GeoLog

With the mammoth task of Storifying #EGU2013 this week, I’m wondering just how useful social media, particularly Twitter, has become at conferences.

While having a hashtag for a conference with 4,684 oral, 8,207 poster, and 452 PICO presentations (#EGU2013) won’t give you an insight into what’s going on in all the sessions – there’s simply too much science – it provides a guide to what’s happening next (as speakers share their sessions) and is an indicator of the “hot topics” as multiple media-savvy participants share their experience of particular sessions. More importantly though, it gives people attending the conference an opportunity to interact and extend their discussion online.

When there’s over 3,800 tweets on the #EGU2013 hashtag during the General Assembly, curating a scintillating story that also falls into the category of ‘short and sweet’ no longer seems achievable. But do we need it? Perhaps it’s better to preserve the discussion that surrounds topical sessions such as the Great Debate on fracking and shale gas (Storify to come – watch this space!) and short courses, which can then be used as a resource for hints and tips later.

Just a sample from #EGU2013 (click for larger).

While making something public via Twitter can bring up the subject of potentially being “scooped” on science before it’s published. At a conference you are already communicating your work externally, so this is not an issue. Instead, it presents an opportunity to communicate your research with the wider public and scientific community. Here are some of the benefits:

Enriched discussions

Twitter provides opportunities for a much richer discussion during a conference – not only are you listening to the speaker’s insights on a topic, but you can tune in to the knowledge and experience of others in the audience. The knowledge gathered in a scientific conference is phenomenal and in the case of the EGU General Assembly, having over 11,000 brilliant scientific minds at your fingertips, why wouldn’t you ask a question?! Okay, so they aren’t all on Twitter, but the chance of a well-informed reply is high, so it’s still worth asking!

Remote participation

To add to the already enriched discussion, when something is being broadcast on Twitter, anyone can follow the goings on – be it the colleagues you left back in the lab, the geologist whose fieldwork clashed with the event, or the interested twitterer, who happens upon the hashtag! If a talk is being live tweeted (someone is tweeting updates about the speaker’s presentation) then it’s even easier for others to participate in the conference online and ask their own questions of the audience and the speaker.

Leaving a legacy

So we have a rich discussion, that involves members of the audience and connects with the wider public, potentially sharing the science with individuals across the globe – is there more to gain from a conference Twitter feed? Yes. The online discussion can be condensed and curated using Storify, which leaves a legacy of the discussion that people can return to later. Take the #EGUjobs session for example, Sarah Blackford and Helen Goulding gave an excellent talk on how to apply for jobs both in and out of academia last week and you can return to their recommendations here.

What did you gain from the conference Twitter feed? Fancy more of the same next year? Less? Or an even bigger online presence in 2014? Leave a comment below, or include it in the conference feedback form and we’ll do our best to make it a reality. 

Blogging

GeoLog will be updated regularly throughout the General Assembly, highlighting some of the meeting’s most interesting sessions, workshops and lectures as well as featuring interviews with scientists attending the Assembly.

Writers from the EGU Blog Network will also be posting about interesting research and sessions during the Assembly, so you can catch up on any sessions you’ve missed and get a feel for what’s going on in the press room through them!

As in previous years, the EGU will be compiling a list of General Assembly related blogs (the blogroll) and making them available through GeoLog.  If you would like to contribute to GeoLog, add your blog to the blogroll, or join the EGU Blog Network please contact Sara Mynott at mynott@egu.eu.

Tweeting

Participants can keep updated with General Assembly goings on by following the EGU twitter account (@EuroGeosciences) and the conference hashtag (#egu2013). You can also direct questions to the EGU communications staff and other participants using #egu2013, or by tweeting to @EuroGeosciences directly.

Some sessions also have their own hashtag including the Great Debate (GDB1; #eguFrack), the Union Session on Curiosity (US2; #eguMars), how to apply for a job (SC9/EOS13;#eguJobs), and how to use blogs and social media in scientific research (SC8/EOS12; #eguSMedia). Make sure to tag your tweets accordingly if you are posting about these sessions!

And other social media!

While these will be the main media streams during the Assembly, you can also follow the European Geosciences Union on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube to keep up with us there!

It’s time for the fifth edition of the EGU’s Twitter Journal Club, our interactive online discussion about a timely scientific article. If you have not yet taken part in one of these discussions, read more about it in our introductory post and make sure to participate when we meet online next week! 

This time, we will be discussing the recent peer-reviewed policy briefing Water Resource Resilience, produced by the UK Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology (POST).

