mars, a preserved time capsule from a period billions of years ago when both planets were warm, wet, and brimming with potential, is perhaps the most suitable environment - for now- to understand the origins of life as we know it.

So, why did these images taken by Viking 1 matter?

Before Viking 1 sent back its first photos, Mars existed largely in the world of science fiction and grainy, low-resolution orbital mapping (Mariner 9: no shade, you did great for a first-timer!). The lander’s eye-level images gave humanity a horizon to look toward, grounding our species in an entirely new wilderness. The media frenzy following those initial transmissions highlighted how these images stirred the public. When the first colour composites arrived, technicians calibrated the color balances to mimic Earth's environmental tones. This led to morning newspaper headlines showcasing a reassuring, bright blue Martian sky.
“Look at that sky—light blue sky—and the reddish hue! It's a very exciting thing to see, this distinct reddish coloration to the surface. These are subtle hues. It's a geological scene, a natural scene. Even in the deserts here on Earth the reds are not crayon reds as painted by a child. This is a surprisingly terrestrial‐like desert scene.” said Dr. Thomas A. Mutch of Brown University, a geologist and leader of the picture‐making team.
When NASA scientists corrected the data hours later, revealing a pale, salmon-pink horizon tinted by suspended iron dust, the shift triggered a wave of public astonishment: The true Martian sky defied human expectations. Years later, a photograph captured from the Viking 1 orbiter over the Cydonia region generated a decades-long media storm. The image showed a rocky mesa that, due to low resolution and low sun angles, resembled a massive human face staring up into space. Tabloids ran wild with theories of ancient alien civilizations after the Face on Mars, proving the desperate human instinct to find fragments of ourselves in the cold dark of the universe. Though advanced rovers later proved the Face on Mars was simply a trick of light and shadow, the photograph demonstrated the immense cultural power of planetary imagery. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41HXR-OiycY[/embed]

50 years late: A renaissance?

This anniversary arrives at a moment of spectacular scientific revision. For decades, textbooks taught that Viking’s biology experiments yielded a definitive negative result for life, which rendered Mars as a self-sterilizing wasteland. However, a recent perspective indexed on PubMed argues that the scientific community spent a half-century misinterpreting the mission's gas chromatography data.

The 2026 study highlights that when the Viking instruments heated the Martian soil to look for organic compounds, they inadvertently triggered a destructive chemical reaction with native perchlorates: oxidizing salts (like perchlorate) that were entirely unknown to scientists in 1976. This reaction incinerated the very organic molecules the mission sought to find and left behind chemical residues that the original teams dismissed as terrestrial contamination. The authors suggest that the positive metabolic signals Viking recorded are completely compatible with a specialized ecosystem of Martian microbes, a hypothetical model named BARSOOM (Bacterial Autotrophs that Respire with Stored Oxygen on Mars).

Concurrently, researchers publishing with European Geosciences Union (EGU) have breathed new life into the mission's data. Climate scientists publishing research in EGU's journal Geoscientific Model Development have combined Viking’s historic, multi-year atmospheric baselines with modern satellite observations to create 3D global climate models. These simulations trace the movement of dust storms and water-ice clouds across the planet and demonstrate that Mars possesses seasonal dust and an atmospheric cycle that continuously shapes its surface features.

The road ahead

In 2026, Mars exploration is transitioning to a commercial and international era. Following recent domestic budget constraints that left the initiative unfunded, private and international alternatives are accelerating. China is steadily advancing its Tianwen-3 Mars Sample Return mission for a 2028 launch. Concurrently, NASA announced last month that is set to launch the Aeolus atmospheric orbiter on a commercial rocket. Engineers are also testing advanced deep-space infrastructure, including a nuclear electric fission prototype outlined under NASA's Space Reactor-1 Freedom pathfinder to shorten transit windows for future crewed expeditions.

These modern exploration models would probably not have been possible without the data established by Viking 1. The atmospheric density profiles captured during Viking’s 1976 descent still calibrate the entry, descent, and landing systems used by modern rovers and upcoming commercial spacecraft alike. The climate models tracking Martian dust cycles expand upon the continuous atmospheric baseline that Viking started fifty years ago. Viking 1 remains the genesis, the mission that provided the foundational proof that landing on Mars was achievable, and supplied the data that makes current plans for human exploration viable.

My brain is blowing with questions right now: "Did terrestrial life as we understand it originate in Mars"? Did Mars have oceans and rivers? Will Mars ever be habitable by Earthlings?

Maybe one day, I'll return to this blog, with a smirk, thinking: It's an honour to be alive in times where these questions have solid answers.

 ]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/30/reflecting-on-fifty-years-of-mars-through-viking-1s-lens/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Mangroves at the edge: Coastal ecosystems in a year of climate extremes]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/24/mangroves-at-the-edge-coastal-ecosystems-in-a-year-of-climate-extremes/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/24/mangroves-at-the-edge-coastal-ecosystems-in-a-year-of-climate-extremes/#comments Fri, 24 Jul 2026 10:00:10 +0000 International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem. We are currently experiecing critical crossroads globally, where groundbreaking data on global forest recovery collides with the immediate threats of an escalating climate crisis.El Niño is pushing Pacific sea surface temperatures toward levels that rank among the highest on record, and climate specialists expect damaging marine heat reaching almost half of the globe till the end of 2026. In the past, this kind of climatic settings have tipped mangroves’ resilience almost to a collapse point. So continue reading to learn about how these significant coastal buffers are faring on the front lines, and why our approach to protecting them must urgently evolve.
A strengthening El Niño is pushing Pacific sea surface temperatures toward levels that rank among the highest on record, and climate specialist expect damaging marine heat reaching almost half of the globe till the end of 2026. In the past, this kind of climatic settings have tipped mangroves’ resilience almost to a collapse point. Mangrove trees are the key element of these ecosystems. They are extremely good at tolerating stress, unless this stress is delivered too fast, or stacked. A great example is the 2015–16 El Niño, when more than 7,000 hectares of mangrove forest died within months along the Gulf of Carpentaria, in Australia. The El Niño suppressed rainfall and dropped regional sea level just as temperatures spiked, and the combination of reduced tidal flushing, high evaporation and hypersaline sediment triggered hydraulic failure. This means that the mangrove trees died of thirst while standing in salt water (Gauthey et al. 2022). Another example is a case in the Maldives in 2020, where record sea levels driven by an extreme Indian Ocean Dipole event outpaced sediment accretion almost five times, killing almost a quarter of the archipelago's mangroves (Carruthers et al. 2024). It is important to understand such mechanism because they can be extrapolated and used for didactic measures. Natural climatic oscillations currently operate on top of a warmer, higher baseline. Every swing toward hypersalinity, heat stress or anomalous sea level starts from a more precarious position than it did fifty years ago. With El Niño again strengthening through 2026, coastal scientists are watching for stress indicators in vulnerable estuaries, such as northern Australia and East Africa. Such indicators or early warning signals can vary from sudden canopy browning to rhizosphere salinity spikes, or dieback at the driest, most tidally restricted edges of mangrove stands. [caption id="attachment_51994" align="alignright" width="300"] Narrow mangrove tree strip next to a dune in the semi-arid coast of Brazil. Arid and semi-arid mangroves are among the most endangered ecosystems facing climate change and sea-level rise.
Photo credit: Guilherme Abuchahla.[/caption] The stakes of losing mangroves go beyond what the eyes can see. Mangroves are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth, rivalled only by peatlands, because they bury organic carbon in waterlogged, oxygen-poor sediment where it can persist for centuries. Global stocks are estimated in the billions of tons of carbon, and losing mangroves can liberate that buried (blue) carbon back into the atmosphere as disturbed sediment oxidizes (Macreadie et al. 2021). Mangroves also form a living buffer against storm surges, besides slowing down shoreline erosion, and providing nursery habitat for marine and estuarine life. Grey or green-grey nature-based solutions cannot match the ecosystem services that a healthy mangrove can provide. That message has finally started to come across to some policymakers, at least on paper. The Global Mangrove Alliance’s 2024 State of the World’s Mangroves report set out goals to halt net mangrove loss, restore half of degraded mangrove area, and double the extent under formal protection by 2030 – with more than 40% of remaining mangroves already under some form of protected status. Nevertheless, there is a caveat pointed out by the report: “protected” does not mean “safe.” Protection status varies between countries, from 5 to 75%. Besides, a park boundary drawn on a map does little against a hypersaline pulse delivered by an El Niño-driven sea-level drop. It is important to question ourselves whether protection on paper survives human needs (e.g., palm oil concessions, shrimp ponds, coastal development) as well as an increasingly erratic ocean.

A frontline in both directions

Frontline conservation battles are still being lost in some areas even as they’re being won in others. Some of that pressure hasn’t let up. In the Niger Delta, Nigeria, the largest mangrove system has lost over 2,500 square kilometers in the past 38 years, representing more than a quarter of the historic extent. That massive loss was driven by oil pollution, urban expansion and unsustainable harvesting layered on top of the delta’s own subsidence (Wang et al. 2025). However, not all is lost. In fact, a recent study based on four decades of satellite imagery, found that global mangrove cover, after a steep decline through the late twentieth century, turned a corner around 2010 and has been in net expansion since, driven by natural regeneration, active restoration, and mangroves recolonizing abandoned aquaculture ponds and freshly formed mudflats across Asia and Latin America (Zhang et al. 2026). Still, the net change across the full 40-year record works out to roughly a 1% decline. Mangroves in Southeast Asia have changed from historic loss to measurable net growth, while West and Central Africa continue to lose area. But the headline finding corrects the doom narrative that has dominated mangrove news for over two decades.

Cautious optimism, not complacency

I don't think the optimism here is misplaced, but it comes with a condition attached (Friess et al. 2020). The recovery documented by Zhang and colleagues largely reflects decades of restoration investment, community-led replanting, and improved monitoring. Also, the Global Mangrove Watch platform that underpins so much of this research is itself a product of that effort (Bunting et al. 2022). None of it was automatic, and none of it guarantees mangroves can absorb what a strengthening El Niño and a warming mean state mean synergistically to them. The Gulf of Carpentaria and Maldives diebacks both happened in systems that looked stable right up until they didn’t (for more on resilience and collapse thresholds, refer to Gunderson 2000 and Dahdouh-Guebas et al. 2021). The good news in this Mangrove Day 2026 is that mangroves have now more capacity to recover globally than we thought a decade ago, and the policy frameworks to keep restoring them already exist. Whether that capacity is enough depends on whether the current El Niño behaves like a stress test the ecosystem can pass, or like Carpentaria in 2016 and the Maldives in 2020 – a threshold some estuaries quietly cross.
Watching the consequences of that, in real time, may be the most relevant mangrove science question of the year.
[caption id="attachment_51992" align="alignleft" width="225"] Author, Guilherme Abuchahla, in Vietnam.[/caption] The distinction between resilience and inevitability is very important. A rebounding global trend line is good news, but it is an average built from thousands of local stories, some of recovery and some of continued collapse. Furthermore, as discussed in the recently concluded largest mangrove conference in the world, the Mangrove, Macrobenthos and Management Meeting (MMM7), increase in mangrove area does not automatically correspond to healthy and permanent mangroves. Some restoration efforts are based in planting seedlings disregarding reference sites for diversity, density, and biodiversity. Furthermore, the ongoing losses in the Niger Delta, for example, are part of the same dataset as the Southeast Asian gains. For coastal communities living behind a thinning mangrove fringe this El Niño season, the global trend line does not mean much for their livelihoods if their particular stretch of coast is the one crossing a threshold. That is exactly why consistent monitoring, rapid-response restoration funding, and local-scale early warning for salinity and heat stress need to be highlighted alongside the global success story.

