Content:

EOS – Education and Outreach Sessions

EOS3.2 – Climate literacy: Learning, education, methods and roadmaps

A recent geoscience education project, undertaken in Irish secondary schools using a children's rights based methodology that incorporated student voice in the design, implementation, and analysis, began with a focus on "Earth Science" but ended, through the influence of the student co-researchers, with a focus on climate literacy. Teenagers have seen the writing on the wall, as sea levels and global temperatures rise, and traditional career paths and global superpowers fall. 

Following on from the aforementioned project, an international comparative study currently ongoing seeks to establish global best practice in geoscience education and climate literacy, with the aim of facilitating improvement in the Irish context. Research suggests Irish school students are eager to learn about the Earth, but are frustrated by classes on climate change that are not actionable and do not address the systemic causes of the climate catastrophe. There is an appetite among teenagers and young people to learn more, but simply adding more classes or more class time isn't sufficient, the classes must be appropriately challenging, honest, and action-focused. This ongoing research seeks to provide guidance and tools to achieve that in Irish formal and informal education. 

Thus, in this presentation, the findings of a recent geoscience and climate change education project will be discussed in the context of how the expressed needs and opinions of the participating students have impacted the ongoing international comparative study seeking to improve Ireland's geoscience and climate literacy.

How to cite: Neenan, E. E.: Rising To The Challenge: Addressing climate literacy in Ireland through the lens of student rights, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12669, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12669, 2021.

EGU21-22 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2 | Highlight

Building Climate Change into Weather and Climate Teaching

Sylvia Knight

The Royal Meteorological Society believes that every student should leave school with the basic climate literacy that would enable them to engage with the messages put forward by the media or politicians, or to make informed decisions about their own opportunities and responsibilities.

Through 2019/ 2020, students, the media and academics became increasingly vocal in demanding that more climate change be taught in UK schools. With a rigid National Curriculum and exam specifications, part of the problem lies in students (and teachers) not realising the relevance of concepts and processes they have actually been taught in school to understanding climate change and the broad spectrum of impacts, mitigation and adaptation issues associated with it. In addition, weather and climate are commonly perceived as being amongst the harder topics in geography and so, even when they are taught at all, geography teachers are used to teaching weather, climate and climate change separately, not highlighting the close ties and links between the topics.

With this in mind, the Royal Meteorological Society has developed a full scheme of work for 11-14 year old students which integrates climate change thinking into weather and climate lessons. Hard copy teacher’s guides have been distributed to schools throughout the UK, free of charge, with associated teaching resources being made available online. Recognising the importance of teacher understanding, the resources are accompanied by CPD materials for teachers.

In 2021, we hope to build on this work by developing resources and teacher training materials for science teachers and students.

How to cite: Knight, S.: Building Climate Change into Weather and Climate Teaching, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-22, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-22, 2021.

EGU21-68 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2 | Highlight

A psychological tool for helping the public feel invested in climate change.

Haydon Mort

A psychological tool for helping the public feel invested in climate change.

Talking to audiences about climate change in a way that helps them feel empowered is a challenge that many geoscientists feel ill-equipped to tackle. In this presentation, I demonstrate how using a blend of reverse psychology and cognitive dissonance can lead to an audience feeling highly activated and motivated. 

I used data and presentation techniques to trick an audience into firmly believing that climate change is a hoax - and then revealed the hoax. I was able to use the initial anger and frustration to elicit highly positive states of mind and feelings of personal empowerment. Audiences report a  much higher degree of climate literacy and a greater sense of awareness of their role in the fight again climate change. This strategy also appears to effective in convincing 'climate sceptics' that they are mistaken.

Questionnaires collected after 24 of these presentations reveal 100% of participants left feeling 'invested' in climate change. 95% additionally felt 'motivated to learn more and take action'. When asking sceptical audiences, 85% said that the presentation had forced them to re-evaluate their pre-existing beliefs. 60% said they now felt anthropogenically driven climate change was likely a reality. 100% of sceptics wanted to learn more.

The neurophysiology of our brains explains this data. When paired with strong emotions - positive or negative - information is more likely stored in memory centres. Audiences that already understood climate change to be a threat switch from anxiety/anger /confusion to relief/happiness/wonder. Such a large jump in emotional state triggers a strong dopaminergic system response. By forcing the audience to consider why they were susceptible to the hoax in the first place, the positive mindset makes them feel empowered and eager to learn more.

In the case of climate sceptics; by mirroring their own arguments, I demonstrate empathy by appreciating their perspectives. Whilst the resulting cognitive dissonance of having the hoax 'unmasked' is deeply uncomfortable, I able to convert this strong negative emotion into a positive one. I do this by a) empathising with the discomfort b) showing solidarity with them c) being open about why I used the strategy I did.