The discussion will take place on Twitter next Thursday 15 November at 14:00 CET, and you can take part by following the EGU’s Twitter account (@EuroGeosciences) and using the hashtag #egutjc5 on your tweets. Please email the EGU’s Science Communications Fellow Edvard Glücksman if you have any further questions.

Happy reading!

The availability of water resources is fundamental for society and economic activities. (Photo: Edvard Glücksman)

Water Resource Resilience

Published 17 September 2012 | POST notes POST PN 419

Summary. The availability of water resources is fundamental for society and economic activities. This POSTnote describes the reasons for uncertainties in water resource availability for future supply and demand and possible responses to managing these risks in the medium term.

Questions to think about:

1. How would you summarise this briefing in a tweet?

2. How does the framework presented here apply internationally, particularly in other European countries?

3. Why are Environmental Flow Indicators (EFIs) important?

4. What would you add to this paper, if given an extra two pages of space?

On Friday, the EGU hosted a prolific Twitter discussion on the “Consequences of the L’Aquila verdict on the dialogue between science and society” where dozens of participants shared and discussed their thoughts on the verdict,  the scientific uncertainty surrounding earthquakes, and the outcomes of the decision for scientific research, communication, and education. You can now read the full transcript of the discussion on our Storify page.

If you didn’t get the chance to take part on the #eguAquila Twitter event, or would like to continue contributing to the discussion, you can do so on our blog forum.

Chris Rowan (@Allochthonous) summarises the L’Aquila issues in a tweet during Friday’s discussion

The EGU’s Twitter Journal Club had its fourth virtual meeting yesterday, this time focusing on a paper from the journal Atmospheric Environment. The work examines methods of assessing contributions of individual emissions to ozone and hence to climate change. Read a full transcript of the discussion on our Storify page!

Emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) lead to formation of ozone, which is an important greenhouse gas. (Photo: Edvard Glücksman)

This Friday 26 October 2012 at 14:00 CEST we will host an online discussion about the consequences of the recent L’Aquila earthquake trial. Contribute by following the EGU’s Twitter account (@EuroGeosciences) and posting using the hashtag #eguAquila on your tweets. Please email the EGU’s Science Communications Fellow Edvard Glücksman if you have any further questions.

The earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, killed 309 people and left 28,000 people homeless. (Photo: Boston.com)

Background

On Monday, an Italian judge sentenced seven members of Italy’s National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, six scientists and a former government official, to six years in jail for manslaughter for providing “inexact, incomplete and contradictory” information to the public before an earthquake hit the town of L’Aquila, Italy, in 2009. Prosecutors in the case argue that 29 of the 309 deaths in the earthquake could have been avoided had people not been reassured by one of the experts that the situation was “normal” and that they should stay in the area. Critics argue that the role of science is not to make decisions about public welfare but, rather, to present information about hazards to decision-makers, who can then decide how best to proceed with mitigation strategies.

The EGU’s Division on Seismology has reacted to the verdict on their Division page with a statement that provides some insight on the possible consequences this case may have for the dialogue between science and society, and for scientific research itself.

How do you think this verdict will affect the science community? Will it affect you personally? If so, in what ways? And what effects will it have on the relationship between scientists, policy makers, and Europe’s legal system?

Speak your mind this Friday on Twitter!

You may find the following articles of interest for the discussion:

• Scientists on trial: At fault? (Nature, 15 September 2011)
• Seismologists found guilty of manslaughter (New Scientist, 22 October 2012)
• Conviction of Italian Scientists May Hinder Open Discussion of Seismic Risk (American Geophysical Union, 23 October 2012)
• Italian court ruling sends chill through science community (Reuters, 22 October 2012)
• Seismologists’ trial likened to persecution of Galileo (AFP, 23 October 2012)
• For more articles, check Google News.

It’s time for the fourth edition of the EGU’s Twitter Journal Club, our interactive online discussion about a timely scientific article. If you have not yet taken part in one of these discussions, read more about it in our introductory post and make sure to participate when we meet online next week! 

This time, we will be discussing a recent Open Access article from the journal Atmospheric Environment, covering the various approaches used to calculate contributions of individual nitrogen oxide emissions to creating ozone – and hence towards climate change.

The discussion will take place on Twitter next Thursday 25 October at 14:00 CEST, and you can take part by following the EGU’s Twitter account (@EuroGeosciences) and using the hashtag #egutjc4 on your tweets. Please email the EGU’s Science Communications Fellow Edvard Glücksman if you have any further questions.

Happy reading!

