Outreach Committee

Immersive virtual reality for engaging students and the public in geological surveys – an EGU Public Engagement Grant project

GeoVires Team December 8, 2023

Why choose immersive virtual reality for teaching and learning about volcanoes? This is a common question that arises when approaching this modern way to explore volcanoes. The answer is clear to those accustomed to working in these captivating regions. Traditional approaches to reaching volcanic areas are fraught with challenges (danger, complex logistics, and high costs). Moreover, these locati ...[Read More]

Can anyone engage in geoscience outreach or does it take certain skills?

Gillian D'Souza September 1, 2023

Students from the secondary school of Nisyros guided in Stefanos crater by Evi Nomikou

On 20 October 2023, a team of geoscientists will host EGU’s Geoscience Day in Santorini and Nisyros (Greece) with a diverse audience: 60 young students from Nisyros Elementary School, 120 students from the Vocational High School of Santorini, educators, local journalists and representatives of the tourism industry. With such a mixed group of attendees, one might expect unique challenges that ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: meet Martin Archer, Space Physicist and Outreach expert!

Simon Clark January 27, 2023

Martin Archer

Hi Martin. Thank you for joining me for this interview! To start, could you please tell our readers a bit about yourself and your research interests? I’m a space plasma physicist at Imperial College London, studying how the interaction between the solar wind and our magnetosphere leads to a huge amount of dynamics and waves that play a role in space weather. I’m also the Chair of EGU’s Outreach Co ...[Read More]

A touch of space weather! An EGU funded outreach project for blind and visually impaired students

Lenka Zychova January 4, 2023

This image shows four tactile images created to share space weather phenomena with blind and visually impaired learners. The image shows a representation of the magnetosphere (a small blue ball with black concentric circles surrounded by dots to the left and right, the ones on the left are smaller), aurora formation (a small blue ball with black concentric circles to the left and right with dots on the circles) and radiation belts ( a small blue ball with a yellow and brown pair of rings extended evenly to the left and the right). All the images are on a white background.

Image credit: Lenka Zychova

We can all probably agree that the Northern Lights are one of the world’s most spectacular natural displays. But how do we share this beauty with children who are blind? How do we explain the processes behind the aurora creation to the visually impaired when all the illustrations of Earth’s magnetosphere are in 2D? The Northern Lights are just one of the consequences of ‘space weather’. Space weat ...[Read More]