In summary, by marrying geocommunication with brain science, we can look forward to exploring more innovative strategies that make members of the public feel more invested and activated.

How to cite: Mort, H.: A psychological tool for helping the public feel invested in climate change., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-68, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-68, 2021.

EGU21-1854 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

E-Learning of meteorological measurements during  the Covid-19 pandemy

Ilaria Cantini, Gabriele Rafanelli, Andrea Rindi, Andrea Antonini, and Luca Bini

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Italian schools and Universities were closed. Due to this situation, our research group, that is composed of high school teachers, University researchers and an experimental farmer, with an audience of 15 to 25 years-old students, underwent to a sudden and total change of learning, since the research laboratory shutdown and the construction of our experimental system of meteorological measurements was stopped.

The group had to manage the didactic activity, carrying out a Distance Learning thanks to the technological support of an on-line simulator like IDE-Arduino, thinkercad and circuit simulator LTspice and LUA Compiler, with the support of Thingspeak by Mathlab.  

This situation required to divide the theory that stays behind the meteorological measurements into several different laboratories to propose to students, with reference to their age and their previous competence.

Firstly we had to re-plan some of the electronics contents, trying to include e-laboratory activities, too, with the teacher support, by using the 5E Inquiry methodology. Here we show, as an example of the new educational approach to remote teaching, the practical activity focused on the functioning of components (transducers and actuators) used to build-up a meteorological station. Subsequently, we had to introduce in the meteorological station a data mining system, which would allow data on-line transmission aimed at a qualitative analysis of the experimental data.

The present case study is based on a qualitative analysis of the observed data (fig. 1 a,b,c). The conceptual framework started from the Vygotskijan idea, mediated by information technologies which were useful for socialization and communication.

The didactic methodology and the used ICT, may be a suggestion for the teaching community in order to organize and realize a distance laboratory practice (E-laboratory), besides the traditional methodologies.

How to cite: Cantini, I., Rafanelli, G., Rindi, A., Antonini, A., and Bini, L.: E-Learning of meteorological measurements during  the Covid-19 pandemy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1854, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1854, 2021.

EGU21-3041 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

A smörgåsbord of climate literacy methods: Outlines & experiences

Pimnutcha Promduangsri, Pariphat Promduangsri, Farhad Bolouri, Isabel M. Caballero Leiva, Linda Khodja, Estelle Knecht, Fernanda Matsuoka, Riccardo Parigi, and Laksh Sharma

The Earth and humanity face real existential threats.  The problems are well known: global warming, climate change (CC), deforestation, pollution, temperature increase, biodiversity loss and so on.

CC is the most dangerous threat of our time.  It “affects every single living being and every ecological niche, with poorer communities suffering disproportionately” (session abstract).  Action and knowledge are needed to combat this crisis so that future generations are saved.

It is important that people learn about CC and its effects, and then learn how to act.  Climate literacy/learning (CL) is the only way in which people can come to understand and become literate so as to make decisions that are grounded in geoethical principles.  As the session abstract says, “the more people are knowledgeable about the changes affecting their lives, the more they will be able to make informed decisions and to adapt and mitigate”.  

Many CL paths exist, all the way down from masters level courses, through collective initiatives, to individual actions.  In our presentation, we will review a variety of CL actions and methods.  These include:

  • En-ROADS, a simulation model, developed by Climate Interactive, for negotiating scenarios to limit future global warming. 
  • Fridays For Future (FFF), “a global climate strike movement that started in August 2018”.  
  • Online participatory simulation to learn about the effect of CC on the oceans, with people from many countries.
  • PhD programme on CC impacts on natural coastal risks and adaptation pathways for the Mediterranean coast.
  • University courses in environmental science and in ecology.
  • Youth Climate Leaders (YCL), an organisation created by four Brazillain women “to offer solutions to help young people tackle [...] the climate crisis and structural unemployment”.  
  • Associations, experience volunteering.
  • Conferences, participation.
  • Designing, playing and debriefing games.
  • MOOCs, our experience with several online courses on CC and CL.
  • Reading and video documentaries.

We also encourage attendees to share their thoughts and outline their own CL experiences and methods.  We will also attempt to answer questions that the audience may have.

How to cite: Promduangsri, P., Promduangsri, P., Bolouri, F., Caballero Leiva, I. M., Khodja, L., Knecht, E., Matsuoka, F., Parigi, R., and Sharma, L.: A smörgåsbord of climate literacy methods: Outlines & experiences, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3041, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3041, 2021.

