European Geosciences Union
Division on Soil System Sciences
President: Claudio Zaccone
(sss@egu.eu)
Deputy President: Heike Knicker
(knicker@irnase.csic.es)
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 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 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 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 2021 Philippe Duchaufour Medal is awarded to Donald L. Sparks for his outstanding research in the field of soil chemistry and physical chemistry, which greatly influenced the development of soil science.
The 2021 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Lucia Fuchslueger for her contributions to understanding responses of soil biogeochemical cycling to global change drivers and to unravelling plant and soil microbial interactions and dependence on nutrient availability.
The 2021 Virtual Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (vOSPP) Award is awarded to Clément Lopez-Canfin Disparate responses of soil-atmosphere CO2 exchange to biophysical and geochemical factors over a biocrust ecological succession in the Tabernas Desert
The 2021 Virtual Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (vOSPP) Award is awarded to Hanna Zeitfogel Variability across scales – exploring methods for predicting soil properties from multiple sources
After a couple of years of online conferences, Early Career Scientists of the EGU’s Soils System Sciences division share their experiences of this year’s General Assembly which was held in a hybrid format. This week, we hear from Marta Basso I started doing research let’s say out of the blue, I have never been to a conference during my studies, so when I started my PhD in 2019 I was extremely enthusiastic to have the opportunity to meet researchers and …
After a couple of years of online conferences, Early Career Scientists of the EGU’s Soils System Sciences division share their experiences of this year’s General Assembly which was held in a hybrid format. This week, we hear from Diana Vieira So, this was it. Our first EGU after the COVID pandemic, and we missed it a lot! I was fortunate to know how the EGU was before, so to me was quite easy to spot the differences. However, I do …
The August issue of The Loupe explores how existing energy resources inform climate change mitigation. Scientists from the Environmental Defense Fund find that while hydrogen is certainly part of the solution to get to net zero, this fuel of the future may not be as clean as we think. Researcher in energy transition under climate change Jarmo Kikstra discusses the delicate intersections between social and natural sciences, and on World Biofuels Day we look at commercially available biofuels around the world and some new ones under development.
Also in this issue: the EGU Biodiversity Task Force’s seven recommendations to the EU Nature Restoration Law which will now be amended and either passed or rejected by the European Parliament and The Council of the European Union. Finally, apply by 12 September to the EGU Policy Pairing scheme to spend a week in Brussels with a Member of the European Parliament (MEP).