References

Bunting P, Rosenqvist A, Hilarides L, Lucas RM, Thomas N (2022) Global Mangrove Watch: Updated 2010 Mangrove Forest Extent (v2.5). Remote Sens 14:1034. doi:10.3390/rs14041034 Carruthers L, Ersek V, Maher D, Sanders C, Tait D, Soares J, Floyd M, Hashim AS, Helber S, Garnett M, East H, Johnson JA, Ponta G, Sippo JZ (2024) Sea-level rise and extreme Indian Ocean Dipole explain mangrove dieback in the Maldives. Sci Rep 14:27012. doi:10.1038/s41598-024-73776-z Dahdouh-Guebas F, Hugé J, Abuchahla GMO, Cannicci S, Jayatissa LP, Kairo JG, Arachchilage SK, Koedam N, Nijamdeen TWGFM, Mukherjee N, Poti M, Prabakaran N, Ratsimbazafy HA, Satyanarayana B, Thavanayagam M, Velde KV, Wodehouse D (2021) Reconciling nature, people and policy in the mangrove social-ecological system through the adaptive cycle heuristic. Estuar Coast Shelf Sci 248:106942. doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2020.106942 Friess DA, Yando ES, Abuchahla GMO, Adams JB, Cannicci S, Canty SWJ, Cavanaugh KC, Connolly RM, Cormier N, Dahdouh-Guebas F, Diele K, Feller IC, Fratini S, Jennerjahn TC, Lee SY, Ogurcak DE, Ouyang X, Rogers K, Rowntree JK, Sharma S, Sloey TM, Wee AKS (2020) Mangroves give cause for conservation optimism, for now. Current Biology 30:R135-158. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.12.054 Gauthey A, Backes D, Balland J, Alam I, Maher DT, Cernusak LA, Duke NC, Medlyn BE, Tissue DT, Choat B (2022) The Role of Hydraulic Failure in a Massive Mangrove Die-Off Event. Front Plant Sci 13:822136. doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.822136 Global Mangrove Alliance (2024) Global Mangrove Alliance: The State of the World's Mangroves 2024. Available at: https://www.mangrovealliance.org/mangrove-forests Gunderson LH (2000) Ecological Resilience — In Theory and Application. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 31:425-439 Macreadie PI, Costa MDP, Atwood TB, Friess DA, Kelleway JJ, Kennedy H, Lovelock CE, Serrano O, Duarte CM (2021) Blue carbon as a natural climate solution Nat Rev Earth Environ 2:826–839. doi:10.1038/s43017-021-00224-1 Wang D, Dai Z, Long C, Liang X, Xiong Y, Cheng J (2025) The serious loss of mangrove forest over the largest delta of Africa, Niger Delta: causes and reasons. Mar Environ Res 210:107350. doi:10.1016/j.marenvres.2025.107350 Zhang Z, Murray NJ, Song X-P, Bunting P, Worthington TA, Fatoyinbo L, Mao D, Jia M, Arifanti VB, Aung T, Htay SS, Friess DA (2026) Unexpected expansion and regrowth in Earth's mangrove forests over the past four decades. Science 2026. doi:10.1126/science.aec9773]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/24/mangroves-at-the-edge-coastal-ecosystems-in-a-year-of-climate-extremes/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[GeoTalk: Meet Trevelayne Faller, Communications Officer for EU-funded raw materials research]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/23/geotalk-meet-trevelayne-faller-communications-officer-for-eu-funded-raw-materials-research/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/23/geotalk-meet-trevelayne-faller-communications-officer-for-eu-funded-raw-materials-research/#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:00:22 +0000 Welcome to GeoTalk, Trevelayne! Could you introduce yourself to our readers? I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience. Throughout my career, I’ve developed and implemented communication strategies that translate scientific knowledge into clear and engaging narratives. Currently, I’m the Project Communications Officer for the MOSMIN (Multiscale Observation Services for Mining-related Deposits) project. MOSMIN is an EU-funded research project coordinated by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). The project aims to develop innovative solutions to monitor the environmental impacts of mine waste while assessing its potential as a source of secondary raw materials. My role is to communicate the project’s research and impact to a wider audience
Please tell us a bit about the European Critical Raw Materials Act signed in 2024. Why should geoscientists be paying attention?
The European Critical Raw Materials Act is a key piece of legislation supporting the green and digital transitions, while aiming to reduce Europe’s dependence on external suppliers. The Act identifies the critical and strategic raw materials that are of importance for the EU’s economy. It also sets out strategies to strengthen Europe’s supply of these resources. Achieving the ambitions set out in the European Critical Raw Materials Act is a challenge for EU. The geology of the continent is incredibly diverse, and so is its policy landscape. While some approaches can be applied across borders, many need to be adapted to local circumstances. At the same time, much of Europe’s mineral potential remains underexplored, meaning there are still gaps in our understanding of available resources. This is where geoscientists have an important role to play. Their expertise is essential for leveraging modern technology, identifying resource opportunities, understanding geological potential, assessing environmental impacts, and providing the scientific evidence needed to support sustainable resource management.
Your team produced a policy brief about the European Critical Raw Materials Act, which was funded by the EU. What impact do you hope it will achieve?
 Together with five other projects in the European Sustainable Mining and Innovation Network , MOSMIN contributed to a joint policy brief exploring how Earth Observation and Machine Learning  can support the ambitions of the European Critical Raw Materials Act. The brief highlights how these technologies can contribute to areas such as increasing domestic resource knowledge, improving circularity, strengthening monitoring, and supporting innovation. MOSMIN’s contribution focuses on the monitoring solutions being developed within the project to improve tailings dam safety, track mining-related contamination, support land rehabilitation, and assess the potential to recover valuable materials from mine waste. Together with innovations from across the European Sustainable Mining and Innovation Network , the brief demonstrates how Earth Observation and Machine Learning can provide valuable information to support more informed decisions across the raw materials sector. Beyond highlighting technological opportunities, we hope the brief encourages greater awareness of both the potential and the challenges associated with wider adoption of these technologies, including fragmented regulations, limited access to high-quality data, and knowledge gaps. Ultimately, we hope it strengthens collaboration between researchers, policymakers, industry, and other stakeholders to help translate innovation into practical, evidence-based solutions.
How do Earth Observation and Machine Learning support access to and management of critical raw materials?
As Europe works towards greater autonomy in its critical raw materials supply, one challenge it faces is finding ways to secure resources without placing unnecessary pressure on ecosystems and local communities. This is where Earth Observation and Machine Learning are becoming increasingly valuable tools. Earth Observation technologies capture vast amounts of data continuously, and often more cost-effectively, than traditional field-based methods, while Machine Learning helps make sense of these datasets by identifying patterns and relationships that might otherwise go unnoticed. Together, they provide a clearer picture of where critical raw materials can be sourced, how mining activities are changing over time, and what impacts they may have on the surrounding environment. One of the major challenges in this area is managing the large volumes of waste generated by mining. In MOSMIN, we're combining Machine Learning with integrated Earth Observation data from satellites, drones, and ground-based measurements to create a continuous, high-resolution view of mine waste deposits and their surrounding environments. This helps mining operators monitor the stability of waste storage facilities, track contamination, support land rehabilitation, and assess whether secondary raw materials can be recovered from existing mine waste.
Where do you see the biggest gap between scientific advances in these fields and their uptake in EU policy?
As highlighted in the joint policy brief, the biggest gap is not necessarily in the technology itself, but in translating scientific advances into solutions that are recognised, trusted, and routinely used by decision-makers. Many Earth Observation and Machine Learning technologies are already technically mature, but their wider adoption is limited by institutional, regulatory, and knowledge barriers. For example, many permitting and monitoring frameworks still rely primarily on traditional field-based methods and do not yet formally recognise Earth observation-derived evidence. At the same time, many stakeholders lack the expertise or resources to interpret and integrate these new data sources into their workflows. Building awareness and making the technology more accessible to a wider range of stakeholders will therefore be key to increasing trust and adoption. Importantly, this does not mean replacing traditional monitoring approaches but rather using new technologies to complement and enhance existing methods where they provide additional value. The policy brief also highlights the need for better integration between different data sources. Earth Observation, geophysical measurements, and ground-based observations each provide valuable insights, but common standards and improved interoperability are needed to combine these datasets into reliable, actionable information. This is also central to MOSMIN, where we're integrating data from multiple sources into operational monitoring services that can support decision-making.
What can geoscientists do to close this gap and make an impact?
Geoscientists have an important role to play in closing the gap between scientific innovation and policy implementation. This starts with working more closely with policymakers, industry, and other stakeholders to ensure that new technologies address real-world needs and can be integrated into existing decision-making frameworks. Geoscientists can assist in evaluating Earth Observation and Machine Learning approaches by implementing pilot projects to assess their technical viability and limitations, and by clearly communicating them. By combining scientific expertise with collaboration and knowledge exchange, they can help translate innovation into practical solutions that support a more sustainable and resilient critical raw materials sector.]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/23/geotalk-meet-trevelayne-faller-communications-officer-for-eu-funded-raw-materials-research/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Why do Earth’s hidden stress fields matter for our future? Let's explore the latest insights from the World Stress Map database]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/17/why-does-earths-hidden-stress-fields-matter-for-our-future-lets-explore-the-latest-insights-from-the-world-stress-map-database/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/17/why-does-earths-hidden-stress-fields-matter-for-our-future-lets-explore-the-latest-insights-from-the-world-stress-map-database/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2026 10:00:11 +0000 landmark paper in the journal Solid Earth where they detail the 2025 release of the World Stress Map (WSM). Marking the project's 40th anniversary, the paper, titled "Patterns of contemporary horizontal stress orientation in the Earth’s crust derived from the World Stress Map Database 2025", represents a massive leap forward in our understanding of planetary geodynamics. This latest release provides a high-resolution view of... basically how the Earth's crust is being squeezed horizontally (referred to as maximum horizontal stress SHmax) across the globe. The scientists who authored this paper compiled and analysed 100,842 quality-ranked data records, and have therefore more than doubled the data available from the previous 2016 release. This uncovered unprecedented scientific insights into how, where, and why the Earth's crust bends and yields

The foundation of a sustainable future

At first glance, mapping the orientation of stress deep underground might seem like a purely academic exercise. However, knowledge of the present-day stress field is a fundamental prerequisite for applied research and modern subsurface engineering. On a macro level, it is essential for understanding large-scale geodynamic processes, tracking global plate tectonics, and decoding the mechanisms behind destructive earthquakes. But beyond Earth sciences, understanding crustal stress is becoming increasingly urgent for humanity's transition to more sustainable economies. As we keep leveraging the subsurface for green energy solutions, such as the exploration of deep geothermal reservoirs and the development of large-scale geo-energy storage, new engineering concepts place heavy demands on geomechanical integrity. Engineers must, therefore, ensure the long-term stability of these reservoirs; it is impossible to safely drill, fracture rock, or store thermal energy deep underground without knowing the precise directions of the forces acting upon those rock formations. In addition to this, crustal stress data is a critical safety parameter for the design of deep geological repositories intended for radioactive waste. These important facilities are typically planned at depths between 400 and 1,000 meters. What's important about this paper is that it also highlights that stress regimes change significantly with depth. Near the surface, horizontal stress magnitudes are frequently larger than the vertical stress (which is controlled solely by gravity), which leads to a thrust faulting stress regime. As depth increases to the zones where earthquakes typically nucleate, these regimes can shift entirely. These changes in the stress regime with depth have a direct impact on the structural design of underground tunnels and storage caverns, and this makes high-resolution stress mapping quite a necessity to ensure environmental and public safety over millennial timescales.

A paradigm shift in geodynamics

Perhaps the most exciting scientific breakthrough from the 2025 WSM database is how the volume of new data has upended a long-standing geological hypothesis. When the WSM project was initially launched in 1986 as a task force of the International Lithosphere Program, its primary objective was to test a hypothesis proposed by Voight in the mid-1960s. Voight posited that the orientation of the maximum horizontal stress in the Earth's crust is predominantly controlled by massive, large-scale plate tectonic forces. For decades, early maps with fewer data points broadly supported this idea, suggesting that stress orientations generally followed the direction of relative plate motions. However, the unprecedented density of the new 2025 dataset proves that this traditional hypothesis must be revised. By estimating SHmax orientations on regular global grids using search radii between 50 and 500 kilometers, the authors concluded that in intraplate regions, which are areas far from the active edges of tectonic plates, there are substantial and dramatic rotations in the orientation of SHmax. In other words, rather than being entirely dictated by uniform plate boundary forces, the stress field in these regions is significantly influenced by second-order effects, such as lateral variations in rock stiffness, density contrasts, and the gravitational potential energy generated by high topography. The paper provides evidence of these localised stress rotations. In the Alpine foreland of central Europe, for instance, the SHmax orientation rotates by approximately 50 degrees, shifting from a north-south alignment in the east to a northwest-southeast alignment in the western Alps. Even more striking is the high-density data emerging from eastern Australia. When they applied a 50-kilometer search radius on a global grid, the authors demonstate that the stress orientation in regions like the Surat Basin rotates by more than 50 degrees over distances of less than 100 kilometers. [caption id="attachment_51961" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Stress map of the Alpine foreland. Black and coloured lines indicate data records of the orientation of maximum horizontal stress (SHmax) with A–C quality. Line length is according to data quality and their colours mark the stress regime with red for normal faulting (NF), green for strike-slip faulting (SS), blue for thrust faulting (TF), and black for unknown stress regime (U). White bars on the 0.2° grid show the dataset of the mean SHmax orientation with a search radius of 50 km. Dashed black line denote the national boundaries.[/caption] These gradual rotations occur even in areas that lack massive topographic mountains and do not necessarily correlate with local fault lines. If we look at a dense dataset of 680 vertical boreholes in the northern Bowen Basin of Australia, we can see uniform stress over a 30,000 square kilometer area despite the presence of faults! Yet just further south, the stress orientation rotates up to 60 degrees. This suggests that in regions where the horizontal differential stress is low, regional topography and local rock stiffness step up to take the wheel and override the massive, continent-shifting forces of plate tectonics. This paradigm-shifting observation was only made possible by the fascinating methodological advancements of the WSM 2025 release. The history of stress measurement dates back to the 1930s with surface relief methods, evolving through the 1950s with flat jacks, the 1970s with hydraulic fracturing and borehole breakouts, and the rapid expansion of global seismological networks. To integrate these different stress indicators, the scientists rely on a quality-ranking scheme. For the 2025 release, the authors overhauled this quality-ranking system to make it machine-readable and compatible with a new Python-based database infrastructure known as MaRS (Management and Repository of Stress). They discarded rarely used or unverified indicators, refined the strict mathematical rules for assigning data quality (ranging from A to E based on standard deviation), and introduced new depth and distance requirements.

From orientation to magnitude

So, what is the next frontier for the World Stress Map? While the 2025 release provides an incredibly detailed, high-resolution map of stress orientation, the geosciences engineering community is looking to quantify the complete, three-dimensional stress tensor. The authors note that the newly documented local rotations in SHmax orientation will serve as proxies to calibrate complex 3D geomechanical-numerical models. These advanced models will finally allow scientists to quantify the relative contributions of continent-pushing plate boundary forces versus localised crustal stiffness. This research will have significant implications for evaluating tectonic fault criticality, which means predicting how close a fault is to slipping, which itself is a safety concern for the energy transition. However, to perfect these predictive geomechanical models, scientists need more than just the direction of the Earth's stress: they need to know its accurate physical power! In regions where the SHmax orientation is uniform, or where data coverage remains sparse, stress magnitudes become the essential missing puzzle piece for model calibration. Initial efforts are already underway to compile an open-access database of stress magnitudes, starting with a pilot focused on Germany and its neighboring countries.

Final thoughts

The 2025 release of the World Stress Map is a significant re-evaluation of the immense forces that shape our world. Thanks to their work, Heidbach and Rajabi have now armed modern researchers, engineers, and policymakers with the open-access tools necessary to safely navigate the deep subsurface. Whether we are modeling the mechanics of the next major earthquake, drilling geothermal well to power a green city, or designing a repository to safely bury hazardous waste for millennia, the World Stress Map makes sure that humanity is no longer operating in the dark. As the project looks toward its next evolution, mapping the magnitudes of these invisible forces, we edge ever closer to mastering this restless crust we call home.]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/17/why-does-earths-hidden-stress-fields-matter-for-our-future-lets-explore-the-latest-insights-from-the-world-stress-map-database/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[The myth of scientific neutrality: A vacuum we can no longer ignore]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/10/the-myth-of-scientific-neutrality-a-vacuum-we-can-no-longer-ignore/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/10/the-myth-of-scientific-neutrality-a-vacuum-we-can-no-longer-ignore/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2026 10:00:58 +0000 Wars, systemic violations of international laws and the acceleration of environmental crises continue to unfold across the globe In this context, geoscientists have increasingly been called to step outside the ivory tower and reflect on their role, responsibility, and influence. This raises uncomfortable but necessary questions about our role as scientists: what responsibilities do we have towards society? Are we fully aware and informed of the implications of the research we carry out, the collaborations we establish, and the institutions we legitimise through our work? More broadly, it invites reflections on a long-standing assumption within academia: that science can operate as a neutral enterprise, detached from political and ethical implications. In the current geopolitical landscape, this notion is increasingly revealing its limitations. This debate is not new, yet as geoscientists we have often struggled to take a clear stand, even as the urgency to do so has become impossible to ignore. This was the topic we discussed during the Townhall Meeting The Myth of Neutrality: Geoscience Responsibility in Times of Global Conflict at this year’s EGU General Assembly. As organisers, we initially worried about the level of engagement from the geoscience community. For many of us, these are not abstract issues but realities we confront daily: through the collaborations we build, the research questions we choose to pursue, the places where we conduct our analyses, and the people who ultimately have access to the knowledge we produce. Yet discussions around ethics, complicity, and responsibility still often remain at the margins of mainstream geoscientific spaces, and in some cases have been actively constrained, silenced or discouraged, particularly in relation to the gross human rights violations against the Palestinian people systematically perpetrated by Israel. What we witnessed that evening, however, exceeded our expectations. On the conference’s busy first day, at 7pm, the room slowly began to fill until it eventually reached maximum capacity. Researchers from across disciplines, institutions, and 11 countries from 3 continents joined what became a deeply engaged, critical, and necessary discussion. [caption id="attachment_51915" align="alignnone" width="602"] Fig. 1. Illustration by Greta Dekker, a participant of the Townhall Meeting, reflecting the discussion on the myth of neutrality in science and its role within geoscience at the Townhall Meeting.[/caption] Three topics were discussed:
  • Beyond neutrality. The discussion explored the meaning of scientific neutrality and its limits, examining the ethical responsibilities of researchers both working in contexts shaped by conflict, colonial legacies, and political power, also in relation to their own national and institutional settings. Participants debated how research agendas, funding structures, and institutional collaborations are never fully detached from geopolitical interests and inequality, while also reflecting on how to define ethical boundaries without undermining scientific exchange, individual agency, while avoiding the reproduction of exclusionary forms of knowledge production.
  • Ethical procurement and institutional due diligence. Participants discussed how goods, services, data, and collaborations are sourced in ways that uphold ethical principles, especially with respect to human rights, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility throughout the entire supply chain. In the context of global conflicts and threats to human rights, participants also discussed on how and by whom due diligence should be carried out, to avoid complicity in harm, increase awareness of dual-use and potential misuse, and promote transparency and accountability of research institutions.
  • The dilemma of cooperation and conscientious objection. Participants debated whether continuing collaborations with institutions implicated in human right violation risks normalising or legitimising violence, while also reflecting on how to support dissenting scholars within those same institutions and protect researchers who take ethical or political positions from retaliation. The debate highlighted broad support for collective forms of protest, including petitions, refusal of funding linked to human rights violations, and institutional pressure.
What emerged from the Townhall was a shared recognition that the geoscience community can no longer hide behind the myth of neutrality. As scientists, our role is not only to study environments and societies, but also to care for them. Principles such as humanity, objectivity, independence, impartiality, and “do no harm” remain fundamental to scientific and ethical practice. Yet neutrality is not equivalent to these principles: neutrality itself is not an absence of politics, but often a political position disguised as absence. Research choices are rarely neutral. They are driven by funding schemes, institutional priorities, and geopolitical interests. In these contexts, claiming neutrality is not without consequences: it can mean overlooking how scientific collaborations, infrastructures, and technologies become entangled with systems of violence, exclusion and exploitation (see Figure 2). [caption id="attachment_51918" align="alignnone" width="606"] Fig. 2. Mentimeter word cloud during the Townhall Meeting, showing participants’ responses to the question: “In one word, what is the greatest danger of scientific neutrality?” Almost all the participants agreed on the urgent need to create collective spaces to openly discuss ethics, responsibility, and the political implications of our research practices, while taking clearer public stances in the face of systemic violence and injustice.[/caption] For instance, participants expressed support for promoting or signing petitions to protest against war crimes, as well as for refusing funding from public or private entities involved in human rights violations. In particular, it was argued that scientific institutions, rather than  only individual researchers, should take a stand by suspending collaborations and funding with human rights violators, while also adopting  shared responsibility for monitoring dual-use procurement and investigating the environmental legacy of wars. These discussions reinforced  the importance of recognising that research is never detached from the world it describes, and that this entanglement demands explicit ethical responsibility rather than assumed neutrality. Perhaps this is what it means to finally step outside the ivory tower. The question is no longer whether geoscience is political, but whether we are willing to openly engage with the ethical and political responsibilities that already shape our work. Are we ready, as a community, to engage with these responsibilities?
This blog post was written by the following scientists: Stefano Corradini Stefano Corradini is a Senior Researcher at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) in Italy. He holds a Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Genova (Italy). Specialized in the physics of atmospheric remote sensing, his primary research focuses on developing satellite- and ground-based algorithms for the volcanic cloud monitoring. Stefano leads national and international research projects and is a co-founder and organizer of the Convective and Volcanic Clouds (CVC) international training school. Marco Cervino Marco Cervino, physicist, is researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Science and Climate (ISAC-CNR). His first research question (degree thesis) regarded the so-called ozone hole, followed by atmospheric pollution detection and measurements from satellites and in situ; then he developed the interest on health effects of pollution. Now he brings his expertise in climate mitigation and adaptation public debates, with special attention to climate justice, wars and policrisis, advocating the public interest. Claudia D’Oriano Claudia D'Oriano is a researcher in volcanology and petrology at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) in Pisa (Italy). She holds a PhD in Earth Sciences from the Department of Science and Technology of the University of Cagliari. Her research aims to understand all the processes that occur from magma formation to eruption, up to the dispersal of the products, in order to derive eruptive dynamics and risk assessments. She is particularly dedicated to disseminating knowledge among small communities and ethnic minorities living near volcanoes, to reduce their vulnerability to phenomena related to volcanic activity Alessia Matanó Alessia Matanó is a researcher in the Water and Climate Risk group at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), VU Amsterdam. In her work, Alessia explores the intersection between hydrological extremes and society with a specific focus on migration, food security and conflict. Alessia holds a PhD in drought and flood risk dynamics from IVM – VU Amsterdam. Tomaso Esposti Ongaro Tomaso Esposti Ongaro holds a degree in Physics from the University of Pisa and a PhD in Physical Modeling for Environmental Protection from the University of Bologna (Italy). His research focuses on the physics of granular media and multiphase flows, applied to the numerical simulation of volcanic explosive eruptions. He has applied his research to volcanic hazard assessment, as part of activities under agreement with the Italian Department of Civil Protection, focusing on Italian (Vesuvius, Stromboli, Campi Flegrei, Etna) and worldwide volcanoes (La Soufrière de Guadeloupe - FR; Soufrière Hills, Montserrat - UK; Mount St. Helens - USA). He is currently the Director of the Pisa Division of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) and a member of the Board of Directors of the INGV Center for Computational Geosciences.]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/10/the-myth-of-scientific-neutrality-a-vacuum-we-can-no-longer-ignore/feed/ 1 <![CDATA[How to get involved with EGU throughout the year]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/03/how-to-get-involved-with-egu-throughout-the-year/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/03/how-to-get-involved-with-egu-throughout-the-year/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2026 10:00:57 +0000 General Assembly, you may have discovered that EGU is much more than an annual conference. Or perhaps, you recently joined EGU as a member, and are now wondering: How can I become more involved in the EGU community? My name is Josephine Cakuru, and I am the Community Development Assistant of the EGU Executive Office. Building upon my experience working in community development, I will highlight some of the most common questions I have heard from members and share some practical ways to stay connected, build skills, and engage with the Union throughout the year, including funding opportunities, community resources, how to get involved with your scientific community, and discover our early career scientist network.