EGU21-8229 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2 | Highlight

From knowledge to action – can modern and active teaching formats help to bridge the value-action gap among school students and raise their climate-friendly behavior?

Eva Feldbacher, Manuela Waberer, Lena Campostrini, and Gabriele Weigelhofer

Numerous studies and survey results indicate that the majority of the population is aware of climate change and displays worries about it, but only a few people show willingness to change their behavior accordingly and to act more climate-friendly. The discrepancy between knowledge and action (value - action gap) is seen as an obstacle to successful adaptation to climate change, and is particularly pronounced in the young population group. In addition to the lack of a sound basic knowledge, young people above all lack the believe in their own possibilities and the conviction that their actions are enough to achieve something (“bigger than self-dilemma”). 

We initiated a research – education – cooperation project to reach out for school students and tried to motivate them to engage intensively with climate change and to increase their climate-friendly behavior. Modern teaching and learning formats were used in order to contrast to the typical “learning” at school and foster voluntary engagement, to transfer positive messages and solutions, and to emphasize the self - efficacy of their actions. The aim of the project was to examine, whether an active engagement over a prolonged time period with topics around climate change can achieve a greater effect on the understanding of complex relationships and raise climate-friendly behavior more effectively than a short, passive learning phase. With the help of an online questionnaire all involved students answered climate-relevant questions of the categories “behavior, perception and knowledge” before and after the activities.

The questionnaire results revealed that a general knowledge about climate change and climate awareness exist among the students surveyed, even before the project activities. More than 90% believe that every single person can contribute significantly to tackle climate change. However, students had problems with understanding complex relationships and long-term interactions of the consequences of climate change on people and ecosystems. For example, it was difficult for students to correctly estimate virtual water consumption and to see the potential social consequences of climate change.

We believe that modern educational concepts on climate change should foster system understanding and seize on the young people’s positive attitude towards climate protection by pointing out concrete, climate-friendly ways of behavior. In this way it is possible to strengthen the young people’s believe in their actions (self-efficacy) and to reduce the gap between attitude and action.

How to cite: Feldbacher, E., Waberer, M., Campostrini, L., and Weigelhofer, G.: From knowledge to action – can modern and active teaching formats help to bridge the value-action gap among school students and raise their climate-friendly behavior?, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8229, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8229, 2021.

EGU21-13240 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2 | Highlight

Resources for teachers on the “Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”

Simon Klein, Eric Guilyardi, Djian Sadadou, Mathilde Tricoire, and David Wilgenbus

The essential role of education in addressing the causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change is increasingly being recognised at an international level. The Office for Climate Education (OCE) develops educational resources and proposes professional development opportunities to support teachers, worldwide, to mainstream climate change education. Drawing upon the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, the OCE has produced a set of educational resources that cover the scientific and societal dimensions, at local and global levels, while developing students’ reasoning abilities and guiding them to take action (mitigation and/or adaptation) in their schools or communities. These resources include:

1. Ready-to-use teacher handbook that (i) target students from the last years of primary school to the end of lower-secondary school (aged 9 to 15), (ii) include scientific and pedagogical overviews, lesson plans, activities and worksheets, (iii) are interdisciplinary, covering topics in the natural sciences, social sciences, arts and physical education, (iv) promote active pedagogies: inquiry-based science education, role-play, debate, projectbased learning.

2. A Summary for teachers of the IPCC Special Report, presented together with a selection of related activities and exercises that can be implemented in the classroom. 

3. A set of 10 videos where experts speak about a specific issue related to the ocean or the cryosphere, in the context of climate change.

4. A set of 4 multimedia activities offering students the possibility of working interactively in different topics related to climate change.

5. A set of 3 resources for teacher trainers, offering turnkey training protocols on the topics of climate change, ocean and cryosphere.

How to cite: Klein, S., Guilyardi, E., Sadadou, D., Tricoire, M., and Wilgenbus, D.: Resources for teachers on the “Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13240, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13240, 2021.

EGU21-16133 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

On the need of new educational curricula in the field of space technologies and their applications.

Valerio Tramutoli, Nicola Capece, Roberto Colonna, Ugo Erra, Caroilina Filizzola, Teodosio Lacava, Guido Masiello, Valeria Satriano, Giuseppe Scanniello, and Carmine Serio

The need of dedicated educational curricula in the field of space technologies and their applications was identified as a gap in the official European offer already in 2013 when the Virtual GMES Academy concept was launched with the Salzburg protocol in the framework of EU4Regions project. Since then, the goal to fill this educational gap (no official academic courses are presently offered covering all the aspects of Space Technologies from the mission design up to the applications developments) has been included, as a pillar, in the European Copernicus-uptake strategy, After the start of the European network of Copernicus Academies, the EO4GEO project took the initiative to design the Body of Knowledge (BoK) to be at the base of new specific educational curricula and well identified skills in the field. 
The present status of development of Bok, its relevance even for non-EU and particularly for developing countries, is here discussed and presented. 

