The March 2014 issue of the quarterly newsletter of the European Geosciences Union is now published online. Following from this year’s idea of having a themed General Assembly, this issue of the EGU newsletter is dedicated to The Face of the Earth. A special contribution from the EGU President and the EGU Programme Committee Chair at the start of the issue informs readers about this theme and what will be different at this year’s General Assembly.

Inspired by the five sub-topics at the EGU2014, we publish five pieces about exciting research focusing on Waters of the Earth, Life of the Earth, Atmosphere of the Earth, Rocks of the Earth and Space and the Earth in the Articles section of this GeoQ. Also of highlight are the Young Scientists and Education sections. The former provides information about activities for young scientists at the General Assembly, while the latter focuses on this year's Geosciences Information For Teachers (GIFT) workshop, which is dedicated to Our Changing Planet.

You can download the full newsletter as a single (interactive) PDF, or follow the Table of Contents links below for the PDFs of each individual section.

Table of Contents

• The Face of the Earth (letter from the EGU President and the EGU Programme Committee Chair)
• Editorial
• Articles
  
  • How the seas stimulate rainfall (Waters of the Earth) – 6
  • Evolution, extinction and the fossil record (Life of the Earth) – 7
  • How the Earth’s atmosphere shows its face (Atmosphere of the Earth) – 9
  • Shrinking mountains (Rocks of the Earth) – 11
  • A glimpse of Mars’ early history (Space and the Earth) – 12
• EGU Voice
  
  • Division reports – 14
• EGU News
  
  • Results of the EGU Autumn 2013 elections – 16
  • Communicate Your Science Video Competition – 16
  • Welcome to a new Imaggeo! – 17
  • New EGU journal SOIL to be launched at the 2014 General Assembly – 17
  • Earth System Dynamics indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded – 18
  • Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics becomes interactive – 18
  • GIFT teachers and EGU scientists: apply now to take part in I’m a Geoscientist, Get me out of here! – 19
• Press Releases
  
  • Greenland’s fastest glacier reaches record speeds – 20
  • Ancient forests stabilised Earth’s CO2 and climate – 21
  • Europe to suffer from more severe and persistent droughts – 22
  • Geoengineering approaches to reduce climate change unlikely to succeed – 23
  • Using moving cars to measure rainfall – 24
  • Sybille Hildebrandt and Chelsea Wald awarded EGU Science Journalism Fellowship – 25
• Journal Watch
  
  • Annales Geophysicae (ANGEO) – 26
  • Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP) – 26
  • Biogeosciences (BG) – 27
  • Climate of the Past (CP) – 27
  • Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems (GI) – 27
  • Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS) – 28
  • Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics (NPG) – 28
  • Ocean Science (OS) – 28
  • Solid Earth (SE) – 28
• External News
  
  • Geological surveys’ capacity to address economic and social challenges – 29
• Education
  
  • Our Changing Planet: a timely ‘gift’ for teachers! – 30
• Young Scientists
  
  • Young Scientists at the Assembly – 31
• Books
  
  • Bilingual Dictionary of Earth Sciences – 32
  • Ecology of Climate Change – 32
  • Interpreting Aerial Photographs to Identify Natural Hazards – 33
  • Returning Carbon to Nature: Coal, Carbon Capture, and Storage – 33
  • The Seismic Analysis Code: A Primer and User’s Guide (book review) – 34
  • Runoff Prediction in Ungauged Basins: Synthesis across Processes, Places and Scales (book review) – 35
  • On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship between Life and Earth (book review) – 36
• Events
  
  • Conferences, meetings and workshops – 37