Funding opportunities

One of the questions that came up during the 2026 General Assembly was whether EGU offers study scholarships. Whilst EGU is not a funding body for research, the Union invests in activities and initiatives that support the community all year round. These include financial support for: For more detailed overview of available support, please visit: EGU support beyond the General Assembly: funding, workshops and more this Summer.

EGU resources

EGU has a library of knowledge and guidance to support its members, including multiple different topics and formats. Take advantage of these resources, and in some cases, you can make your own contributions. These include:

Join your community via EGU Divisions

Better know EGU’s communities by joining one (or more) of EGU’s scientific divisions 

EGU is made up of 22 Scientific Divisions that cover studies of the Earth, planetary, or space sciences, from Atmospheric Sciences to Tectonics and Structural Geology. Get involved with your scientific division by:
  • Attending or presenting at such as seminar-style Campfires and webinars,
  • Reading and writing division blogs,
  • Following their social media accounts,
  • Celebrating your peers and nominating them for division awards and medals,
  • Providing feedback, voting and meeting other members at the annual General Assembly division meeting.

Staying in touch

Get informed about upcoming events and opportunities by subscribing to their mailing lists and following their divisions’ social media accounts to stay informed about upcoming events and opportunities. Many members began by observing and following updates, before gradually becoming more involved.

Volunteer for your division

Scientific divisions are run by volunteers who organise the above alongside other activities and managing their division's programme for each General Assembly. You can have a say in shaping these activities by becoming a volunteer as well! Division volunteers often support particular initiatives by adopting an officer role, such as the Early Career Scientist (ECS) representative, the voice of the division’s ECS members who organises ECS activities, and Science-Policy Officers, who keep members informed about opportunities for impact at the science-policy interface. You can also steer your community and have a say in the direction of the Union by becoming a division president. Each division is led by a president who also has a vote on the EGU Council. Because of this vote, the division president is elected during the Autumn EGU elections.

Get involved as an Early Career Scientist

[caption id="attachment_52004" align="alignnone" width="605"] Photo Pfluegl/EGU[/caption] One of the highlights of the General Assembly for me this year was the quality of conversations during the networking events and the practice sessions associated with the short courses. I also had the opportunity to speak with some of the Early Career Scientist (ECS) Representatives about why they first joined EGU and what encouraged them to stay engaged over the year. One common answer among them was that a key motivation for getting engaged was the importance of the connections that they had built within the community. An Early Career Scientist (ECS) is a student, a PhD candidate, or a practising scientist who obtained their highest academic certificate (e.g. BSc, MSc, or PhD) within the past seven years. If you are an ECS, then you already have an entry point into the community! EGU’s ECS community is supported through a number of initiatives, such as:

ECS Feedback and updates:

Have an idea or feedback about how EGU supports the ECS community? Contact the ECS Union representative, who co-ordinates the division ECS representatives and helps steer the EGU by voting on the EGU Council. A good first step is to subscribe to your division’s ECS mailing list.

Volunteer as an ECS

Organise ECS division initiatives by volunteering as par to a division’s ECS team or be the voice for your ECS community by becoming an ECS representative! Across EGU’s scientific divisions, ECS Representatives work to advocate for the voices of the early career members during the Assembly and throughout the year. The ECS teams also coordinate several division initiatives, including division blogs, online events like seminar-style campfires and webinars, and networking opportunities. Help to run union-wide ECS initiatives by supporting the ECS representatives’ network - the division-spanning group which together addresses common topics which affect our ECS members, from visibility to inclusion. Find out more by contacting the ECS Union representative.

Interested in getting involved?

The most important thing is simply to start. You might start by: If you would like to explore more ways to get involved, visit the EGU's volunteer opportunities page and see what matches your interests.]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/07/03/how-to-get-involved-with-egu-throughout-the-year/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[GeoRoundup: the highlights of EGU Journals published during June!]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/30/georoundup-the-highlights-of-egu-journals-published-during-june-2026/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/30/georoundup-the-highlights-of-egu-journals-published-during-june-2026/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2026 10:00:42 +0000 Each month we feature specific Divisions of EGU and during the monthly GeoRoundup we put the journals that publish science from those Divisions at the top of the Highlights section. For June, we are featuring the Ocean Science Division (OS). It is represented by the journal Ocean Science.
Ocean Science   Estuarine mixing - 22 June 2026 This review presents major aspects of estuarine mixing. Due to the large amounts of brackish water in estuaries produced by mixing of fresh river discharge and salty ocean water, mixing is one major characteristic of what is an estuary. Mixing is quantified locally as well as on estuary-wide scales. Diagnostics of integrated mixing are given for estuarine volumes bounded by transects as well as surfaces of constant salinity moving with the flow. Examples for real-world estuaries are given. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics On describing particle nucleation within the Volatility Basis Set - 15 June 2026 Influence of tropospheric temperature on the formation and aging of secondary organic aerosol from biogenic vapor mixtures - 24 June 2026 Quantification of inmixing of Asian Monsoon air by multi-species classification in a match flight experiment - 29 June 2026 Atmospheric Measurement Techniques Arctic Weather Satellite assessment and assimilation at ECMWF - 02 June 2026 From real-time to long-term source apportionment of PM10 using high-time-resolution measurements of aerosol physical properties: methodology and example application at an urban background site (Aosta, Italy) - 03 June 2026 Global and diurnal variations in tropospheric ammonia observed from a constellation of hyperspectral infrared sounders in three different LEO orbits - 19 June 2026 Biogeosciences Denitrification as the dominant process in nitrous oxide production in the water column of two eutrophic reservoirs - 12 June 2026 Rapid soil degradation following deforestation in Eastern Africa - 15 June 2026 Air–Sea Interactions and Biogeochemical Responses to Medicane Daniel - 29 June 2026 Climate of the Past Quantitative climate reconstruction from sedimentary ancient DNA: framework, validation and application - 10 June 2026 Earth System Dynamics Atmospheric river trajectories organise along a global transport network - 12 June 2026 Chaotic fluctuations in Greenland ice streams limit predictability of ice sheet collapse - 19 June 2026 Climate models with moderate climate sensitivity best simulate the magnitude of Earth's energy imbalance - 29 June 2026
Understanding changes in Iceland's streamflow dynamics in response to climate change - 29 June 2026
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Wikimpacts 1.0: a new global climate impact database based on automated information extraction from Wikipedia - 04 June 2026 The Pluvial Flood Index (PFI): a new instrument for evaluating flash flood hazards and facilitating real-time warning - 10 June 2026 The Cryosphere The influence of ocean waves on Antarctic sea-ice albedo and seasonal melting, and potential coupled physical and biological feedbacks - 09 June 2026 Detection and attribution of the role of anthropogenic climate change in industrial-era retreat of Pine Island Glacier - 29 June 2026 EGU in the news: ]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/30/georoundup-the-highlights-of-egu-journals-published-during-june-2026/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Taking Pride in our planet: Protecting oceans for queer and trans survival]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/29/taking-pride-in-our-planet-protecting-oceans-for-queer-trans-survival/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/29/taking-pride-in-our-planet-protecting-oceans-for-queer-trans-survival/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:00:07 +0000 In Spring of 2025, just as I was preparing to release the Queer Climate Justice StoryMap I had been building for two years, I received a difficult email from my lead community collaborator, an LGBTQ+ foundation, describing the devastating legal and financial situation the newly inaugurated Trump administration had put them in. We decided to set the project to private to protect the queer and trans-led groups whose climate justice organising we had been trying to uplift.
There is a nested set of problems here: As climate change accelerates, the social vulnerability of queer and trans people is also increasing. But the barriers for research into LGBTQ+ disaster vulnerability and resilience are rising as well, making good evidence more challenging to gather or disseminate.
Recognising that June is both World Oceans Month and Pride Month for LGBTQ+ communities around the world, I suggest that if we bring these agendas together, we can see beneath the problems at the surface to the shared root issues. Indeed, as I thread together the issues, a pattern emerges: the warming sea (increasingly unmonitored) is the literal physical engine accelerating these crises, and the fossil fuels accelerating the warming are also funding the removal of ocean monitors, and fomenting political attacks on queer and transgender communities.

Queer climate vulnerability

Researchers around the world are beginning to build a clearer case that gender and sexually marginalised people are more vulnerable to disasters. My own co-authored research, "Queer and Present Danger: Understanding the Disparate Impacts of Disasters on LGBTQ+ Communities,” documents how the roughly 16 million LGBTQ+ people in the United States are rendered systematically invisible within disaster policies. We describe how bias in federal disaster response programs, a lack of recognition of LGBTQ+ families, and the prevalence of faith-based organisations in disaster relief combine to heighten risk. The recently released anthology Queering Disasters, Climate Change and Humanitarian Crises edited by Dale Dominey Howes et al represents this global field of study coming into maturity after over a decade of slow and steady publications.
The data makes the picture stark: In the United States, disaster displacement is nearly 2x higher for LGBTQ+ people than it is for cisgender, heterosexual people, based on the US Census’ Household Pulse Study. And vulnerability is never evenly distributed even within our communities. As my research emphasizes, queer and trans people experiencing multiple oppressions along lines of race, class, disability, or immigration status, face qualitatively distinct experiences, often more severe. But most importantly, vulnerability to disasters is not something innate to our communities. The problem is not the hurricanes. The problem is the political, economic, and social systems that make certain communities vulnerable, that make hurricanes disastrous.
For queer and transgender people already navigating the ordinary vulnerabilities of daily life, these policies compound every dimension of disaster risk.

While social vulnerability increases, the storms get stronger

The Trump administration has made no effort to conceal where it stands on queer and trans lives. On his first day back in office in January 2025, President Trump signed a wave of executive orders targeting LGBTQ+ people. Executive Order 14168, titled "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," effectively removed federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people, directing all agencies to replace "gender" with "sex" and defining sex as a male-female binary "determined at conception."
Simultaneously, the administration rescinded Biden-era orders protecting LGBTQ+ people from employment discrimination and reinstated the transgender military ban. Within weeks, the Department of Housing and Urban Development stopped enforcing a 2016 policy prohibiting gender identity discrimination in shelter spaces, which was especially chilling for queer and trans people who rely on emergency housing during disasters.
In a particularly alarming escalation, the administration has now declared that transgender people and those who spread “gender ideology” are terrorists who endanger National Security. The Lempkin Center for Genocide Prevention and Human Security has issued a Red Flag alert for signs of an Anti-Trans Genocide in the United States.
And now we have the news of the powerful El Niño conditions brewing in the Pacific. El Niño events are naturally occurring periodic phenomena marked by rising ocean temperatures around the equator, and a reversing of typical Pacific currents. This can drastically shift typical weather patterns, and can foster disastrous extreme weather conditions. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) recently predicted that there is a 63% chance that this year's El Niño conditions will be very strong.

Barriers to research

The Trump administration has gutted the scientific infrastructure we depend on to understand these risks. At the National Science Foundation alone, over 1,600 grants were canceled, representing more than $1 billion in lost funding, many of them projects related to diversity and equity in science. Meanwhile, the administration has moved to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative, removing more than 900 deep-sea instruments that have tracked critical real-time climate data since 2016. Oceanographers have raised the alarm that the Pacific array is being pulled out precisely when those instruments are needed most with the intense El Niño season ahead.
The administration’s anti-DEI campaign has simultaneously decimated the research infrastructure for understanding LGBTQ+ lives and disasters. The NIH cut over $800 million in LGBTQ+ health research, including more than 200 federal HIV research grants. Researchers studying sexual orientation and gender identity have had their federal grants terminated simply for using words like "equity," "disparities," or "gender" in their project descriptions. At universities, the pressure has been sweeping: institutions across the country have shuttered Women's and Gender Studies programs, LGBTQ+ resource centers, and cultural offices under threat of losing federal funding.
As I shared in the vignette that opened this blog, when it comes to community-based research like the kind that I prioritise in my scholarship, we must grapple with the ethics of engaging with a politically persecuted minority and how our research impacts their safety. Of course, many researchers around the world have already been dealing with such conditions. It is imperative US scholars learn research ethics forged in contexts of political violence to gender and sexually diverse people.
In sum, whether it is fear and lack of funding on the part of researchers, or the fear of surveillance among gender and sexually diverse communities, the current political situation makes it challenging to understand the true scope of growing climate vulnerability for queer and trans people.