How to cite: Tramutoli, V., Capece, N., Colonna, R., Erra, U., Filizzola, C., Lacava, T., Masiello, G., Satriano, V., Scanniello, G., and Serio, C.: On the need of new educational curricula in the field of space technologies and their applications., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16133, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16133, 2021.

EGU21-14885 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

Time-series of GhG emissions estimation for the learning of inverse modeling

Carlos Gómez-Ortiz, Guillaume Monteil, and Marko Scholze

Inverse modeling is a commonly used method to infer greenhouse gases (GhGs) sources and sinks based on their observed concentrations in the atmosphere. It is a Bayesian framework and requires a priori fluxes of all the evaluated sources and sinks, atmospheric observations, an atmospheric transport model that relates the observations to the a priori fluxes and the uncertainties of both fluxes and observations. Various techniques exist to solve the inversion.

Atmospheric inverse modeling is and will become even more important in the future quantification of GhGs to monitor the compliance of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. Therefore, the scientific and educational communities are becoming more interested in using atmospheric inversions and this has risen a necessity of creating tools that facilitate understanding as well as training in these techniques.

Quantifying anthropogenic GhG emissions, such as CO2 from fossil fuel burning or CH4 from human activities, from atmospheric concentration observations is difficult since the carbon from all sources, both natural and anthropogenic, is mixed in the atmosphere, making it necessary to use other signals or tracers to separate anthropogenic emissions from natural sources. For fossil fuel CO2 emissions radiocarbon (14CO2) is an excellent emission tracer because, due to its radioactive decay (~ 5000 years), it cannot be found in fossil fuels, which have been deposited millions of years ago as organic material. We have developed a Jupyter Notebook based on Python for the quantification of multi-tracer GhGs fossil fuel emissions and its isotopes. The notebook solves for the emissions by applying atmospheric inversions within a practical two-box model. The inverse modeling notebook is based on the analytical maximum a posteriori (MAP) solution of the Bayes’ theorem and allows to assess the error in the state vector and its uncertainty.

This basic but powerful notebook is meant to be an educational and training tool for university students and new researchers in the field as well as for researchers interested in the estimation of long-term (>centennial) time-series of GhG emissions since it is built as a modular algorithm to be easily modified, coupled or expanded to other approaches or models depending on the application. The notebook was initially developed for the inverse modeling of CO2 and 14CO2 simultaneously and it is being expanded for additional GHG such as CH4 and 13CH4.

How to cite: Gómez-Ortiz, C., Monteil, G., and Scholze, M.: Time-series of GhG emissions estimation for the learning of inverse modeling, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14885, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14885, 2021.

EGU21-9531 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2 | Highlight

GlacierMap: a citizen science mapping tool for evaluating glacier change and contributing to climate literacy

Caroline Clason, Sally Rangecroft, Gina Kallis, Shaun Lewin, Tom Mullier, Will Blake, and Iain Stewart

Glacier retreat provides clear, visual evidence of environmental change in response to warming temperatures around the world. In the tropical Andes of Peru, glaciers act as critical buffers to water supply essential to water, food, and energy security downstream, especially during the dry season. The direct and indirect impacts of glacier change are an important part of the global sustainability challenge within the context of both climate change and increased pressures on resources. Public understanding around glacier-fed water supplies, and subsequent threats to this for millions of people due to climate change, is an important component of climate literacy.

In this context, we have developed a web-based interdisciplinary citizen science glacier mapping tool (GlacierMap) to help to raise awareness of these issues, particularly amongst UK high school pupils, and to contribute to increased public support for mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Users of GlacierMap undertake an interactive learning experience by mapping a glacier from two different periods (1984 and 2018) from freely available Landsat data, resulting in a visual demonstration of glacier retreat within Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, while learning more about the impacts of this retreat from information provided by the project. 

During the first four months of data collection we integrated pre- and post-mapping questionnaires into the GlacierMap app to evaluate the extent to which participation in mapping impacted understanding of glacier change and concern regarding the associated impacts. We also assessed the value of ‘crowd-sourcing’ glacier mapping for the purposes of glacier monitoring and data generation through comparison of mapping conducted by the general public and that of a control group with previous education and/or work experience in glaciology. In doing so, we have identified a number of challenges and opportunities with regards to the use of a citizen science-based educational activity for climate learning. Challenges relate to recruitment of participants, evaluation, and ethics (particularly when working with children and young people), while opportunities were identified in terms of increasing public awareness, the provision of alternative forms of learning, and global reach.  

