European Geosciences Union
Division on Geodesy
President: Johannes Böhm (g@egu.eu)
Deputy President: Annette Eicker (annette.eicker@hcu-hamburg.de)
Traditionally geodesy is the science of the measurement and the mapping of the Earth’s surface. Since the surface is mainly shaped by the Earth’s gravity field the classical definition includes the Earth’s gravitational potential. Observing the Earth figure, the orientation and rotation as well as the gravity field, geodesy today provides spatial and temporal patterns of geophysical processes within the Earth system such as sea level rise, tides, melting of continental ice masses, changes in global water circulation and in the atmosphere or deformations of the solid Earth. Consequently, the geodesy division covers activities on the whole spectrum of modern geodetic Earth system modeling from the measurement systems to the investigation of geophysical processes.
The 2018 Vening Meinesz Medal is awarded to Markus Rothacher for his pioneering work in linking geometry, rotation and gravity to space geodetic observations and subsequently enhancing the understanding of the Earth system.
The 2018 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award is awarded to Sara Bruni for her innovative contributions to global and regional reference-frame studies bridging the gap to other fields of geosciences, such as geodynamics.
The 2017 Vening Meinesz Medal is awarded to Isabella Velicogna in recognition of her pioneering and groundbreaking work on the application of time-variable gravity for ice-sheet mass balance and land-water hydrology studies.
The 2017 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award is awarded to Xingxing Li for his innovative contributions in improving the performance of precise point positioning, significantly extending the high-rate GNSS applications in geosciences.
The 2017 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Awards is awarded to Florian Andritsch Comparing tracking scenarios to LAGEOS and Etalon by simulating realistic SLR observations
More than 15.000 participants with great presentations in 666 sessions (posters, PICOs, and orals) made the EGU General Assembly 2018 at the Austrian Convention Centre in Vienna a great success. In the geodesy-led programme, we had 428 submissions, which were distributed to 19 oral blocks, 3 PICO sessions, and a series of poster sessions. We listened to exciting talks, starting with geodetic theory on Monday morning and ending with presentations on VLBI and SLR observations to artificial objects in space …
We all know that easy access to data speeds up doing research. In this post, we will discuss how open GIS data can stimulate innovative ways of doing research in the field of geodesy and geosciences, considering first the benefits and challenges of open data. Geodesy can benefit greatly from the open data movement and from open Geographic Information System (GIS) data. The reasons for this are two. First, open data, namely data freely usable, re-usable and re-distributable, promotes transparency, …
With the EGU General Assembly just over a week away, we have a number of updates on the meeting, happening in Vienna from 8–13 April. Our conference organiser Copernicus has launched a great mobile app, and we recently announced a number of measures to reduce the environmental impact of the conference, from encouraging people to travel by train to introducing an option for participants to offset their carbon footprint. On the EGU blog, GeoLog, you can find posts about the city of Vienna, and a selection of Union-wide events, short courses and policy activities at the EGU General Assembly. For students taking part in the Outstanding Student Poster and PICO, there are also some tips from the judges on how to prepare a poster or PICO presentation.
This month, we have also announced that we are accepting nominations for EGU awards and medals. We encourage the EGU membership to consider gender, geographical and cultural balance when nominating outstanding Earth, planetary and space scientists at various career stages.
Last but not the least, we have also announced that we are launching two new publications at the 2018 General Assembly: a journal, Geoscience Communication, and a compilation, the Encyclopedia of Geosciences. Find these and many other EGU updates below.