Fossil-fuelled transphobia

Recently, my research has turned towards using a queer lens to examine how all of these climate change induced phenomena like rising sea levels, rising authoritarianism, rising barriers to research are interconnected in a web. I am part of an ongoing research project seeking to trace the tendrils of this web to highlight a pattern we are calling "Fossil-Fueled Transphobia." There is a century of evidence for how the scapegoating of marginalised communities is core to an authoritarian playbook to divide people with common political interests. What we are identifying is the way that anti-trans media and policy is being funded by those who have amassed their wealth through fossil fuel industries, fomenting a culture war distraction away from the root causes of accelerating climate change.
This research is still in early stages, but it highlights the kind of root cause analysis that queer climate justice offers to researchers: go beneath the headlines and the symptoms of vulnerability to expose the systems and those who benefit from harm.
My documentary film Can't Stop Change: Queer Climate Stories from the Florida Frontlines illustrates these connections on the ground. Interviewing queer and trans activists throughout Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in 2022, the film shows both the devastation left by the storm and the extraordinary community solidarity that emerged in response. It also emphasises the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council, funded by corporate interests including fossil fuels, in crafting the model legislation passed in Florida, which is now replicating across the country.
There is, therefore, emerging evidence that the same fossil fuel industry that has caused the acceleration and increased the frequency of supercharged hurricanes and record-breaking ocean temperatures is also the engine funding the political apparatus that strips queer and trans people of their rights and protections, making them more vulnerable when those storms arrive.

Learning from histories of resistance

This month, gender and sexually diverse communities around the world celebrate Pride (when possible)- a tradition that honors the 1969 uprising of queer and trans people resisting police harassment at the Stonewall Inn. Even though this was a specific, local event at a bar in New York, their protest against police violence and social persecution struck a chord, and Pride has become a global phenomenon, with over 100 countries hosting some form of celebration (OutRight International). Whether its a massive street carnival like in São Paulo, Brazil, or a private home gathering in Assam, India, Pride is both a celebration of our histories of resistance and our commitment to survival.
Our film Can’t Stop Change highlights this mutual aid disaster relief organising, and also emphasizes the importance of rooting in the wisdom of nature and our oceans. Indeed, the film starts underwater, and emphasises water as a force of change. Our conclusion uplifts queer ecologies to highlight another important point: when queer and trans people can see themselves reflected in nature, as opposed to being “unnatural” or “crimes against nature”, it gives us a deeper grounding for loving ourselves enough to fight for our futures.
When queer and trans people lead in climate justice, we bring both our analysis and the hard-won tools of communities that have always had to build safety for themselves when institutions refused to provide it, informed by an understanding that we are natural and so we are forces of nature.

What can we do now?

We are in a situation where our ability to do sound research is diminishing while we can assume that the problem is worsening. But there are clear steps that affirming agencies can take to support diverse communities, even when the research is still lagging behind the need:
Continue fighting for ocean health. Because the health of our oceans is a direct lifeline for the vulnerable coastal communities on the frontlines of these supercharged storms. For LGBTQ+ people, many of whom are already in ocean health research and advocacy, this month is an opportunity for us to uplift our Pride in protecting our oceans.
Over a year later, I still question if taking our Queer Climate Justice StoryMaps private was the right choice, especially as a new season of El Niño storms threatens our communities. While rising persecution made protecting our data feel necessary, Audre Lorde's words still haunt me: "When we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak, knowing we were never meant to survive."
]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/29/taking-pride-in-our-planet-protecting-oceans-for-queer-trans-survival/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[GeoTalk: meet Delphine Urbah, space anthropologist!]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/26/geotalk-meet-delphine-urbah-space-anthropologist/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/26/geotalk-meet-delphine-urbah-space-anthropologist/#comments Fri, 26 Jun 2026 10:00:07 +0000 Hello Delphine! Thank you for agreeing to have this GeoTalk interview. Could you briefly introduce yourself and your background?
Hello, and thank you for having me! My name is Delphine Urbah, and I am a French professional working at the intersection of space, policy, ethics, and the human dimensions of space exploration. I currently work as a project manager for the Académie Spatiale Île-de-France, where I coordinate research and training initiatives in the public space research sector.
My previous experiences include the European Space Agency and the OECD. My background was in social sciences, specifically political anthropology, and my research focused on how humans live, believe, cooperate, and create meaning in space environments, as well as the legal and geopolitical frameworks around these questions.
Could introduce space anthropology to our readers?
Space anthropology is a way of looking at space exploration not first as a technical or scientific project, but as a human one. So my previous research asked questions such as: how do astronauts from different cultures live together? How do they deal with isolation, hierarchy, risk, or homesickness? What kinds of symbols, habits, rituals, or values do humans carry with them when they leave Earth?
Recently I am also increasingly interested in new questions, such as what do astronauts do after their space careers, and why do so many of them later move into public, political, diplomatic, or symbolic roles? Is this simply because they are already exceptional individuals, or does the astronaut experience itself produce a particular form of political authority?
Cultural behaviors are often adaptive technologies in disguise.
I am also fascinated by what a less Western-centred space habitat might look like, for example through the case of China’s Tiangong space station. These questions matter because space environments are never culturally neutral. Even the most advanced technological systems are imagined, designed, funded, and narrated by specific groups of people, in specific places, at specific moments in history.
Space anthropology helps us trace those assumptions: through social practices, institutional choices, epistemology, and the history of ideas.
How are values and rituals expressed in space missions?
The easy answer is to look at human spaceflight: astronauts celebrating holidays, bringing symbolic objects, taking photographs of specific places on Earth with already charged meaning, or maintaining small routines that help them feel connected to home. But I think values and rituals are present in all space missions decision making, including telecoms or robotic ones.
Space is an Earth-based, human endeavour: every funding decision, scientific priority, mission design, public communication strategy, and institutional hierarchy is shaped by humans in a specific political, cultural, and historical context. So values are not only expressed once humans arrive in orbit; they are already present in how space programmes are imagined, justified, financed, and narrated. I had a start up and am open to do consulting on that now, but that’s another story.
Why is it important that there is a legal framework for rituals and other social behaviours in space?
It is important because space missions are not ordinary private environments: they are shared, international, highly constrained workplaces where people may live, work, sleep, eat, and depend on each other for survival. In the social sciences, Erving Goffman called this kind of environment a “total institution”: a place where most aspects of life happen within the same enclosed system.
Of course, a spacecraft is not a prison or a hospital, but the comparison, maybe closer to a submarine or an Antarctic base; also total institutions, helps us understand why rights and responsibilities cannot be left vague. A legal and ethical framework does not mean controlling every personal gesture or belief. Rather, it helps clarify how freedom of conscience, cultural practices, privacy, non-discrimination, and mission constraints can coexist.
It is not enough to invite more diverse people into the room if the conditions of participation remain unequal.
It also matters for innovation: the more we make room for different ways of thinking, living, and solving problems, the more varied our responses to technical challenges can become. For example, even something as practical as hair care in space raises cultural questions: protective hairstyles developed in different communities may offer useful low-water, low-maintenance solutions that space agencies should take seriously. Cultural behaviors are often adaptive technologies in disguise.
You also work towards bettering inclusion and equity in space research. Could you share some of the work you do with us?
A lot of my work is about making the space sector more open, interdisciplinary, and structurally accessible. In my current role, I coordinate programmes that connect universities, research laboratories, public institutions, and researchers from different backgrounds. This includes supporting international mobility through scholarships, but also making practical information easier to find: financial support, disability services, social support, and resources for people facing discrimination or gender-based violence. I think inclusion has to be concrete.
It is not enough to invite more diverse people into the room if the conditions of participation remain unequal. That also means paying women and underrepresented people properly for their work, rather than treating visibility as a substitute for compensation or power.
I would also like to mention Space Pride, where I served on the board during its founding phase. The organisation continues to build community and advocacy for LGBTQIA+ people in the space sector, including at conferences where early-career queer professionals may need support, visibility, and a safer network.
Do you have any advice for people wishing to build inclusive communities in research?
My first advice would be to start small, but to be very intentional. Inclusion is not only about inviting “diverse people” into a room. Sometimes what we call “diversity” simply means gathering on stage all the people who were previously absent and worked their way there, while power remains somewhere else.
I am less interested in creating spaces that merely look diverse than in making spaces that already hold power more resilient to the arrival of different profiles, ideas, and ways of working. That is difficult, because institutions often want both innovation and stability: they want people to “break new ground” without shaking the house too much.
In research specifically now, I also think it is very important not to build communities only around prestige or productivity. People stay when they feel respected, useful, able to grow, and fairly compensated. For early-career researchers such as myself, it can be incredibly powerful to feel that choosing research does not mean accepting precarity as a condition of belonging.
]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/26/geotalk-meet-delphine-urbah-space-anthropologist/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[The day I realised I had nothing to offer teachers: The story behind Almanac of Geoscience experiments]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/25/the-day-i-realised-i-had-nothing-to-offer-teachers-the-story-behind-almanac-of-geoscience-experiments/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/25/the-day-i-realised-i-had-nothing-to-offer-teachers-the-story-behind-almanac-of-geoscience-experiments/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:00:16 +0000 like barrel organ of plate tectonicsm, developed together with Matěj Machek, my colleague at the institute, people immediately became more engaged. Suddenly abstract concepts such as plate tectonism, explosive volcanism, or the geomagnetic field became understandable because visitors could directly observe simplified analogues of these processes with their own eyes. And this eventually led me to the idea of creating an open-access almanac of geoscience experiments! [caption id="attachment_51600" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Example of one outreach sheet from the almanac of geoscience[/caption] Together with the very talented illustrator Lucie Škodová (Ajeejee) and several colleagues from the Czech Academy of Sciences, we started to assemble a collection of simple geological experiments suitable for classrooms. We wanted experiments that would be scientifically meaningful, visually understandable, inexpensive, quick to prepare, and usable with only minimal equipment and preparation. [caption id="attachment_51818" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Example of one outreach sheet from the almanac of geoscience[/caption] Many geological processes are inherently difficult to reproduce in classroom conditions because they operate on enormous spatial and temporal scales. You cannot simply create a real volcano, tectonic plate, or lava flow inside a classroom (although I am quite sure many children would enjoy that — unlike the school director!). Therefore, we had to search for simplified physical analogues that preserve at least some of the key principles of the natural process while still remaining understandable and practical for teachers and students. At the same time, we tried to avoid experiments that only “look cool” but do not actually explain much scientifically. The goal was always to connect the demonstration directly with real geological processes. Every experiment therefore includes not only instructions, but also an explanation of what is happening physically and why the observed behaviour resembles processes operating on Earth or other planetary bodies. The final almanac contains sixteen experiments focused on volcanism, earthquakes, plate tectonics, rock deformation, atmosphere, and river behaviour. Most of them can be prepared from common household materials within several minutes. In many cases, the experiments use objects that people already have at home but would probably never associate with geoscience education. Another important aspect for us was accessibility. We wanted the experiments to be freely available to anyone. Therefore, the almanac was released as open access under a Creative Commons license, allowing teachers, outreach coordinators, museums, and science communicators to freely use, adapt, translate, and distribute the materials. So anyone can freely download the almanac and use it in essentially any way they find useful. Personally, I would also be extremely happy to see the almanac spreading further around the world and gradually being translated into additional languages, making these experiments accessible to even more teachers, students, and outreach enthusiasts.    ]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/25/the-day-i-realised-i-had-nothing-to-offer-teachers-the-story-behind-almanac-of-geoscience-experiments/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[What can EGU do for you? A guide to funding, waivers and assistance]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/25/what-can-egu-do-for-you-a-guide-to-funding-waivers-and-assistance/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/25/what-can-egu-do-for-you-a-guide-to-funding-waivers-and-assistance/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2026 09:01:01 +0000 Travel support! EGU has many foms of travel support to help you attend the annual EGU General Assembly in Vienna, and online, including:
  • Roland Schlich Travel Support is available to presenting authors who are Early Career Scientists.
  • Early Career Scientists Travel Support is available to Early Career Scientists who wish to attend the meeting.
  • Established Scientist's Travel Support is available to a very limited number of established scientists from low-, lower-middle, and upper-middle income countries (as determined by the World Bank).
  • Tomasin Support is available to Early Career Scientists working in the Ocean Sciences.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Participation Support!

For those who face specific financial challenges unrelated to their geographical location, including care-giving, disability or special needs, and career transitions, EGU also offers a special support scheme. Support includes:
  • Registration fee waivers: For both onsite or virtual waivers, also for caregivers to attend onsite.
  • Travel Support: Travel expenses for caregivers or dependant children; expenses for transporting and/or hiring necessary medical equipment.
  • Home-Help Support: to hire home-help to assist in caring for a dependent during the meeting.
  • Accommodation Support: Financial assistance for accessible or specialized accommodation required.
  • Additional Childcare Support: Subsidies for childcare services at the conference venue or in the participant’s home location.
  • Accessibility Support: Financial support for the purchase or rental of assistive technology or equipment necessary to facilitate participation.

Emergency support fund!

Any researcher in the field of Earth, planetary and space sciences from a country, region or community identified by the UNHCR’s emergency declarations protocol is automatically eligible to access funding and logistical support from EGU. Support is available for:
  • Publications: standard waiver of the article processing charge
  • General Assembly: waiver of registration fee, with optional extension of abstract submission deadline without financial penalty
  • Membership of EGU: one year’s complimentary membership to grant access to award and medal nominations, funding schemes and other EGU membership benefits

Topical events and training schools!

EGU provides funding of between €6000-€8000 to support access for Early Career Scientists to a range of member-run, subject-specific conferences and summer schools. These include:
  • Galileo conferences which address well-focused, cutting-edge topics at the frontier of geosciences research
  • Seven subject-specific conference series’ that are run on an annual or bi-annual basis
  • 15-20 training schools (sometimes called summer schools) per year, where EGU supports a diverse range of training schools, which offer Early Career Scientists specialist training opportunities that they normally don’t have access to at their home institutions

Outreach and science communication funding!

Looking for ways to get started in outreach, public engagement or science communication? Want to expand your science journalism work with funding for a special project? EGU can help!
  • Public Engagement Grants: four grants of up to €2000 to support innovative outreach projects that aim to raise awareness of geosciences outside the scientific community.
  • Geoscience Days: €10,000 to run a day of Geoscience in your own country, in your own language!
  • Science Journalism Fellowships: €5000 to enable reporters to follow scientists on location to report on ongoing research in the Earth, planetary or space sciences.

GIFT: Geoscience Education For Teachers!

If you are a teacher or educator who teaches about subjects related to any aspect of the Earth, planetary or space sciences, why not apply for the GIFT programme!
    • Annual workshops run online and in Vienna, Austria, connected to the General Assembly, which provide hands-on practical training for educators who teach aspects of geoscience in their classrooms
    • Provide collaborative, community environments for teachers to share best practice and ask advice
    • Teachers can apply to attend onsite in Vienna, and are given financial support to cover the cost of travel and accommodation, as well as free access to the training
    • All attendees gain a certificate of attendance whether they participate online or in-person

AND Education funding for teachers and educators!

  • Tertiary Education in Geoscience teaching materials award: funding for 10 grants of up to €750 to develop geoscience teaching materials on any relevant topic, including laboratory or field work
  • Field schools for Teachers and Geoscience Education Events grants: supporting events specifically targeted at training teachers and educators, run internationally
  • Distinguished Lecturer series: up to €1400 funding available to invite distinguished speakers who have participated in the EGU General Assembly to present at international institutions
  • Early Career Scientist Education Fellowship: €2500 available to an Eary Career Scientist to explore a topic focused on teaching Earth, planetary and space sciences

Open publishing!