Nitrogen oxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are important contributors to the formation of ozone, and hence to climate change. (Source: Wikimedia)

Attributing ozone to NOx emissions: Implications for climate mitigation measures

Atmospheric Environment 59 (2012) 102-107

Abstract. Emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) lead to formation of ozone, which is an important greenhouse gas. Despite its relevance, little emphasis was previously given on verifying approaches to calculate contributions of individual emissions to ozone and hence to climate change. Basically two methods (perturbation method and tagging method) were used in the past. We demonstrate that both methods are valid and have their area of application, but only tagging calculates contributions of emissions to concentrations, whereas the perturbation method identifies changes in the ozone concentrations due to emission changes. Our results show that the contribution of road traffic emissions to climate change is underestimated by a factor of 5 in the perturbation method. This is caused by non-linear compensating effects from other emission sectors, which are concealed in the perturbation method but disclosed with tagging. Consequently, the effectiveness of mitigation measures for individual sectors (i.e. concentrating on road traffic induced ozone) is only correctly expressed by the tagging method. The perturbation method provides accurately the total impact (i.e. total ozone) of a mitigation measure. However, current approaches, which evaluate the effectiveness of a mitigation measure based on the perturbation approach, do not reflect changes in the chemical state of the atmosphere (i.e. ozone production rates). These largely affect the effectiveness of subsequent measures and hence make the evaluation of the effectiveness of two measures dependent on their chronology of application. We show that also in this regard, the tagging method is better suited to evaluate the effectiveness of a mitigation measure than the perturbation method.

Questions to think about:

1. How would you summarise this article in a tweet?

2. What are the broader implications of this study?

3. Which approach seems to be the most effective in calculating contributions of individual emissions to ozone?

4. What would be an interesting follow-up study to this work?

It’s time for the third edition of the EGU’s Twitter Journal Club, our interactive online discussion about a timely scientific article. If you have not yet taken part in one of these discussions, read more about it in our introductory post and make sure to participate on this third edition! 

This time, we will be discussing an article recently published in the EGU’s Open Access journal Biogeosciences that features an innovative way of calculating the amount of carbon stored in tropical forests which incorporates tree-height data. The discussion will take place on Twitter next Thursday 27 September at 17:00 CEST, and you can take part by following the EGU’s Twitter account (@EuroGeosciences) and using the hashtag #egutjc3 on your tweets. Please email the EGU’s Science Communications Fellow Edvard Glücksman if you have any further questions.

Happy reading – and don’t be scared of the equations, they won’t bite!

Incorporating tree-height data into calculations of the amount of carbon stored in tropical forests reduces the estimates by roughly 13%. (Source: Imaggeo.net, credit: Alina Mihaela Luchian)

Tree height integrated into pantropical forest biomass estimates
Biogeosciences, 9, 3381–3403, 2012

Abstract. Aboveground tropical tree biomass and carbon storage estimates commonly ignore tree height (H). We estimate the effect of incorporating H on tropics-wide forest biomass estimates in 327 plots across four continents using 42 656 H and diameter measurements and harvested trees from 20 sites to answer the following questions:

1. What is the best H-model form and geographic unit to include in biomass models to minimise site-level uncertainty in estimates of destructive biomass?

2. To what extent does including H estimates derived in (1) reduce uncertainty in biomass estimates across all 327 plots?

3. What effect does accounting for H have on plot- and continental-scale forest biomass estimates?

The mean relative error in biomass estimates of destructively harvested trees when including H (mean 0.06), was half that when excluding H (mean 0.13). Power- and Weibull-H models provided the greatest reduction in uncertainty, with regional Weibull-H models preferred because they reduce uncertainty in smaller-diameter classes (< or = to 40 cm D) that store about one-third of biomass per hectare in most forests. Propagating the relationships from destructively harvested tree biomass to each of the 327 plots from across the tropics shows that including H reduces errors from 41.8 Mg/ha (range 6.6 to 112.4) to 8.0 Mg/ha (−2.5 to 23.0). For all plots, aboveground live biomass was −52.2 Mg/ha (−82.0 to −20.3 bootstrapped 95% CI), or 13%, lower when including H estimates, with the greatest relative reductions in estimated biomass in forests of the Brazilian Shield, east Africa, and Australia, and relatively little change in the Guiana Shield, central Africa and southeast Asia. Appreciably different stand structure was observed among regions across the tropical continents, with some storing significantly more biomass in small diameter stems, which affects selection of the best height models to reduce uncertainty and biomass reductions due to H. After accounting for variation in H, total biomass per hectare is greatest in Australia, the Guiana Shield, Asia, central and east Africa, and lowest in east-central Amazonia, W. Africa, W. Amazonia, and the Brazilian Shield (descending order). Thus, if tropical forests span 1668 million km2 and store 285 Pg C (estimate including H), then applying our regional relationships implies that carbon storage is overestimated by 35 PgC (31–39 bootstrapped 95% CI) if H is ignored, assuming that the sampled plots are an unbiased statistical representation of all tropical forest in terms of biomass and height factors. Our results show that tree H is an important allometric factor that needs to be included in future forest biomass estimates to reduce error in estimates of tropical carbon stocks and emissions due to deforestation.

