European Geosciences Union
Division on Soil System Sciences
President: Heike Knicker
(sss@egu.eu)
Deputy President: vacant
Soil is the interface between the crust and atmosphere, and is the basis of life on Earth. The impact of soil science to the society has probably never been as high as it is currently. The importance of soils in the Earth system must make us, the soil scientists, more noticeable at the EGU. The aim of the Division on Soil System Sciences (SSS) is to coordinate the EGU scientific programme on soil science and related activities. The SSS contributes actively with EGU by promoting scientific interchange and dissemination of activity carried out by members.
The composition of our division (https://www.egu.eu/sss/structure/) will be partially renewed/updated. In particular, we are looking for volunteers for the following positions:
Are you are interested to serve and help growing the Soil System Sciences division?
If YES, please send a brief CV (1 pp.) and a motivation letter (1 pp.) to:
Deadline: March 20, 2023.
All new Officers/Committee members will be officially nominated and approved during the next SSS division meeting on April 25, 2023.
The EGU General Assembly 2023 will be held on site at the Austria Center Vienna, with online components provided to enable virtual attendance, from 23 to 28 April 2023.
The call-for-sessions for the next EGU is open, and that the deadline for session proposals is September 19th, 2022.
All members of the SSS community can suggest sessions with conveners and a description HERE. You have the possibility of proposing either physical oral/poster sessions with a hybrid component or hybrid vPICO sessions.
When suggesting a session, Short Course, or Townhall Meeting, please consider promoting under-represented demographics, including: (i) multiple countries and institutes, (ii) different career stages, (iii) different genders and all other forms of diversity, and (iv) diverse scientific approaches (see convener guidelines and rules here).
To all members of the SSS community,
The call-for-nominations for the SSS Outstanding Early Career Scientist (OECS) award and the Philippe Duchaufour / Alina Kabata-Pendias medals is currently open. Check it out here.
Deadline for submissions is 15 June 2022.
The composition of our SSS division (https://www.egu.eu/sss/structure/) will be partially renewed/updated. In particular, we are looking for volunteers for the following positions:
Are you are interested to serve and help growing the Soil System Sciences division?
If YES, please send a brief CV (1 pp.) and a motivation letter to:
Deadline: April 11, 2022.
All new Officers/Committee members will be officially nominated and approved during the next SSS division meeting (in May 2022).
In October 2021, Biodiversity was selected by the EGU Science for Policy Working Group and approved by the EGU Council as the 2022-2024 Policy Priority Area due to its relevance to many EGU divisions, current and future policy relevance, and the need for information and continued scientific support in the creation of new European legislation and establishment of new European and national initiatives.
On 17 November 2021, EGU launched a call for experts to join the EGU’s Biodiversity Task Force that will support these activities and allow EGU to contribute to the EU’s upcoming biodiversity policies and activities!
To apply, please submit your CV (max 2 pages) that outlines your relevant experience in the area of biodiversity and a cover letter here by 17 December 2021. For more info, click here.
On November 3rd 2021, the EGU named the 50 recipients of next year's Union Medals and Awards, Division Medals, and Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist (OECS) Awards (https://www.egu.eu/news/872/egu-announces-its-2022-awards-and-medals/).
We wish to congratulate Mary K. Firestone (Philippe Duchaufour Medal 2022) and Diana C.S. Vieira (SSS OECS 2022), and thank all scientists nominated but not awarded. Our Division received several great nominations (the work of the Medal and Award Committees was not easy at all!), and this mirrors the high scientific profile of our members.
On October 21st, 2021, the EGU Council approved a second medal for our SSS division. This medal, proposed by the previous President Saskia Keesstra in 2018 and voted during the SSS division meeting in April 2021 (https://www.egu.eu/sss/reports/), will be available for nomination in 2022 and will be named after A. Kabata-Pendias.
The EGU Election Autumn 2021 for the next EGU Union President, General Secretary and Division (including SSS) Presidents is currently open for all 2021 EGU members until November 30, 2021 (https://www.egu.eu/elections/).
The candidate for the SSS division is Heike Knicker (https://www.egu.eu/elections/egu-election-autumn-2021/candidates/).
The Call for Abstracts to the EGU General Assembly 2022 is now open (https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU22/sessionprogramme)!
Please, submit the results of your research in one of the sessions promoted by the SSS division.
The deadline to nominate the best deserving soil researchers for the Philippe Duchaufour Medal and the Division Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award for 2022 is June 15 2021.
Detailed information on the selection process and how to propose a candidate is available on the Awards & Medals section of the EGU website. Nominations for all the medals and awards must be submitted via an online nomination form. Before submitting a nomination, please carefully check if the nomination and supporting documents satisfy the EGU requirements.
We are more than happy to announce the 2nd edition of the Soil System Sciences Division’s Campfire event. The idea of our campfire events is to bring together early career and other scientists in these challenging times when other ways of meeting each other is difficult. This time following up on our recent blog post, we will discuss gender equity in (soil) science. After a general introduction by our guest speaker, attendees will be randomly divided into room chats where they will meet and introduce one another; discuss their opinions on a selected question related to gender bias, mentorship and/or academic career; and discuss what can early career scientists as individuals as well as our Division do to further promote gender equity.