EGU uses a fully interactive, publicly peer-reviewed publishing process, that takes scientific publishing beyond open access and into a transparent, and community focused approach to sharing new research for all 20 of our journals.
  • All articles published by an EGU journal are available for free to the reader with no paywall or restrictions
  • The full review process as well as preprints of the work are archived and receive a digital object identifier (DOI) to ensure full transparency and citability
  • Our journals are community-driven, run by thousands of volunteer editors and reviewers, with technical support for our not-for-profit publications provided by our publishing partner, Copernicus

Publications fee waivers!

EGU publications offer an extensive range of article processing charges (APCs) for all 20 of our interactive, open-access publications. These include:
  • EGU members receive 10% discount
  • Authors affiliated in European economically disadvantaged (EED) countries will automatically receive a 50% discount
  • Authors with affiliations in countries classified by Research4Life in Groups A and B, will receive a full waiver
  • Authors who fall outside these groups can still apply for a full or partial waiver at EGU’s discretion
  • Several institutions have agreements to cover APCs in our journals; the full list is available on journal pages

Peer review training!

  • This free training, available to EGU members, is designed to promote  hands-on experience via interactive sessions, in which participants can review real manuscripts submitted to the EGU Journals with the guidance of EGU editors
  • During the three sessions of the training, participants gain experience in completing review reports that can later be added to EGUsphere, EGU’s interactive publicly peer-reviewed platform, and count as official reviews
  • Participants who successfully complete the training are added to the Copernicus Referee Database and start to receive invitations to review for EGU journals
  • Run annually between September-October
And much more on our website! Download our full support guide with links here: EGU funding and support guide 2026]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/25/what-can-egu-do-for-you-a-guide-to-funding-waivers-and-assistance/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Climate vs. landscape? A new breakthrough in continental water modeling!]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/19/climate-vs-landscape-a-new-breakthrough-in-continental-water-modeling/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/19/climate-vs-landscape-a-new-breakthrough-in-continental-water-modeling/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2026 10:30:09 +0000 Every year on 21 June, the global scientific community celebrates World Hydrology Day to highlight the importance of water sciences play in sustainable resource management and natural hazard mitigation. Historically, human efforts to protect and manage freshwater have suffered from a blind spot. While we can easily measure a river's flow at a specific gauging station, predicting how an untouched, ungauged valley will respond to a heavy storm or a prolonged drought has remained notoriously difficult. We have long relied on static physical maps and assumed that similar soils or forests must behave the same way, but things are rarely that simple...

This month a team of scientists has published a paper in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences that changes how we can map and predict water behavior. Led by Ryoko Araki, a researcher in the joint doctoral program at San Diego State University and UC Santa Barbara, the study delivers a comprehensive, observation-based map of dominant hydrological processes across the contiguous United States.

To build this map, the authors compiled daily hydroclimatic records from 14,146 watersheds using the Caravan, a global open-source hydroclimatic database, and GAGES-II, a dataset maintained by the USGS. This resulted in a sample size roughly ten times larger than most previous continental-scale studies, which gave the scientists the opportunity to capture the true diversity of the continent's landscape. Instead of treating streamflow as a single, blunt metric, the researchers calculated so-called 'hydrologic signatures'. These signatures are statistical properties of river flow, such as: how quickly a river recedes after a storm; how much flow is sustained by groundwater during dry spells; and how often a basin experiences extreme high-flow events. Collectively, these signatures act as a functional fingerprint and therefore reveal the hidden flow patterns of the landscape.

Mapping the continent’s hidden plumbing?

When the authors plotted these signatures across the country, striking regional patterns emerged that prove that hydrology operates on vast, predictable gradients.

In the East, they traced a hydrological transition along the elevation gradient. High up in the rugged Appalachian spine, rivers are heavily sustained by deep baseflow and display slow yet complex recession rates. As you move down into the rolling hills of the Piedmont, the thin soils store very little water, leading to fast, flashy runoff. Once you reach the sandy aquifers of the Eastern Coastal Plain, the system shifts back to slow, groundwater-dominated baseflow.

In the Midwest, a massive outer ring of peculiar water behaviour traces the edge of ancient glacial sheets. Near the Great Lakes, sandy glacial soils absorb rain like a sponge and keep streamflow steady all year! Further south and west, where the soils turn to heavy, poorly drained clay, the landscape behaves entirely differently, as it actually sheds water quickly and produces intense runoff events.

In the west, the contrast is even more dramatic. Coastal mountain ranges experience heavy, wet winters with rapid surface runoff. Just a few miles inland, across the Cascade and Sierra Nevada crests, hydrology is dictated by massive winter snowpacks that slowly release water throughout the dry summer months.

The East-West divide: Who is in the driver’s seat?

Perhaps the most significant breakthrough of the study is how it reveals the real, complex drivers of these water patterns. For years, most large-scale computer models have operated under the assumption that climate is the dominant influence on hydrology, but when the team trained a random forest machine-learning model to predict these water fingerprints, they discovered a divide between the two halves of the continent.

In the western United States, climate indeed reigns supreme. Attributes like snow fraction, aridity, and precipitation seasonality are the primary controls on how watersheds behave. If the climate shifts, the water cycle shifts almost immediately. In the eastern United States, the physical landscape itself is in the driver's seat. Here, soil texture, geological age, and topography play a far more dominant role in shaping water pathways than local weather patterns. In these watersheds, the physical structure of the earth acts as a powerful buffer, filtering and shaping how water moves regardless of short-term climate variability.

The model also highlighted a third, highly localized driver: human activity. In major metropolitan areas across the East and Midwest, population density and built infrastructure became the dominant predictors of streamflow signatures, easily overriding natural soils and geology to create fast, artificial, and flashier runoff patterns.

Why does this new map matter for our water future? 

This study has (as you have probably guessed by now) some valuable implications for how we manage water in an era of rapid environmental change. For hydrological modelling, it provides a much-needed reality check. Modern flood-forecasting and climate-prediction systems frequently struggle with structural biases, simulating water pathways that do not match reality. By comparing these models against the team's empirical process maps, scientists can quickly identify where their simulations are structurally flawed; such as modelling a groundwater-dependent basin as a fast surface-runoff zone.

For water managers and urban planners, the maps offer a guide towards an even more effective climate resilience. In the climate-controlled west, water systems are vulnerable to rising temperatures that shrink mountain snowpacks. In the landscape-controlled East, water security is closely tied to land-use decisions. Paving over a recharge zone or draining a wetland in a geology-driven watershed will have immediate impacts on local water supplies and flood risks.

Final reflections

Science never ceases to impress! For decades, many researchers and water managers viewed water management through a narrow lens that often forced nature's complex plumbing into simplified and generalised boxes. Yet once we let data from over 14,000 watersheds speak for itself, this study shows that protecting our water future requires us to listen to the rhythm of the landscape; literally! It seems like there is no one-size-fits-all solution, the variation inherent in the system needs to be met with equally variable and flexible policies. This is because a policy that secures water in the snow-dependent land (the west) will totally miss the mark in the geology-driven East, hence the need for specialised, regional-specific investigations AND legislation. In the meantime, happy World Hydrology Day, and if you're in the Northern Hemisphere or it's hot where you live: Don't forget to hydrate!  ]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/19/climate-vs-landscape-a-new-breakthrough-in-continental-water-modeling/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Yes, Nature is transgender too! Between fish, fluidity and finding myself as a trans marine biologist]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/18/yes-nature-is-transgender-too-between-fish-fluidity-and-finding-myself/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/18/yes-nature-is-transgender-too-between-fish-fluidity-and-finding-myself/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:00:27 +0000 Unpacking pandora’s box Here's one thing: Transitioning, in my experience, is not hard. At least not harder than the general path of finding myself and understanding who I am instead of whom I was conditioned to be. The hardest part is the societal confrontation and the internalised transphobia, especially for late-blooming queers like myself. In many societies, including the one where I live, there is a fixed idea of two binary genders only, and growing up, one's developing brain adapts to these definitions, leaving it to one's (more or less) fully developed brain to question the things it once learned. But by the time someone starts unpacking these boxes and find new ones that fit better, the voices of judgment can start creeping in. These voices stem from the societal norms that many of us absorbed throughout our lives. Growing up, anything associated with queerness was branded as weird at best, and condemned as pathological or unnatural at worst. With such ingrained stigma, it is no wonder so many choose to leave this Pandora’s box shut, only daring to look inside later in life when they have finally found a safer, gentler environment. For me, it took years simple to recognise that this box existed within me, and it took far more courage than I ever thought I possessed to finally open it. Compounding this struggle is the reality that the battle is fought on two fronts: these restrictive, hateful narratives screaming from within as internalised echoes, even as they continue to be reinforced by the outside world. Fast forward one year and I am now close to celebrating my first anniversary on testosterone, my therapist helps me tremendously with my transition and in one week I will present a talk during an international conference about my research project on arctic fish. Regardless of how difficult times are – another cold-room power outage during running incubations, burning headaches trying to understand my data, life altering decisions like whether or not to freeze eggs before hormone-replacement-therapy or to leave ovaries intact during surgery as a hormonal back-up, because of current world politics and the resulting anxiety about the future of accessing gender affirming care – being able to pursue my dream provides me with so much strength and hope to continue. [caption id="attachment_51770" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Adult Queen Angelfish (Holacanthus ciliaris). Although little is known about their specific reproductive biology, some marine angelfish species are known to be protogynous hermaphrodites. Their harems consist of typically one male and several females and, once the male disappears, one of the females transitions into a male.
Photo credit: Marina Schiller[/caption] As early as kindergarten, I was amazed by nature and evolution and when I learned that fish are in fact older than dinosaurs, the deal was sealed for me: I had to become an Ichthyologist (aka fish nerd). Decades later, this fascination is still rooted within me and, as fed up as I am, about a future in academia, there are few to none alternative tracks I can see myself taking. Over the years, I uncovered a new layer to my interest in nature and that is its diversity and queerness. Growing up in a white, conservative family during the early 00’s, you don’t question sex or gender. It wasn’t until my undergrad that I realized how amazingly queer, diverse, and non-conforming Nature is, and not until finishing my masters before I started reflecting on these labels myself. The myth of the fixed binary Have you heard of the field trans*ecology? Yes! Nature is queer, and this queerness includes transness! So, to describe organisms that maintain a single, unchanging biological sex throughout their entire lifespan, scientists use the term gonochorism. Hermaphroditism, female and male sex organs in the same individual, is the predominant trait for flowering plants (94 % of all angiosperm species1). Within the animal kingdom, 5 % of species exhibit hermaphroditism, rising to roughly 30 % if insects are included2. But most importantly, teleost fish are the only vertebrates to embrace sexual fluidity and very commonly so! At least 25 % of reef fish change their sex throughout their life3. Most of them are protogynous, meaning they first mature into an intermediate female adult before transitioning into the final male stage. For example, California sheephead wrasses live four to six years as female before becoming male, bluehead wrasses are born male or female with females being able to change sex – the list is extensive ad includes species within groupers, seabreams, parrotfish, angelfish, gobies and emperors. [caption id="attachment_51769" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Terminal phase male Bluehead wrasse (center) surrounded by yellow initial phase bluehead wrasses. Bluehead wrasses (Thalassoma bifasciatum) are born female or male and mature into initial phases. Both sexes can later transition into terminal phase males. Photo credit: Marina Schiller[/caption] The most famous example is probably the clownfish, although many might not be aware of it. Clownfish are protandrous and live in a very structured society with one dominant female that breeds with the biggest male, while the remaining members are smaller non-breeding males. Now, when the female dies, the dominant male grows and transitions into the new matriarch with a new male stepping up in the breeding hierarchy. Another example of protandry is the ribbon eel, commonly considered a treat when spotted scuba diving. My personal favorite are hamlets and they are a rare gem in the sexually fluid waters of fish gender. Hamlets are synchronous hermaphrodites and mature female and male gonads at the same time, bending the binary spectrum of sex into more of a circle. Diving into belonging A few months ago, my new passport, with my correct name and ‘X’ as gender marker, received its first visa stamp and I can still feel the wave of euphoria sweeping through my body. During the many hours diving at the reef, I felt part of the immense queer community of nature and it reminded me of this deep feeling of belonging during pride parades. To this day I struggle to fight the boxes and definitions of my upbringing to navigate current experiences. But they could never hold the immense diversity that nature offers, which makes it easier for me to break them open and grasp a complex understanding of how nature actually works. But it is important to find a spark that keeps your light burning – be it friends and peer-groups, sports, arts or anything else. Fortunately, I found my passion very early and it will never cease to fuel me on my journey. I simply have to acknowledge it from time to time to dim the voices and noises of harm. References 1 Käfer, J., Marais, G. A. & Pannell, J. R. On the rarity of dioecy in flowering plants. Mol. Ecol. 26, 1225–1241 (2017). 2 Jarne, P. & Auld, J. R. Animals mix it up too: the distribution of self-fertilization among hermaphroditic animals. Evolution 60, 1816–1824 (2006). 3 Molloy, Philip P., et al. "Links between sex change and fish densities in marine pro tected areas." Biological Conservation141.1 (2008): 187-197.]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/18/yes-nature-is-transgender-too-between-fish-fluidity-and-finding-myself/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Allyship is a choice: A letter from small town Brazil to the world on how my allyship is action]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/17/allyship-is-a-choice-a-letter-from-small-town-brazil-to-the-world-on-how-my-allyship-is-action/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/17/allyship-is-a-choice-a-letter-from-small-town-brazil-to-the-world-on-how-my-allyship-is-action/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2026 09:00:32 +0000 https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/17/allyship-is-a-choice-a-letter-from-small-town-brazil-to-the-world-on-how-my-allyship-is-action/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Revisiting the key Science for Policy conversations at EGU26]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/16/revisiting-the-key-science-for-policy-conversations-at-egu26/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/16/revisiting-the-key-science-for-policy-conversations-at-egu26/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:11 +0000 EGU26 behind with record participation, it was amazing to see increased interest in science-policy sessions from the scientific community. Thanks to all panellists who contributed to the stimulating discussions, and to all participants for igniting them! Below is a look into some of the key themes emerged from the #science4policy sessions at EGU26. [caption id="attachment_51742" align="alignnone" width="602"] The Geoengineering Great Debate[/caption]

Innovation and emerging technologies

A central theme of EGU26 was the urgent need to tackle the climate crisis. These discussions not only encompassed a huge variety of research, policy, and mitigation strategies, but also innovation and technology. In the light of the European Green Deal and the 2040 Climate Target, the Union Symposium Greennovation”: how can scientists support the green transition drew on diverse perspectives from science, policy, and industry. The panellists conceptualised the green transition as both the engine behind clean economic growth and as a matter of sovereignty and competitiveness for Europe amid growing geopolitical tensions. The discussions emphasised the need to equip scientists with the necessary skills to engage in policymaking and the importance of putting financial mechanisms in place, which is also discussed below. Reaching the plenary room’s full capacity, the Geoengineering - Overarching Great Debate was one of the most attended sessions of the week. Focusing on Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR), the panellists of the session questioned the extent to which these geoengineering methods fit into existing policy frameworks and discussed whether these “technological fixes” undermine current emission mitigation efforts by diverting attention away from them. The panellists highlighted the potential risks of deploying such technologies without adequate research as well as ethical concerns in piloting them, especially in parts of the world where indigenous communities live. [caption id="attachment_51744" align="alignnone" width="602"] Union Symposium “Greennovation”[/caption]

Policy for science

It’s not only vital for scientists to engage in policymaking to provide science advice, but also to support the institutional structures that enable them to participate and for evidence to be effectively integrated into policymaking. These institutional structures are across local, national and international levels and interconnected, making them relevant for the whole scientific community. As underlined during the Great Debate “From Honest Brokers to Lobbyists: What Could Be the Role of Scientists in Different Contexts and Countries?”, Policy for Science refers to the rules, funding mechanisms, strategies and plans that influence how scientific research is conducted. The panellists in this session discussed different roles that scientists could play in science-policy interface, with the potential to influence both Policy for Science and Science for Policy. While most of EGU26’s science for policy sessions outlined some form of challenges, the Short Course “New Toolkits – the destabilisation of science and what we can do about it” had the difficult job of addressing the shifting geopolitical pressures, political polarisation, misinformation, and risk of declining public trust. The panellists shared personal anecdotes, gave insights into how misinformation is spread, provided effective techniques for minimising its impact, and introduced tips and various support mechanisms designed to help scientists when they or their institution is impacted.