Questions to think about:

1. How would you summarise this article in a tweet?

2. What are the broader implications of this study? (hint: see recent Nature blurb linked to below)

3. What methods could be used to improve data within biomass maps?

4. What are the practical implications of this and similar studies on how we interpret carbon storage within biomass?

5. Could this article be improved – specifically, are there too many equations?

Related media coverage:
Nature

The European Geosciences Union, through publishing house Copernicus Publications, publishes 14 peer-reviewed Open Access journals. Biogeosciences (BG, IF 3.859) is an international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and discussion of research articles, short communications and review papers on all aspects of the interactions between the biological, chemical and physical processes in terrestrial or extraterrestrial life with the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. The objective of the journal is to cut across the boundaries of established sciences and achieve an interdisciplinary view of these interactions.

The EGU’s Twitter Journal Club had its second virtual meeting yesterday, this time focusing on a paper from the EGU’s journal Biogeosciences, investigating the means by which microscopic life is sustained in the hostile aridity of the Atacama Desert. Read a full transcript of our discussion on our Storify page!

Vast expanse of Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the most arid regions in the world. (source: Wikimedia)

The European Geosciences Union, through publishing house Copernicus Publications, publishes 14 peer-reviewed Open Access journals. Biogeosciences (BG, IF 3.587)  is an international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and discussion of research articles, short communications and review papers on all aspects of the interactions between the biological, chemical and physical processes in terrestrial or extraterrestrial life with the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. The objective of the journal is to cut across the boundaries of established sciences and achieve an interdisciplinary view of these interactions.

Time for the second edition of the EGU’s Twitter Journal Club, our interactive online discussion about a timely scientific article. Full details can be found here. 

This time, our article focuses on one of the most extreme environments on Earth, the Atacama Desert in Chile, and the method by which rock-dwelling microorganisms obtain their water. The Twitter discussion will take place on Thursday 12 July at 17:00 CEST (hashtag #egutjc2). Please email the EGU’s Science Communications Fellow Edvard Glücksman with further questions. Happy reading!

The Atacama Desert is one of Earth’s driest environments. (credit: Wikimedia)

Novel water source for endolithic life in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert
Biogeosciences, 9, 2275-2286, 2012

Abstract. The hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert, Chile, is possibly the driest and most life-limited place on Earth, yet endolithic microorganisms thrive inside halite pinnacles that are part of ancient salt flats. The existence of this microbial community in an environment that excludes any other life forms suggests biological adaptation to high salinity and desiccation stress, and indicates an alternative source of water for life other than rainfall, fog or dew. Here, we show that halite endoliths obtain liquid water through spontaneous capillary condensation at relative humidity (RH) much lower than the deliquescence RH of NaCl. We describe how this condensation could occur inside nano-pores smaller than 100 nm, in a newly characterized halite phase that is intimately associated with the endolithic aggregates. This nano-porous phase helps retain liquid water for long periods of time by preventing its evaporation even in conditions of utmost dryness. Our results explain how life has colonized and adapted to one of the most extreme environments on our planet, expanding the water activity envelope for life on Earth, and broadening the spectrum of possible habitats for life beyond our planet.

Questions to think about:
1. How would you summarise this article in a tweet?

2. The Atacama Desert is one of the driest environments on the planet. Can you think of others, and do you know of similar studies done there?

3. What is the link between the research presented here and our quest to find extraterrestrial life?

4. How could the methods presented here be improved in follow-up studies?

5. Do you see industrial applications for these findings?

Related media coverage
National Geographic Magazine
Sydney Morning Herald

The European Geosciences Union, through publishing house Copernicus Publications, publishes 14 peer-reviewed Open Access journals. Biogeosciences (BG, IF 3.587)  is an international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and discussion of research articles, short communications and review papers on all aspects of the interactions between the biological, chemical and physical processes in terrestrial or extraterrestrial life with the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. The objective of the journal is to cut across the boundaries of established sciences and achieve an interdisciplinary view of these interactions.