How to cite: Clason, C., Rangecroft, S., Kallis, G., Lewin, S., Mullier, T., Blake, W., and Stewart, I.: GlacierMap: a citizen science mapping tool for evaluating glacier change and contributing to climate literacy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9531, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9531, 2021.

Citizens’ Climate Lobby is an international organization educating citizens and their political representatives on a solution that could on its own reach 80% of the Paris COP21 objectives. The beauty of this solution is that, although Climate Change is complex and thousands of solutions, regulations, fundings are already implemented, it is a unique and simple solution that would be much more effective and could complement existing ones in driving the change we need. However, this solution is new to most citizens and politicians and needs to be explained to citizens’s volunteering for climate action, policy developers and politicians.

The focus on Carbon Pricing is based on the international economic and scientific consensus as the highest priority primary legislation to address climate change. The need to redistribute the revenues in the form of dividend or climate income is driven both by effectiveness and acceptability and has been enhanced by the Yellow Vest experience in France and the Covid 19 impact. 

Between 2014 and 2020 national teams within the EU have educated and lobbied to build political will with national governments in favour of Carbon Pricing as the most effective climate policy. In the last two years CCL began to work at the European level developing strategy to build political will for the essential support from the European Parliament to support and encourage consistent Carbon Pricing both inside the EU and Internationally. 

Starting with mutual respect and appreciation, more than 500 groups in more than 50 countries engage society in its widest sense. “We seek to educate, build partnerships with and gain the support of community leaders and non-governmental organizations, both nationally and locally.” In Europe CCL has active groups lobbying in Germany; France; Sweden; UK; Denmark; Norway; Spain; Poland & Portugal. In the EU Parliament lobby experience is positive across a range of party groups with positive responses. This competency is currently being scaled up to build political will within the European Parliament.

CCL France, CC Europe and CCE  trains individuals to engage in climate communication on a human level, learning about the concerns, beliefs, and values of the people they seek to educate about the benefits of climate action. This training relies on techniques that include developing effective listening skills, motivational interviewing, and practicing conversational scenarios. 

In this presentation, we will explain and study 

- how CCL is building consensus across the political spectrum: from the market based solution promoted to conservatives to the progressive and efficient solution promoted to social democrats, from “carbon fee and dividend” to “climate income”

- the motivational interviewing used with politicians to build long term relationships and drive change.

- the challenges to explain the solution, from citizens not familiar with carbon footprint nor economic externalities, to policy developers at the EU commission dealing with the Emission Trading System, the energy taxation directive or the border carbon adjustment

How to cite: Ruban, S.: Citizens Climate Lobby, educating citizens to advocate for an effective climate solution, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9295, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9295, 2021.

EGU21-5380 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

Using Remote Sensing Technologies to Improve Climate Literacy of Students at the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukrain

Svitlana Babiichuk, Stanislav Dovgyi, and Tetyana Kuchma

The Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (JASU) is a state-funded extracurricular educational system that develops and implements methods of science education. Climate education is an essential component of educational system at the JASU. Currently, the JASU has more than 250,000 students working in 64 scientific areas. In 2018, the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine received the status of Category 2 Science Education Center under the auspices of UNESCO and joined the network of Copernicus Academies.

          In 2012, a new section, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing of the Earth (RS), was established at the Kyiv branch of the JASU, which is supervised by the GIS and RS Laboratory. Whereas the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by a booming growth of IT and unprecedented environmental problems and climate changes, the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine aims not only to prepare modern students for life in new environment, but also to improve their climate literacy. Therefore, the GIS and RS Laboratory set a goal to teach the students to utilize modern technologies for monitoring environmental conditions of a particular area through analysis of satellite imagery within the framework of the All-Ukrainian Competition, “Ecopohliad” (Ecoview) (hereinafter referred to as the “Competition”).

          Every day we receive arrays of spatial data that are published on the Internet. However, without proper analysis and, most importantly, interpretation, such data are deposits of rough diamonds hiding in rock formations. Knowledge of the sources and ways to analyse satellite imagery enables us to independently verify the information provided by the media or official statistics. In its activities, the Laboratory uses extensively cloud services, EO Browser and Giovanni, which are characterized by intuitive interface and large array of available satellite imagery.

          The Competition was held for the first time in 2019-2020. It was attended by 341 secondary school students. Topics of competition projects chosen by the students were mostly related to the climate change at their places of residence. In particular, Artem Shelestov examined the relationship between the area of greenery in Kyiv city using Sentinel-2 satellite images and average annual air concentration of PM 2.5 based on surveillance sensors data. Bohdan Avramenko examined the traffic load on the air in the city of Starobilsk, compared the data with the information from Sentinel-5P satellite, and developed appropriate recommendations.  Marharyta Korol analysed the scale and consequences of the fire that occurred in September 2019 in the village of Novi Sokoly near the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and the impact of this emergency situation on air pollution.