Creating policy impact

The importance of being able to measure recognise and reward our science for policy engagement was mentioned throughout the week’s discussions. Numerous panellists highlighted the need to recognise the work of knowledge brokers and researchers on the science-policy interface. The panellists in the Soil System Sciences policy session, “Facing the last policy challenges in the EU: How soil scientists can contribute to the demands for scientific evidence to support EU policies” specifically drew on the challenges in soil science to also emphasise the need for the academic institutions to recognise policy engagement beyond traditional academic metrics. These discussions cumulated into the Friday Splinter Meeting “Measuring and valuing science for policy and engagement impact”. During this session, methods of measuring policy impact were presented followed by a panel discussion which highlighted the importance of planning for impact and using qualitative and narrative metrics. EGU26 also welcomed the first recipients of the EGU’s Science for Policy Award, which was created to recognise and reward those working on the science-policy interface. Science for Policy Team at the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters shared their award-winning work on different knowledge synthesis methodologies, their science for policy resources for researchers, and their knowledge broker network. [caption id="attachment_51746" align="alignnone" width="602"] The Soil System Sciences session Facing the last policy challenges in the EU: How soil scientists can contribute to the demands for scientific evidence to support EU policies[/caption]

Science Communication and New Narratives

Science communication is about how scientists transform technical knowledge into digestible insights; which in turn influences the narratives about societal transformation in public. Climate change is a prime example of this, where geoscientist can engage in a multitude of roles across the science-policy spectrum from modelling to providing science-advice to engaging in climate advocacy. The panellists of the Union Symposium “Climate change, morals, values and policies” explored how individuals’ different priorities and perceptions shape their attitudes towards climate change. The conversation recognised the necessity of adopting new narratives to resonate more deeply with the public. The speakers emphasised a whole-of-society approach to engage a broader range of stakeholders in both communicating the issues and co-creating solutions. [caption id="attachment_51751" align="alignnone" width="602"] Union Symposium “Climate change, morals, values and policies"[/caption]

Skills and career paths for scientists

As usual, the Short Courses and Splinter Meetings aimed to showcase the multitude of roles that scientists could play in science-policy interface and to upskill scientists who are interested in engaging with policy! The Splinter Meeting “Shaping Your Science-Policy Career: Pathways and Opportunities” convened speakers from policymaker and researcher roles who shared challenging and rewarding aspects of their roles, and highlighted relevant skills that could help scientists in their career paths. The Short Course “Meet the Austrian Public Administration and Parliament Science for Policy Staff” featured four panellists from different public institutions in Austria that illustrated how these institutions engage with scientific knowledge, providing a glimpse of different career opportunities for scientists. While the Short Course “Instruments and Initiatives for Policy Engagement” provided the foundations of policy engagement and important tips from a panel of experts, as well as various toolkits and training opportunities; “Science Diplomacy: What is it and how to engage” showcased the synergies between the skills that geoscientists have and the skills needed in diplomatic engagement. The Splinter Meeting “Pitch your research to a policymaker” featured presentations by four researchers who got feedback from a panel of experts on how to tailor their scientific knowledge into policy-relevant insights; “How to submit evidence to help inform policy decisions” provided participants with information using examples at the EU level and different national policy contexts. And, as the last science for policy session of the EGU26, “How to write a policy brief” provided participants with useful tips and tools on this important method of communicating scientific knowledge. [caption id="attachment_51748" align="alignnone" width="602"] Splinter Meeting “Shaping Your Science-Policy Career: Pathways and Opportunities”[/caption]

Conclusion

While each of EGU26’s science for policy sessions had their own focus, it was great to see key themes emerging across them throughout the week. If you want to revisit the stimulating EGU26 week, you can watch the recordings of the Great Debates, Union Symposia and Award and Medal Lectures on the EGU26 platform. You can also find the speaker presentations and additional session materials linked on the individual #Science4Policy Short Course descriptions. If you have more ideas about science for policy topics for EGU27 sessions, feel free to comment below, reach out to us at policy@egu.eu, or submit your own session!]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/16/revisiting-the-key-science-for-policy-conversations-at-egu26/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Interdisciplinary futures in geoscience: Cross-divisional insights from the Division Presidents - Atmospheric Sciences (AS)]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/15/interdisciplinary-futures-in-geoscience-cross-divisional-insights-from-the-division-presidents-atmospheric-sciences-as/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/15/interdisciplinary-futures-in-geoscience-cross-divisional-insights-from-the-division-presidents-atmospheric-sciences-as/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:00:13 +0000 This interview is part of an ongoing series exploring the evolving role of interdisciplinarity across the geosciences. As environmental challenges grow more complex, addressing them requires not only disciplinary expertise but also meaningful collaboration and innovation across fields, methodologies, and communities. In each conversation, I ask Division Presidents to reflect on how cross-divisional work is currently practiced, where it falls short, and what more transformative forms of collaboration could look like. Through this series, I aim to surface both practical pathways and significant tensions in interdisciplinary work to highlight why it matters for research, policy, and the broader societal relevance of the geosciences.
Hello Philip, and thank you so much for joining us. This conversation is part of our new interview series, Cross-Divisional Perspectives: Insights from the Presidents. In this series, we are exploring the unique scope of each EGU division and identifying new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration across the union. So, you’ve been serving as the AS Division President for a while now, right in the thick of your term. Looking back to when you first stepped into this leadership role, what has surprised you the most about steering the AS division? So many things! For most people EGU is simply a conference, but once you look deeper you realise the full range of activities EGU as a geoscience union is leading, from conferences (more than just the General Assembly) to publications, webinars, early career events, teacher training – and the list is growing. What people also often don’t realise is the real bottom-up and volunteer-led spirit of EGU, which is fantastic to experience. As for Atmospheric Sciences in particular, it was always clear that we cover a wide range of science, but I had no idea how big the division really is – almost 2700 members in 2026, 12% of EGU’s total membership. This is amazing, but also a challenge to represent effectively. The AS division covers an extraordinary spectrum that spans spatial scales from small-scale turbulent mixing to global planetary circulation, and timescales from seconds in chemical kinetics to centuries in climate modeling. How do you maintain a cohesive identity for a division where two members' daily workflows can look very different from each other? Diversity is good, in so many ways, so I don’t think we need to strive for too much unification; each of our many scientific communities should be able to express their own identity and their own ways of working. What should unite us are the broader scientific questions, and this is something we can always improve on. For example, as Earth warms and air pollution decreases, we struggle to close Earth’s radiation budget under emerging cloud feedbacks and aerosol trends, which also projects on large-scale dynamics. Traditional separation by disciplinary communities slows down progress in our understanding, and we still need to improve the links. Bringing everyone together at the General Assembly is a great start. While the General Assemblies are EGU’s most popular and well-known events, I know from experience that the real work happens in the other 51 weeks of the year. During your presidency, what has been your primary strategy for keeping the AS community engaged, inclusive, and collaborative outside of the annual General Assembly? Here I should really point out that EGU divisions are a team effort. Over the last years we have refreshed our entire team including our scientific officers, OSPP organisers and, importantly, a team of new early career representatives who also lead on our blog and social media (the full team can be found here). We also introduced the role of a policy officer. And when I myself may get stuck and distracted by EGU council business and the organisation of the AS GA programme, it has really been the early career team who pushed our AS communications and have revamped our blog with many interesting articles, including interviews with our AS award winners. Your own research leans heavily into emerging tools like AI, machine learning, and advanced data compression. Within the broader AS division, do you see these rapidly evolving computational tools acting as a bridge that brings disparate sub-disciplines together, or are they risking a new digital divide? It’s an exciting and slightly scary time to do atmospheric sciences! While AI is transforming all areas of science, for much of what we do the underlying physics is key and should not be forgotten. But aside from the actual science, we also see a rapid transformation of methodologies, with agentic coding taking over, and this is where I see a real risk of a digital divide between groups that embrace this change and others that don’t. This is particularly important for Early Career Scientists, but we will all need to learn how to navigate this space. Atmospheric science naturally bleeds into Ocean Sciences, Biogeosciences, Hydrological Sciences, and Climate. Where do you currently see the most organic collaborative bridges between AS and these neighboring divisions? Many atmospheric scientists, including myself, would naturally consider themselves climate scientists as well, but we of course have close links and overlaps with many other divisions – the question is: How best EGU can support this? One attempt to do this is cross-listing General Assembly sessions between divisions, but we are also considering more ambitious ways to group sessions and allow attendees to put together tailored programmes that really fit their interests. But personally, I believe the historic division structure of EGU would benefit from a major overhaul by grouping into its major components and introducing cross-cutting themes. If you could point to one planetary blind spot that exists simply because atmospheric scientists and researchers from other earth science divisions aren't talking to each other enough, what would it be? What are we missing out on by staying in our comfort zones? Good question! To be honest, I am not entirely sure, as I believe we tend to be very open-minded and collaborative. But at the same time the current division structure does not serve cross-cutting topics well; for example, extreme events: a flooding event would be in Hydrology, is caused by the Atmosphere, possibly with Oceanic precursors, and we are interested in the change in risk under climate change… Interdisciplinarity is a popular buzzword in grant proposals, but at conferences, it tends to manifest as just adding another division’s acronym as a co-sponsor to a session. When dealing with system-wide challenges like climate tipping points or the risks of solar radiation modification, how can the AS division move past superficial collaboration and work towards structural and efficient co-production of knowledge with other disciplines? The current EGU division structures do not help, but divisions will exist in any structure. But I believe that, in terms of the General Assembly programme, there are many innovative ways to address this, which we are actively discussing in EGU council. This could go as far as the submission of abstracts without a target session and clustering sessions with AI – but this also risks losing community, so all of this needs quite a bit of thought. Let’s say you are handed a blank slate to completely restructure how EGU divisions operate, throw out the traditional categories, and design a system optimised solely for cross-disciplinary breakthroughs. What is one change you would introduce, and what role should the Atmospheric Sciences play in leading that charge? This is controversial but, personally, I would significantly reduce the number of divisions so that they represent major Earth or space “spheres”. This does not need to mean that any community loses its identity, as structures can be retained as sub-divisions or programme areas, just as is done in Atmospheric Sciences division. Combined with cross-cutting themes across all divisions, e.g. extreme events and machine learning, this would naturally support cross-disciplinary exchange – and make the organisation, and also the GA programme, much more manageable. It would also give EGU members more equal representation on council. Although division structure does not need to match the GA programme, it feels much more natural for it to do so.  ]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/15/interdisciplinary-futures-in-geoscience-cross-divisional-insights-from-the-division-presidents-atmospheric-sciences-as/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Pride month in the era of DEI rollbacks: Reflections on resilience, and why pride was a riot after all]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/12/pride-month-in-the-era-of-dei-rollbacks-reflections-on-resilience-and-why-pride-was-a-riot-after-all/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/12/pride-month-in-the-era-of-dei-rollbacks-reflections-on-resilience-and-why-pride-was-a-riot-after-all/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:30:55 +0000 Pride month arrives this year against a backdrop of institutional irony. In the United States, federal research funding has been thoroughly weaponised and forced a massive scientific brain drain across the Atlantic. In Europe, a multi-million-euro effort to capture that exiled talent is underway, even as Europe's own domestic politics fracture along the exact same ideological fault lines.

For queer researchers, especially those in the geosciences, this transatlantic war over Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) compromises networks for international collaboration, visa security, and the mentorship pipelines needed to sustain the next generation of scholars. As we look at the state of research in 2026, it has never been more urgent to peel off the corporate rainbow decals and remember an important (perhaps the most important) truth: Pride was not born in an administrative boardroom or a well-funded university lab. Pride was a riot.

The dismantling of the word "diversity"

The current crisis escalated dramatically following executive mandates that targeted diversity infrastructure within American higher education. Federal research agencies were pressured to freeze or cancel programs containing specific keywords. The National Science Foundation archived flagship diversity programs like ADVANCE, purging over 1,600 grants and stripping millions of U.S. dollars in funding as documented in the comprehensive CEWS Journal analysis of the war on DEIA.

This disruption did not remain confined to American borders; it immediately triggered a geopolitical domino effect across the Atlantic. To make matters worse, many European institutions appear to be preemptively capitulating to protect their commercial and academic ties to the US. European academic entities and multinational corporations are actively downplaying diversity initiatives, in a move that seems designed to appease American political interests, an alarming trend noted in the HEC Paris analysis of corporate and academic self-censorship.

The very lexicon of "diversity" betrays a flawed institutional framework and treats human variation as a mere ornamental appendix to an unquestioned default, European norm. Yet, for us, the ones relegated to this administrative category, including queer researchers, migrant scholars, and scientists with disabilities, are far from peripheral extras.

We constitute the scaffolding that sustains the European economic, social, and scientific landscape. Therefore, when European institutions dismantle these protections to protect bilateral ties and appease shifting political currents, shouldn't we question their principles? This regression exposes a fragile and conditional commitment to human rights, one that treats equality as a political luxury to be bartered away under electoral pressure. When the very communities that build, research, and sustain these societies are deemed disposable in times of friction, the rhetoric of European values is therefore less of a moral compass and more of a geopolitical commodity.

Queer vulnerabilities increase with attacks on Geoscience

While laboratory-based disciplines can sometimes isolate themselves from political crosswinds, the geosciences stand exposed because their primary laboratory is the planet itself. Whether it's mapping structural faults, taking hydrological samples, or spending weeks on an oceanographic cruise, a geoscientist must physically go where the data resides.

When academic institutions cave to political pressure and dismantle their equity, diversity, and inclusion frameworks, they are throwing field safety protocols completely overboard and are therefore stripping away the structural protections that keep vulnerable researchers safe in remote or hostile environments.

In a study published six years ago in Eos, researchers Alison Olcott and Matthew Downen exposed the realities faced by LGBTQ+ geoscientists. Their survey shows that 55% of queer geoscientists have felt physically unsafe on location due to their identity, and a third have been forced to refuse field deployments entirely out of fear for their well-being. This environment breeds a severe power imbalance. While 57% of tenured professors possess the career security to refuse an unsafe fieldwork destination, a mere 29% of graduate students can exercise that same choice (although, is it really a choice?)

As universities seem to delete inclusive risk assessments to maintain a politically neutral profile, early-career scientists are left to navigate criminalising laws, hostile local cultures, and border checks completely alone. In geoscience, you must 'go where the rocks are', but institutions are increasingly refusing to ask if those rocks lie in a place that will jail or harm the scientist gathering them.

Pathways to resistance

Resisting this systemic rollback in 2026 requires an approach that moves far beyond standard advocacy. For tenured faculty and scientists who are safely out, resistance can mean leveraging their career security to act as physical and administrative shields.

  • If this is you, you can refuse to authorise departmental field expeditions that lack explicitly documented, queer-inclusive risk assessments.
  • You can redirect private endowments to fund censored environmental or demographic research and step up as the public principal investigators to absorb the political heat from state legislatures or hostile committees.
  • This is the time to use your privilege to establish safe spaces and ensure that vulnerable fieldworkers are never forced to choose between their career progression and their safety.

Conversely, for early-career researchers and those who cannot safely come out, resistance can become something of an underground subversion. Maintaining a low profile is a valid survival tactic, believe me, I know.

However, this doesn't mean being passive:

  • You can still, for instance, leverage digital networks to share crowdsourced safety logs that detail local hostile behaviours, discriminatory law enforcement, and border risks with junior colleagues before travel.
  • You can also practice data archiving and help back up marginalised environmental justice and climate equity datasets to secure, off-campus servers before university networks face state-mandated purges.
  • Your underground work, that still keeps you safe and anonymous if desired, proves that even when institutional or governmental support is revoked, the community can still find ways defend both its people and its science.

