As a new participant in the gloriously titled Geoblogosphere, a couple of things have come to my attention recently that I’d like to highlight. One of them is entertaining, the other deadly serious, neither of them directly to do with sand, but both linked to the international community.
First, for entertainment, Geotripper posted a geologist’s version of the “100 things you’ve done” meme ((http://geotripper.blogspot.com/2008/12/100-things-youve-done-meme-geologists.html), to which the geoblogosphere, including myself, has responded with enthusiasm - there’s a lively series of comments on Highly Allochthonous (http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/) and the level of activity seems to have diminished attendance of AGU meeting sessions in San Francisco. Several comments have noted a degree of Americocentrism to the list; this seems to me fair enough since the origins are in the US, and it wasn’t a problem for me since I have spent so much of my life geologizing around the US. But it does raise the question: where’s the international geoblogosphere? Perhaps I just haven’t found it, but, from my European perspective all the good blogs come from the US. So this is an appeal to locate international geobloggers - you must be out there.
The more serious issue also relates to the international earth science community. Andrew Alden’s blog pointed me to the document “Critical Needs for the Twenty First Century: The Role of the Geosciences” put out by the AGI on behalf of its member societies (http://www.agiweb.org/gap/geotrans08.pdf). “The geoscience community of more than 120,000 geoscientists represented by the 44 member societies of the AGI stands ready to help deal with the challenges of modern life in a delicately linked Earth system.” The document highlights seven critical challenges facing society, all of which are global headline issues and to all of which the geosciences and geoscientists have a fundamental contribution to make. Again, of course the document has a US focus, but the issues are global and the AGI putting this out has set a great example for the geological community around the world. The document needs to be broadcast and adapted and adopted by geosocieties globally - we all need to stick our heads above the parapet.
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