          These studies were not only of scientific interest, but also of practical importance. In particular, the results of investigations conducted by Competition winners were published in the media.

How to cite: Babiichuk, S., Dovgyi, S., and Kuchma, T.: Using Remote Sensing Technologies to Improve Climate Literacy of Students at the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukrain, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5380, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5380, 2021.

The evolution of new technology and the progressive integration of automated processes in mining had been encouraged by reformed policies around the world. Initiatives were adopted in the hope that they will bring a more sustainable approach to mineral exploitation and help reduce CO2 emissions and put a stop in the temperature rises. Remote control machines and fully autonomous vehicles, as well as new applications in machine learning and big data management, used to analyse data collected from automated machines, are continuously innovated and introduced to mine sites across the globe by medium and large companies in the industry. Overall, they reduce the carbon footprint of companies and create a safer work environment. 

But what about artisanal and small-scale mining? How can new technology improve safety conditions? And how does that translate into a change in public opinion about the effects of mining on climate change? Also, could the introduction of new technologies be a way to push for climate literacy in regions where the most basic needs are generally the only concerns of the population?  

A ponderable part of the reasons why the sector is still vastly lagging in formalization and sustainable exploitation conditions is stemming from the lack of proper education and training, including climate literacy. This paper aims to show an overview of the changes automation would impose on a sector that is characterized by informal work in dangerous environments, limited use of mechanical tools, low capital and productivity, and limited access to markets - be it positive or negative- and highlight the main challenges that such a technological disruption would have to overcome. 

How to cite: Comaniciu, A.-C.: Literature review: Possible implications of introducing new technologies in artisanal and small scale mining activities on climate literacy in regional population, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9135, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9135, 2021.

EGU21-9132 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

Visual storytelling about future weather extremes in Norway

Jana Sillmann, Melanie Burford, and Miriam Stackpole Dahl

Extreme floods with severe impacts have hit municipalities in Western Norway in recent decades and they will become more intense and frequent with global warming. We present a project that focused on providing an approach for visualizing climate change information for decision-makers challenged with planning resilient infrastructure and preparedness measures for future flood impacts. We have chosen visual storytelling through a short film as the most suitable and effective tool for building a communication strategy to reach out to local and regional decision-makers on the one hand and the research community on the other.

The objective was to present and communicate results from a research project in a film by focusing on low-probability high-impact events using a storyline approach. The scope of the research project was to provide Norwegian stakeholders with a realistic representation of how an observed high-impact event of the past will look like under projected future climate conditions (Schaller et al. 2020, Hegdahl et al. 2020). Recent high-impact flood events in Norway have emphasized the need for more proactive climate change adaptation. This requires local, actionable and reliable climate information to support the decision making as well as awareness and consideration of barriers to adaptation. Thus, a seamless chain from global climate system modelling over high-resolution hydrological modelling to impact assessments is needed. We have therefore taken a novel "Tales of future weather" approach (Hazeleger et al. 2015), which suggests that scenarios tailored to a specific region and stakeholder context in combination with numerical weather prediction models will offer a more realistic picture of what future weather might look like, hence facilitating adaptation planning and implementation.

The film we produced particularly focuses on the extreme flood event in October 2005 that affected people (including fatalities) in Bergen municipality, how the event can be seen in context of historic floods and its atmospheric drivers. It tells the story of people having experienced this event and how Bergen municipality was responding to that event.  One key objective of the film is to drive interest and attention to the event-based storyline approach (Sillmann et al. 2020) to facilitate uptake of climate information and to empower decision makers with new knowledge and tools to assist them in their decision making.

 

References

Hazeleger, W., B. Van den Hurk, E. Min, G-J. Van Oldenborgh, A. Petersen, D. Stainforth, D., E. Vasileiadou, and L. Smith, 2015: Tales of future weather. Nature Climate Change, 5, 107-113, doi: 10.1038/nclimate2450.

Hegdahl, T.J., K. Engeland, M. Müller and J. Sillmann, 2020: Atmospheric River induced floods in western Norway – under present and future climate, J. Hydrometeorology, doi: 10.1175/JHM-D-19-0071.1.

Schaller, N., J. Sillmann, M. Mueller, R. Haarsma, W. Hazeleger, T. Jahr Hegdahl, T. Kelder, G. van den Oord, A. Weerts, and K. Whan, 2020: The role of spatial and temporal model resolution in a flood event storyline approach in Western Norway, Weather and Climate Extremes, 29, doi: 10.1016/j.wace.2020.100259.