If we want a future where a queer geoscientist can safely map a changing planet or decode climate systems without sacrificing their dignity or safety, it's time we stopped asking institutions for permission to exist. We cannot keep shrinking ourselves so we look less threatening to a university budget. Pride was a riot after all, and our queer ancestors would have wanted us to push back with the same power and desire to exist publicly without shame or fear.

This Pride month, I wish you safety, resilience, and love, whether you are out, safely, or not. Know, you are not alone, because we have always been here, and we will continue to be.

Remember, EGU's EDI committee is always here to support you, and make sure to check out the work that the EGU pride group does and join us if you want!

]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/12/pride-month-in-the-era-of-dei-rollbacks-reflections-on-resilience-and-why-pride-was-a-riot-after-all/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[Help us celebrate excellence in science journalism: Time for nominations for the 2027 EGU Angela Croome Award!]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/02/help-us-celebrate-excellence-in-science-journalism-time-for-nominations-for-the-2027-egu-angela-croome-award/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/02/help-us-celebrate-excellence-in-science-journalism-time-for-nominations-for-the-2027-egu-angela-croome-award/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:00:05 +0000 What good is groundbreaking Earth and space science if it never breaks through the laboratory walls and digital libraries?

Without skilled journalists, our peer-reviewed papers risk gathering digital dust, and remain isolated from the public policy and societal awareness they are meant to inform. This is why we need science journalists, as they have the skills to take complex scientific results and turn them into accessible stories that captivate global audiences and help (re)shape climate policies around the world.

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) believes this bridge deserves recognition. That is why the 15 June 2026 deadline for the EGU Angela Croome Award is an date you cannot afford to miss! If you know a journalist who has spent their career working on democratising the geosciences, it’s time to give them the spotlight.

The legacy of Angela Croome

Established in 2019, this union-level award complements the EGU Science Journalism Fellowship. It honours the role that media professionals play in raising awareness of the global challenges facing our planet. The award is named in memory of Angela Croome, a pioneering UK science journalist. Croome was a trailblazer who carved out a space for reporting during the infancy of space exploration and underwater archaeology in the mid-20th century. She set a gold standard for reporting on complex, frontiers-pushing discoveries with clarity, balance, and objectivity. Today, the Angela Croome Award keeps that spirit alive by awarding media professionals who excel at making Earth, space, and planetary sciences accessible to the general public.

Who is eligible for this award?

  • The medium: Nominees must be journalists working in any medium, including print, digital media, television, radio, podcasts, or independent web publishing.

  • The style: The award targets professionals who have been demonstrating continued, excellent, and successful reporting on Earth, space, or planetary science topics.

  • The audience: A particular emphasis is placed on reporting that brings new scientific concepts to the public’s attention, especially discoveries relevant to Europe and European citizens.

  • The status: Freelance journalists are fully eligible. Please note that only one author of a published journalistic piece may be nominated (joint team nominations are not eligible for this specific award).

Did you know? Unlike most elite academic accolades, self-nominations are accepted for the Angela Croome Award! Furthermore, nominees are not required to be EGU members.

Who can nominate and how?

While the nominee doesn't need to be an EGU member, the person submitting the final package via the EGU Awards & Medals Nomination Portal must be a registered EGU member.

If you are an active EGU member and want to highlight an outstanding journalist, or if you are a journalist looking to self-nominate with the backing of an EGU colleague, the nomination package is pretty straightforward. You can visit the official EGU Proposal and Selection of Candidates page for more details. Your single PDF upload must include:

  1. A nomination letter: This must not exceed 5,000 characters (including spaces). It should outline why the candidate deserves this recognition, focusing specifically on their contributions to geosciences journalism and public accessibility.

  2. A summary CV: A concise, one-page summary of the journalist’s career history, outreach experience, previous honours, and public service.

  3. Selected work portfolio: Up to three samples of reporting that establish the nominee’s excellent contributions to geoscience journalism. Each submitted sample must be accompanied by a summary (maximum one page) providing a synthesis of the content and information to evaluate the value of the contribution. The samples and accompanying summaries may be in any language.

The clock is ticking: Act before June 15!

Nominations for the 2027 EGU Awards cycle close on 15 June 2026.

Putting together a nomination package takes less time than you think, but its impact can last a career. Take a look through your favorite media outlets, remember the articles that successfully explained your own field to your friends and family, and help us celebrate the people who keep our science alive in the public consciousness.

]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/06/02/help-us-celebrate-excellence-in-science-journalism-time-for-nominations-for-the-2027-egu-angela-croome-award/feed/ 1 <![CDATA[GeoRoundup: the highlights of EGU Journals published during May!]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/29/georoundup-the-highlights-of-egu-journals-published-during-may-2026/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/29/georoundup-the-highlights-of-egu-journals-published-during-may-2026/#comments Fri, 29 May 2026 10:00:27 +0000 Each month we feature specific Divisions of EGU and during the monthly GeoRoundup we put the journals that publish science from those Divisions at the top of the Highlights section. For May, we are not featuring any particular divisions, but an ensemble of all the highlights of this month instead.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Beyond discrete stratocumulus regimes: a ternary continuum of morphology reveals within-regime variability in cloud susceptibilities - 27 May 2026 Cryptotephra in the East Antarctic Mount Brown South ice core - 29 May 2026 Atmospheric Measurement Techniques Impact of spectral aerosol radiative forcing at the Izaña observatory during the August 2023 extreme wildfires - 13 May 2026 Biogeosciences Shoreline exposure controls teal carbon accumulation in boreal lakes - 28 May 2026 Climate of the Past Climate change drove Late Miocene to Pliocene rise and fall of C4 vegetation at the crossroads of Africa and Eurasia (Anatolia, Türkiye) - 12 May 2026 Cryptotephra in the East Antarctic Mount Brown South ice core - 29 May 2026 Earth System Dynamics Quantification of the influence of anthropogenic and natural factors on the record-high temperatures in 2023 and 2024 - 06 May 2026 Developing Guidelines for working with Multi-Model Ensembles in CMIP - 08 May
Earth Surface Dynamics
Geoscience Communication Increasing earthquake awareness: seismo-at-school Switzerland - 21 May 2026 Geoscientific Model Development Love number computation within the Ice-sheet and Sea-level System Model (ISSM v4.24) - 18 May 2026 Hydrology and Earth System Sciences A novel classifier-guided ensemble framework for global terrestrial evapotranspiration estimates - 27 May 2026 Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences The TSUSY Database: a global database of historical tsunami events and a tsunami-occurrence criterion based on historical earthquakes - 29 May 2026 Ocean Science The Scotland–Canada overturning array (SCOTIA): twenty years of meridional overturning in the subpolar North Atlantic - 08 May 2026 Modelling primary production: multitude of theories, or multitude of languages? - 11 May 2026 High-latitude eddy statistics from SWOT compared with in situ observations - 13 May 2026 Internal tides–cyclonic eddy interaction and intermodal energy pathways: evidence from 3 km NEMO-AMAZON36 simulations - 18 May 2026 Tide of the Time: Global tidal characteristics observed from in-situ measurements - 28 May 2026 SOIL Mineral-bound organic carbon exposed by hillslope thermokarst terrain: case study in Cape Bounty, Canadian High Arctic - 18 May 2026]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/29/georoundup-the-highlights-of-egu-journals-published-during-may-2026/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[A mosaic beneath our feet? Connecting soil science and policy at EGU26]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/29/a-mosaic-beneath-our-feet-connecting-soil-science-and-policy-at-egu26/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/29/a-mosaic-beneath-our-feet-connecting-soil-science-and-policy-at-egu26/#comments Fri, 29 May 2026 09:00:40 +0000

On Friday, May 8, 2026, the final day of the EGU26, I attended a Special Programme Group session of the Soil System Sciences (SSS) division on Facing the last policy challenges in the EU: How soil scientists can contribute to the demands for scientific evidence to support EU policies. The session brought together scientists, policymakers, and representatives from European institutions, including members of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the European Parliament (EP), to discuss one of the most significant recent developments in European soil policy: the EU Soil Monitoring and Resilience Law (SMRL).

In the session, it was immediately made clear that this is not a regulation concerned only with agriculture. Soil health is now recognised as a wider question about climate adaptation, biodiversity, carbon storage, human health, air pollution, and more. A matter connected to multiple policy priorities, which also makes it challenging to define in a single way, both politically and scientifically.

What’s interesting is that a proposal for EU-wide soil legislation was first adopted by the European Commission (EC) nearly two decades ago. After disagreements between Member States, however, it was withdrawn in 2014. The SMRL being implemented now is therefore not a sudden decision, but the result of a much longer process of political negotiation and scientific advocacy. Martin Hojsík reflected on the collaborative efforts that have helped push the legislation forward:

“...when official channels fail, it is civil society and informal networks of scientists that help keep things alive and moving forward...” said Martin Hojsík (MEP, Renew Europe, EP)

One of the law’s central objectives is to develop a harmonised framework for soil health monitoring. In practice, this means establishing monitoring systems that make soil data comparable across the EU (EC, 2023). The matter of harmonisation was frequently brought up during the session, with a central dilemma repeatedly emerging: how do we establish a framework that works for all? This poses a challenge particularly from a legal perspective, as the law must remain flexible enough to function across very different national and ecological contexts. Not to mention, monitoring itself is only the beginning. Europe already holds vast amounts of soil data, but the challenge lies in transforming that information into tools for decision-making.

This part of the discussion was particularly interesting for me because it connected directly to the practical reality of soil science. As an early-career soil scientist working with peatlands, I’m aware that European soils are not a single system, but a mosaic of very different environments. Soil health in a Mediterranean dryland is not the same thing as soil health in a boreal peatland. The climatic conditions, hydrology, nutrient cycles, and microbial communities are all different, just to begin with. The core issue is how soil functions vary enormously between regions.

So how do we decide what a defines a healthy soil? Should we focus on carbon budgets, biodiversity and belowground functioning, nutrient cycling, ecosystem services, or, perhaps, a combination of the above? And how do we compare all this data without overlooking the differences that make each soil system unique? During the session, I asked Claire Chenu of AgroParisTech and INRAE how such diverse soil data can realistically be harmonised across Europe. Chenu’s answer highlighted an important distinction: while monitoring systems may require shared indicators, descriptors, and measurement standards, the target values themselves cannot necessarily be universal across all soil types and land uses. As she explained:

“If we want to cover the whole of Europe, we need the same measurement frequency, depth, and descriptors across land uses. But the target values still need to be defined.” – Claire Chenu (AgroParisTech, INRAE)

The discussion repeatedly returned to the question of how to define thresholds and target values accurately. Speakers acknowledged that they cannot simply be transferred from one soil system to another, as the health of a given soil is ultimately defined by its ecological context, but also by what society expects it to provide. This is what makes defining “soil health” such a complex scientific and political challenge. It’s an exciting framework for action, but scientifically, it also risks becoming too broad unless it remains grounded in the actual functioning of different systems.

The implementation discussions also made clear that data harmonisation is not only a technical issue, but an institutional one as well. Austria was brought up as an example, as it already holds soil monitoring data from multiple federal states. However, the challenge lies in bringing those datasets together, harmonising them, and making them comparable over time. A strong emphasis was also placed on continuity: the speakers argued that the relationship between science and policy cannot be treated as a single workshop or consultation round. Instead, it must become an ongoing discussion. Scientists need time to become familiar with policy development, while policymakers in turn need time to understand how scientific evidence is produced, what its limitations are, and how uncertainty should be approached, as Chenu noted:

“We also need to improve how to communicate about uncertainty.” – Claire Chenu (AgroParisTech, INRAE)

For me, this was one of the most encouraging parts of the session. It was refreshing to hear uncertainty acknowledged honestly instead of treating it as failure. Soil systems are complex, and while clear categories and thresholds are required for policymaking, the discussion highlighted that the real challenge is not eliminating complexity but working with it. In other words, building frameworks that can be applied in practice while remaining flexible enough to evolve alongside growing scientific knowledge.

One interesting question that emerged was how scientists should engage in policymaking. The answer was not that every scientist must become a policy expert. Rather, the call was for stronger connections, better communication — also across scientific disciplines — and more active involvement where expertise is needed. The speakers reminded us that the scientific community should not underestimate its own relevance in this process, because good policy is built on scientific contribution. At the same time, the importance of scientific engagement should be more recognised in academia; after all, policy work is unfortunately not frequently rewarded in the same way as publications.

What stayed with me most by the end of the session was the sense that soil protection is not just about soil. It is about coordination, communication, and shared responsibility across institutions, disciplines, and countries. The SMRL represents a major political and scientific milestone, but its success will depend on the effectiveness of translating scientific results into policy decisions while accounting for soil diversity. For a soil scientist, diversity is not an abstract concept but an inherent part of system functioning. Any attempt to define “healthy soil” must leave room for ecological variation while still creating an actionable framework. That is the challenge ahead, and also the very reason this law matters: it depends on our collective effort.

]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/29/a-mosaic-beneath-our-feet-connecting-soil-science-and-policy-at-egu26/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[EGU support beyond the General Assembly: funding, workshops and more this Summer!]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/22/egu-support-beyond-the-general-assembly-funding-workshops-and-more-this-summer/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/22/egu-support-beyond-the-general-assembly-funding-workshops-and-more-this-summer/#comments Fri, 22 May 2026 10:00:20 +0000 about the General Assembly, but delivers opportunities to learn, develop and network all year long! With many driven and developed by our volunteers in our committees and working groups, our initiatives cover a breadth of topics and formats, including training, funding, and more. The list below covers just some of the Union's higlights this summer and does not cover everything we do, so remember to sign-up to our monthly newsletter to keep up-to-date with all our upcoming opportunities! All times are in CEST.

EGU Awards and Medals nominations

Celebrate you colleagues and help EGU recognise outstanding research to science and society by nominating someone for an EGU award or medal!  Any EGU member can nominate someone for one of our range of medals and awards for significant contributions to the Earth, planetary, and space sciences, including contributions to research by early career scientists, as well as awards for science-for-policy; scientific journalism; equality, diversity and inclusion; as well as, science communication, outreach and public engagement. 15 June 2026 - deadline for EGU awards and medals nominations.

Public engagement grants

Up to €2000 is available for applicants to raise awareness of the geosciences beyond the scientific community, particularly projects that target hard-to-reach audiences. An initiative of the Outreach Committee, you have the choice of format - be it comic, documentary, podcast, or whatever your imaginations manifests! 17 June 2026 - deadline for Public Engagement Grants applications.

Science journalism fellowship

EGU is offering up to €5000 for journalists to cover research in the Earth, planetary or space sciences. Applicants need to submit innovative proposals to report on geoscientific research not yet in the public sphere and which have European-relevance, and they can be any European language. 17 June 2026 - deadline for Science Journalism Fellowship applications.

Early Career Scientist Online Workshops

The Early Career Scientist (ECS) Network, spearheaded by the ECS representatives, will be soon launching a call for applications to deliver autumn online workshops to support and further develop the careers for EGU's ECS members. If you want to be funded by EGU to develop workshops built for early scientific careers, keep an eye out for the calls for applications this month. If you want to attend such a workshop, registration will open at the end of summer! May 2026 - Funding applications open to develop ECS online workshops. June 2026 - Deadline for funding applications open to develop ECS online workshops. Augst 2026 - Registration opens to attend ECS online workshops.

High education teaching grants

Develop your own teaching materials with EGU's High Education Teaching Grants, supported by the Education Committee! Funding will be provided for successful applicants to develop university-level education teaching materials which will be shared online with our community. Get inspired by checking out our previously funded teaching materials! June 2026 - Funding applications open for High Education Teaching Grants.

How to peer review online workshops

Funding is available to support the development of autumn online workshops equip EGU's members with the skills and knowledge needed to peer review. An initiative lead by the EGU Publications Committee, applications for funding to develop workshops for peer-review training will launch in June, whilst registration to attend the workshops will open at the end of summer! June 2026 - Funding applications open to develop peer preview training online workshops August 2026 - Registrations open to attend peer preview training online workshops.