When? Thursday 25 March 2021, 19:00 CET
Register for the event: here
Contacts: Olga Vindušková (olga.vinduskova@gmail.com), Layla M. San Emeterio (laylase92@gmail.com), Dan Evans (Daniel.L.Evans@cranfield.ac.<wbr></wbr>uk)
Our Division is looking for enthusiastic soil science community members to join our team in 2021. In particular, we are looking for:
If you are interested to serve and help growing the Soil System Sciences division, please send a brief CV (1 pp.) and a motivation letter to:
Deadline: March 31st, 2021.
Please take into account that all new Officers/Committee members need to be nominated and approved during the next SSS business meeting (on April, 21st), i.e., they need to be present during the SSS meeting.
CiteScore 2019 values are now available in Scopus. SOIL, our EGU Soil System Sciences (SSS) division open-access journal ranked 3/126 (98th percentile) in the category Soil Science !!!
The deadline to nominate the best deserving soil researchers for the Philippe Duchaufour Medal and the Division Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award for 2021 has been extended to 30 June 2020.
Detailed information on the selection process and how to propose a candidate is available on the Awards & Medals section of the EGU website. Nominations for all the medals and awards must be submitted via an online nomination form. Before submitting a nomination, please carefully check if the nomination and supporting documents satisfy the EGU requirements.
As every two years, our Division was looking for enthusiastic soil science community members to join our team as Subdivision Committee members. This year, several Subdivision chairs and committee members are ending their mandate, and new candidates will be proposed and approved during the SSS Division Meeting on May 5th, 2020.
Deadline: March 31st, 2020.
The EGU has issued an open letter to funding agencies and evaluation committees with information on the assessment of presentations given at its scientific meetings.
The letter details the three presentation types given at EGU General Assembly and states that the selection of the type of presentation is not based on any evaluation of the scientific value of the contribution. This letter emphasises that there is no distinction regarding the standing, quality or prestige of oral, poster, or PICO presentations.
Lily Pereg, Deputy President and Programme Group Chair of the EGU Soil System Sciences (SSS) Division and Executive Editor of the SOIL journal, died tragically and unexpectedly earlier this month during a trip to Argentina.
Pereg was a microbiologist with 25 years of research experience and an associate professor at the School of Science and Technology, University of New England in Armidale, Australia. An EGU member since 2013, Pereg was elected to serve as president of the EGU SSS Division in Autumn 2017, a role she was due to take on in April this year.
Amazing soil pictures? Are you a photoartist? Share your work at Imaggeo, the open-access image repository of EGU.
Lorena M. Zavala (Univ. of Sevilla) holds a soil
aggregate composed of organic matter from a
peatland from the Wicklow Mountains (Ireland)
The 2023 Philippe Duchaufour Medal is awarded to Andreas A. Richter for his pioneering scientific contributions in soil ecological research, and his work as an excellent teacher and mentor for his students, following an inclusive approach.
The 2023 Alina Kabata-Pendias Medal is awarded to Ravendra Naidu for outstanding research on developing better ways to assess, characterise risks of, and remediate contaminated soil, and the potential impacts of contaminants on environmental and human health.
The 2023 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Gina Garland for outstanding research exploring how different agricultural practices impact soil functioning and environmental sustainability.
The 2022 Philippe Duchaufour Medal is awarded to Mary K. Firestone for outstanding research exploring the interactions between soil physicochemical conditions, soil microbial activity, plants and nutrient cycling processes.
The 2022 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Diana C. S. Vieira for contributions to the understanding of post-fire hydrological and erosive processes through field monitoring and the translation of that empirical knowledge into mathematical models.
The 2022 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Aydogan Avcioglu Seasonal influences on weathering processes in Turkish Badlands: Laboratory-based climate experiments
The 2022 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Tullia Calogiuri Can earthworms enhance mineral weathering and thereby increase carbon sequestration?
We are looking forward to celebrating another excellent exhibition of soil science at this year’s EGU General Assembly. Of course, very little soils research could take place without the work carried out by technicians, laboratory assistants, and research support staff. This monthly blog post is our opportunity to thank these key individuals, and their tireless efforts to maintain our laboratories, carry out fieldwork, and make research happen! You can read our previous conversations with a diverse range of soil science …
In the May newsletter, EGU spoke to researchers about the exclusionary practices contributing to the low retention rate of minority groups within the geosciences, and to understand what needs to be done to usher in change.
We hear about the geological period that no one talks about: menstruation in the field, and the struggles of being a parent or caregiver in academia. David Fernández-Blanco also shares his plans to better support early career researchers as EGU’s new Union-level Early Career Scientist Representative.
Members of EGU’s Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee invite your inputs to their survey on workplace experiences of geoscientists and EGU’s Education Committee shares ways to bring science to educators! Want to do your part in making the geoscience community more inclusive? Watch our free EGUwebinar to identify and combat structural discrimination in your work environment and personal life.