Sillmann, J., T. G. Shepherd, B. van den Hurk, W. Hazeleger, O. Martius, J. Zscheischler, 2020: Event-based storylines to address climate risk, Earth’s Future, doi: 10.1029/2020EF001783.

How to cite: Sillmann, J., Burford, M., and Stackpole Dahl, M.: Visual storytelling about future weather extremes in Norway, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9132, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9132, 2021.

EGU21-8097 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

Teaching scientific evidences of climate change to K12 : a key to reach social acceptance of mitigation and adaptation strategies

Gérard Vidal, Charles-Henri Eyraud, Carole Larose, and Éric Lejan

Our societies are violently hit by the implications of climate change. The IPCC keeps on waving red flags to the governments since its creation but few progress has been made, most of the proposed decisions do not rely on scientific facts.

Article 12 of Paris agreement requests that states made necessary efforts to inform and educate people. Teaching scientific data on climate change to K12 is our duty to provide them with the required knowledge and competencies to face challenges of the future.

Our proposal is to tackle climate change awareness and training through a global multilevel approach whose starting point is to measure meteorological parameters within the classroom or the school, then reach the use of digital data on climate projections computed by international laboratories.

1. Using a thermometer in primary schools : an easy tool to establish a scientific approach to weather and stimulate student’s curiosity to go further. The aim is to bring pupils from the empiric observation of the temperature to quantitative measurements of temperature. It can lead to understand that differences between observed temperatures contribute to the definition / recognition of seasons and their changes across time.

2. Weather-station : one of the best multi-purpose devices for lower secondary schools. It is a visible signal for families, pupils, administrations. Describing the variations in time or in space, smoothly bring the pupils from the weather observed to the parameters of local or regional climate; it is a first approach of the difference between errors and uncertainties.

3. Mathematical models and access to laboratory resources : scientific resource to tackle climate change in upper secondary schools. Even if the equations are too complex for a student to manipulate, students will get access to results computed in laboratories. It will lead to giving an insight to global or regional models and to the scenarios which take into account the long term variation of constraints on the models to build climate projections.

Understanding does not mean blind acceptation and the role of science teachers is to provide the students with the necessary skills and knowledge to be able to understand the climate situation and its evolution. In any case social acceptance will be facilitated when citizens understand the facts and reasons that back uncomfortable decisions or actions.

How to cite: Vidal, G., Eyraud, C.-H., Larose, C., and Lejan, É.: Teaching scientific evidences of climate change to K12 : a key to reach social acceptance of mitigation and adaptation strategies, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8097, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8097, 2021.

EGU21-2780 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

Using the foods we love and need to enhance climate literacy

Michael Hoffmann

Climate change is affecting the foods we love and need—just about everything on the menu is changing. Plants, the basis of life, require the right temperatures, water, soil, air, and sunlight. All but sunlight are changing and having subtle and in many cases ominous impacts on our foods and beverages—from spices and herbs to pistachios. The flavors of teas, the protein and mineral content of wheat, vitamins in rice, and yields of many crops are undergoing change. This story needs to be told given the cultural, historical, and personal connections everyone has to food. The communication and outreach approaches taken to enhance climate literacy include a book – Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods we Love and Need and a companion website, which includes a searchable database of the hundreds of food ingredients that are changing. The changing menu may be a way to join forces—consumers, producers, chefs, restaurateurs, and food businesses—to find a common ground and draw more attention and action to address this grand challenge of climate change. We all eat.

How to cite: Hoffmann, M.: Using the foods we love and need to enhance climate literacy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2780, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2780, 2021.

Solar irradiance is one of the defining factors determining Earth’s climate and habitability. Thus, comprehension of Earth’s orbital parameters, and the resulting apparent motions of the Sun on the celestial sphere and spatio-temporal patterns of insolation, is an important part of climate literacy. The Earth orbit v2.1 model (Kostadinov and Gilb, 2014, GMD) focused on 3D Earth orbit, Milankovitch cycles and insolation visualization and analysis with research and pedagogical applications.  Here I introduce AstroGeoVis v1.0 – software that performs astronomical visualizations relevant to Earth and climate science, with a focus on the apparent motions of the Sun on the celestial sphere and related concepts, with primarily pedagogical applications in mind. Specifically, AstroGeoVis v1.0 computes solar equatorial and local horizontal coordinates (using the Meeus (1998) algorithms) and uses first principles to compute and visualize various phenomena such as the terminator, daily path of the Sun on the celestial sphere, shadow geometry, the equation of time and the analemma, seasonality and daylength. Instantaneous irradiance on a randomly oriented solar panel is computed and used to determine annual energy production and optimize panel orientation, demonstrating numerical integration and optimization. This component of AstroGeoVis v1.0 is particularly relevant in the context of the increasing importance of solar renewable energy and sustainable practices such as passive building design, requiring that an increasing number and variety of professionals be familiar with Sun-Earth geometry and related concepts.