Science-for-policy pairing scheme

As part of its mission to support evidence-based policy-making and bring scientists and decision-makers together, the Union sponsors a science-policy pairing scheme which offers Europe-based EGU members the opportunity to work in the European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium. Supported by the Science for Policy Working Group, the winning applicants have expenses, such as accommodation and travel, paid for by the Union as they foster connections at the science-policy interface, Summer 2026 - applications open for the Science-for-Policy Pairing Scheme.

Online webinars and events

All through the year, EGU provides opportunites for learning and networking via its digital programme of online events. All our events are free and by registration only. Our offer includes:
  • Webinars: often an hour long, EGU webinars cover a range free training as well as panels discussing research and geoscience community topics. All webinars are recorded and published on the EGU Youtube channel.
  • Workshops: our workshop offers provide more in-depth training, often occuring for two or more hour-long sessions and which are spread over a series. Workshops are delivered by professionals who have been funded by EGU following their succesful application to our calls.
        • Coming soon: August onwards - registration opens for three EGU Autumn Workshop Series on Science Communication, Science-for-Policy, Peer-Review, and Early Career Scientist career development.
  • Seminar-style Campfires: EGU Campfires provide space for community discussion and networking around a particular scientific field. Run by one or more of our scientific divisions, Campfires are not recorded to cultivate a space for relaxed discussion.
  • Hangouts: building community around cross-cutting and interdisciplinary themes like Science-for-Policy, our Hangouts, similar to Campfires, are also not recorded and are focused around topical seminars and networking.
Have an idea for a webinar you want to see, or you want to deliver yourself? Want to speak in a seminar-style Campfire or Hangout? Contact the digital programmes manager, Simon Clark, at webinars@egu.eu.]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/22/egu-support-beyond-the-general-assembly-funding-workshops-and-more-this-summer/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[More than mere three letters: My first EGU and the importance of EDI]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/20/more-than-mere-three-letters-my-first-egu-and-the-importance-of-edi/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/20/more-than-mere-three-letters-my-first-egu-and-the-importance-of-edi/#comments Wed, 20 May 2026 10:00:39 +0000 No matter who you are or what your background is, if you attended EGU26, it is very likely that the EGU EDI Committee did something that you found valuable or helpful.The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee was formed in 2018, and has since then been working with EGU to promote its core values. Let’s break down how EDI shaped the experience of the latest General Assembly and what we can expect in the future! There are a lot of acronyms to keep in mind at EGU (here goes the first one already!). All badges at the General Assembly showcase lettered stickers that indicate one’s field of study or interest. I’ve seen attendees turn this mnemonic challenge into a game, by trying to guess each other’s specialty based on acronym stickers during receptions or networking events, a challenging yet amusing pastime. As a first-time queer attendee, one of those acronyms stood out to me and quite literally made my week. That is EDI, which stands for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Thanks to these three letters, and the people that stand behind them, for the first time in my life I didn’t have to weirdly tip-toe around my identity to fit in. I just did right away! For those of you who haven’t heard about it yet, the EGU EDI Committee aims is to provide a safe space for everybody to discuss science and enjoy themselves, while also encouraging underrepresented people to make their voices heard. The Committee is currently chaired by Lisa Wingate and has 14 additional members, mostly volunteers, that co-ordinate with representatives from EGU’s sibling societies. During EGU26, you might have spotted EDI members at their booth on the Purple Floor, where they were busy distributing alternative lanyards to help you navigate the conference safely and hosting highly attended quizzes. [caption id="attachment_51454" align="alignnone" width="300"]The image depicts a small crowd attending a quiz at the EDI booth during EGU26. A small crowd attending an EDI quiz during EGU26. Did you go? Credits: Jakup Stepanovic.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_51464" align="alignnone" width="226"]The image shows alternative lanyards being distributed by EDI at the general assembly. Each lanyard can signify different things, allowing people to connect with their communities or convey their needs quickly. Alternative lanyards distributed by EDI at the general assembly. Each lanyard can signify different things, allowing people to connect with their communities or convey their needs quickly. Credits: Chaimae Baddad.[/caption] You may have also stopped to look at the EDI Inclusivity tree which was in full bloom thanks to people’s ideas and hopes, hanging on it in the form of little garlands. Many people expressed the bliss of rejoining with their communities during EDI events and receptions, but also shared the challenges that they still face in both their careers and personal lives. Furthermore, since 2023, the committee EDI promote an award that recognises the significant contributions by an individual or a team who have put into exemplary practice the principles of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), resulting in a positive change in the experience of the geoscience community. [caption id="attachment_51459" align="alignnone" width="226"]The image shows a cardboard tree with hanging notes, each contaning a different message about EDI. The EDI tree on day one of the conference. Notes and ideas kept pouring in in the following days! Credits: Chaimae Baddad.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_51462" align="alignnone" width="226"]Garlands on the EDI tree. Credits: Chaimae Baddad. Garlands on the EDI tree. Credits: Chaimae Baddad.[/caption] As EDI Committee Deputy Chair Anita di Chiara explained, they work hard the whole year to achieve all of this.
“We start prepping for the next General Assembly around July!”, she says.
However, the current global climate presents significant challenges for EDI initiatives. The polarization surrounding identity politics, combined with mounting scrutiny of EDI commissions worldwide, is creating an environment that directly impacts the safety and well-being of marginalized communities. This is why the last day of EGU hosted a Great Debate about the future of EDI, discussing how to move forward with a constructive attitude and highlighting the benefits that EDI has achieved not only for scientists but for science itself. [caption id="attachment_51467" align="alignnone" width="300"]The image shows panelists during the Great Debate "What's next for EDI in these turbulent times? " at EGU26. From left to right: Marguerite Xenopoulos (Trent University), Brandon Jones (American Geophysical Union), Yukihiro Takahashi (Hokkaido University), Alberto Montanari (University of Bologna) and Convener Claudia Jesus-Rydin. Panelist Dan Robertson from Fairer Consulting is speaking on the podium. Panelists during the Great Debate "What's next for EDI in these turbulent times? " at EGU26. From left to right: Marguerite Xenopoulos (Trent University), Brandon Jones (American Geophysical Union), Yukihiro Takahashi (Hokkaido University), Alberto Montanari (University of Bologna) and Convener Claudia Jesus-Rydin. Panelist Dan Robertson from Fairer Consulting is speaking on the podium. Credits: Manuela Gialanella.[/caption] The debate sparked enthusiastic participation, so much so that time ran out before all questions could be addressed. Attendees shared their perspectives on the intersection of EDI and AI, and emphacised the power of collective action and allyship. While many shared goals emerged, some disagreements naturally surfaced. Rather than a setback, this dialogue reflects the core of EDI: creating a space where everyone can voice their perspective without fear of dismissal. Facing these challenges requires honest conversations to build environments where everyone truly belongs, and where diversity is not just accepted, but actively expected. If you couldn’t make it to the debate but you’d like to provide some feedback to EDI based on your experience, you may reach out to Lisa wingate at edi@egu.eu . Positive messages are welcome; constructive criticism even more!  ]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/20/more-than-mere-three-letters-my-first-egu-and-the-importance-of-edi/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[GeoTalk: meet your new Early Career Scientist Union Representative, Maria Vittoria “Mavi” Gargiulo]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/15/geotalk-meet-your-new-early-career-scientist-union-representative-maria-vittoria-mavi-gargiulo/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/15/geotalk-meet-your-new-early-career-scientist-union-representative-maria-vittoria-mavi-gargiulo/#comments Fri, 15 May 2026 10:00:30 +0000 Hello Mavi - congratulations on your appointment as Early Career Scientist Union Representative! Could you introduce yourself to our readers? Thank you so much, Simon! I’m a physicist by training, but my path has evolved at the intersection of the physical sciences and the social sciences. I started in theoretical physics and today I work on disaster risk, climate hazards, and science–policy communication. Along the way, I also completed advanced training in mediation and science communication, because I strongly believe that understanding risk is not only about data, it’s about people. I’m naturally curious, very energetic, and probably a bit incapable of staying still for too long. I care deeply about building bridges between disciplines, and I approach science with both rigor and empathy. What does the Early Career Scientist Union Representative do? The Early Career Scientist Union Representative works to ensure that early career scientists have a real voice within EGU. It means listening carefully, bringing forward ideas and concerns, and helping shape initiatives that support professional growth across disciplines. For me, it’s also about creating spaces where people feel seen and heard. Early career stages can be exciting but also uncertain and having someone at the table who understands that makes a difference. What drew you to volunteer with EGU? EGU has been part of my professional home for years. I’ve presented my research there, engaged in Science for Policy activities, and connected with inspiring colleagues from very different fields. I’ve always loved its interdisciplinary spirit and openness. Volunteering felt like a natural next step, when something gives you energy and opportunities, you want to give some back. And I tend to jump in wholeheartedly when I believe in something. Why do you think geoscience communities - such as EGU and our Early Career network - are important these days? We are facing increasingly complex environmental challenges, and no single discipline has all the answers. Communities like EGU create the space where different perspectives can meet, natural sciences, social sciences, policy, communication. That exchange is essential. The Early Career network, in particular, helps reduce isolation, encourages collaboration, and empowers young scientists to speak up. In a time of global uncertainty, supportive scientific communities are not a luxury, they are a necessity. How can people engage with EGU's Early Career Scientist initiatives? The easiest way is simply to start showing up. Join your division’s early career activities, attend short courses and networking events at the General Assembly, contribute to blogs or outreach, or volunteer in committees, perhaps nominate colleagues for awards and medals, or stand for election to the Union's governing Council. You don’t have to do everything at once, although I personally tend to try! Even small steps can lead to meaningful connections. EGU is genuinely welcoming, and there is space for different personalities, interests, and levels of involvement.  ]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/15/geotalk-meet-your-new-early-career-scientist-union-representative-maria-vittoria-mavi-gargiulo/feed/ 0 <![CDATA[AI in science: the ethical experiment we didn’t design]]> https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/08/ai-in-science-the-ethical-experiment-we-didnt-design/ https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2026/05/08/ai-in-science-the-ethical-experiment-we-didnt-design/#comments Fri, 08 May 2026 11:00:28 +0000 Artificial Intelligence, and its rapid incursion into the (geo)sciences, was already impossible to ignore at last year’s EGU General Assembly. (you can read my reflections then in this blog post) This year, unsurprisingly, it felt equally present. On Thursday, I attended the Great Debate on “The ethics of using AI in Geosciences: opportunities and risks”, a discussion spanning everything from scientific integrity and transparency to environmental costs, bias, and human responsibility.

Like many conversations around Generative AI, it was sprawling at times, making it difficult to reduce to a single thread. Perhaps that speaks of the fact that “AI ethics” itself is usually discussed as if it were something external to us: a framework to develop, a policy to write, a set of guidelines to package neatly into an institutionally branded document. In reality, some of the most important ethical decisions around AI can be quite personal, and in a way, rather simple.

You could use Generative AI to help refine and correct your grammar for a peer review written in a language that is not your first. You could also ask it to write the review for you. Technically, they both involve AI-generated text. Ethically, they are worlds apart. 

That distinction matters because, despite frequent discussions about regulation, detection tools, and institutional guidance, much of scientific integrity still depends on individual choices. Many researchers may not act ethically because they are constantly monitored or because misconduct is easy to detect. They do so because science relies, to a remarkable extent, on personal responsibility: on judgement, restraint, and the willingness to engage critically and honestly with the work you are doing.

Perhaps that is what makes the current moment feel so important. AI is not only changing what scientists can do, but potentially how scientists think, and how much thinking we choose to outsource to a co-worker that is always helpful, perhaps at times suspiciously so.

At its broadest level, AI ethics is concerned with how these systems are built, trained, deployed, and used (and with the consequences that emerge from those choices). Some concerns relate to the data used to train AI models: where it comes from, what biases it may contain, whether people consented to its use, and whether copyrighted or sensitive material is involved. Others focus on transparency and accountability: whether humans can meaningfully understand how a system reached a conclusion, who is responsible when errors occur, and how these technologies should be regulated in high-impact contexts such as healthcare, law, or education. Finally, there are also broader societal concerns, ranging from environmental costs to misinformation, labour displacement, surveillance, and the possibility of increasingly powerful AI systems being used irresponsibly.

The recent report by the IUGS Commission on Geoethics approaches many of these issues directly, offering recommendations for the ethical use of AI in the geosciences. Going through every aspect of AI ethics in detail would be difficult in a single blog post (and would probably ensure nobody reaches the end of it). So instead, I want to focus on a few ideas from the debate that stayed with me afterwards.

The first one is agency.

The truth is, ultimately, ethical AI use is less about what AI can do, and more about what you choose to delegate to it and about recognising that this remains a choice.

This may sound obvious, but AI has been in conversation where it was described as something happening to scientists rather than something scientists actively decide to use. The language surrounding this is strangely passive: AI is transforming research, changing publishing, and disrupting education. AI isn't doing any of those things; we are. The responsibility for how we engage with these systems remains ours.

You choose whether to verify the output of a model before including it in your work. You choose whether to rely on AI-generated summaries instead of reading papers yourself. You choose whether AI acts as an assistant to your thinking or begins replacing parts of the thinking process altogether. As Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem (one of the panellists) said:

“once AI is part of your process (in whichever way you choose), the work you need to do after you’ve generated content with AI is not insignificant. The key is, you have to want to do it.”

The debate repeatedly returned to this point, directly and indirectly. Not necessarily through dramatic warnings about artificial intelligence itself (at no point in the debate did I feel like any of the panellists discouraged AI use in science), but through reminders that scientific integrity cannot be outsourced. Responsibility does not disappear simply because a tool becomes more powerful or more convenient. Convenience matters, and AI systems are extraordinarily good at reducing friction: drafting text, summarising information, generating code, organising ideas. But reducing friction can also reduce reflection. The easier it becomes to automate parts of scientific work, the easier it may become to disengage from them intellectually while still remaining accountable for the result. This takes me to the second idea that stayed with me after the debate: the importance of critical thinking not simply as a scientific skill, but as part of scientific ethics itself.

There is often concern that over-reliance on AI could lead to an erosion of skills (I wrote about this in last year’s blog post), but in the context of ethical use of AI, what the debate made me reflect on is the relationship between critical engagement and responsibility.

Science is not only about producing outputs. It is also about understanding how those outputs were reached, recognising uncertainty, identifying limitations, questioning assumptions, and being able to defend conclusions. Many of these processes are cognitively demanding, slow, and occasionally uncomfortable. They require attention, they take effort... if only there was an easier way, right?

AI can absolutely support these processes. It can help researchers work across languages, assist with coding, improve accessibility, and accelerate routine tasks. But there is a meaningful difference between using AI to support reasoning and using it to bypass reasoning altogether. Paraphrasing Emma again, “Know why you are interacting with AI, think about not being manipulated. It’s not paranoia, it’s just acknowledging that AI often cuts reflection time, which is a key part of our process. Research is about learning and reflection. It’s not about doing it as fast as possible.”

Perhaps this is why discussions around AI in science can feel ethically uneasy even when no obvious misconduct has occurred. The concern is not always that researchers are “cheating” in some concrete way. To me, the more concerning thought is that they may gradually stop fully inhabiting the intellectual processes for which they are still held accountable.

[caption id="attachment_51429" align="aligncenter" width="371"] Fig. 1. Credit: xkcd.com[/caption]

As I wrote at the start of this piece, ethical AI use is really difficult to police. Like many other aspects of science, it relies on trust at the individual level and so it is a collective responsibility to make choices simply because they are ethical rather than because of the consequences (for ourselves) if we do not.

Nevertheless, some organisations are now developing guidelines and recommendations for the ethical use of AI, with practical and actionable suggestions for researchers. These are not intended as rigid rules, but as tools to help people develop the knowledge, awareness, and agency needed to make thoughtful choices that protect both science and scientists. 

I will conclude by quoting the IUGS report, because I don’t think I can phrase this better than they already have:

“Ethics is not just about rules or consequences; it is situational, emotional, empathetic and relational. It is about moral character. Virtue ethics is a habitual disposition to act rightly – what a good and wise person would do.”

Choose to be a good and wise scientist.

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