AstroGeoVis v1.0 was written in MATLAB© and is open source. I provide multiple examples and ideas for classroom use, including a complete exercise in which students track solar declination throughout the semester via shadow length and azimuth measurements. The software has multiple pedagogical advantages, e.g. figures are dynamic and can be re-created by the instructor, for example for a specific latitude, some are 3D and have pan/tilt/zoom capability. The scientific code itself can be inspected, modified and improved by instructors and students as needed, i.e. it is intended that the code as well as the visualizations will be used in instructional settings. This makes AstroGeoVis v1.0 applicable in pedagogical settings at many levels, across many disciplines, e.g. physical geography, oceanography, meteorology, climatology, Earth system science, physics, astronomy, mathematics and computer science. Earth sciences, like many other disciplines, have increasingly become highly quantitative and computational in nature, dealing with large numerical data sets (e.g. climate model development and analysis). AstroGeoVis v1.0 is intended to help students master not only astronomical concepts relevant to Earth and climate sciences, but also acquire scientific computing and data analysis skills, which are becoming increasingly indispensable for a wide variety of careers.

How to cite: Kostadinov, T.: Teaching Astronomical Concepts Relevant to Earth and Climate Sciences with AstroGeoVis 1.0 : Leveraging Scientific Computing and Dynamic Visualizations, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-526, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-526, 2021.

EGU21-3815 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2 | Highlight

Developing Climate Change Literacy to Combat Climate Change and Its Impacts

Julie Johnston

If literacy can be defined as competence or knowledge in a specific area, then climate change literacy is competence or knowledge in the area of climate change, its impacts, and its solutions. Climate change literacy is a vital element in strategies for meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13: "Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts" — and, frankly, safeguarding the survival of the human species and most life on Earth. Developing climate change literacy in individuals, institutions, and societies entails understanding why it is important, who must be involved, what it includes, where and when it takes place, how to deal with challenges that arise, and what the end result, a climate-change-literate citizen, will look like.

How to cite: Johnston, J.: Developing Climate Change Literacy to Combat Climate Change and Its Impacts, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3815, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3815, 2021.

EGU21-5537 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2 | Highlight

Getting to impact at scale: A dynamic model to guide scaling of climate change education

Juliette Rooney-Varga and Florian Kapmeier

In order to successfully address climate change, society needs education that scales rapidly, transmits scientific information about its causes and effects, and motivates sustained commitment to the problem and science-based action to address it. The gap in public understanding and motivation to address climate change is not caused by a lack of information or educational resources that are effective. Systems thinking and simulation-based learning have been shown to deliver gains in knowledge, affect, and intent to take action and learn more about climate change. But, in order to have impact at scale, an educational innovation must be adopted at scale. Most of the time they are not: uptake from dissemination, active outreach, or word-of-mouth diffusion among educators usually falls short. Here, we describe and apply a simple system dynamics model to explore why propagation efforts often fall flat. We then use the model to explore how rapid scaling could be achieved in higher education. We rely on prior studies and expert opinion for model structure and parameterization. Our analysis shows that outreach has limited impact and does little to accelerate word-of-mouth adoption under conditions typical in higher education. Instead, widespread adoption is fueled by encouraging and supporting adopters’ efforts to reach, persuade, and support potential adopters through community-based propagation. We explore faculty incentives and cultural shifts that could enable community-based propagation.

How to cite: Rooney-Varga, J. and Kapmeier, F.: Getting to impact at scale: A dynamic model to guide scaling of climate change education, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5537, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5537, 2021.

EGU21-15671 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

Defining Terms for Climate Literacy

Katie Singer
 
To move forward with substantial, constructive actions that reduce overall consumption and emissions, the public, scientists and policymakers need agreement about our terms. Terms like "sustainability," "zero-emissions" and "carbon-neutrality" tend to focus on a device or vehicle's energy use and emissions during operation--and to exclude energy use and emission during extraction, smelting, manufacturing and recycling or discard. What do such exclusions mean for e-vehicles, smartphones and solar panels? How can we encourage learning about and reducing electronics' true costs? Katie Singer will describe the process involved in manufacturing electronic-grade silicon (similar to solar-grade silicon), and propose that every Internet user learn the international supply chain of one substance (of 1000+) in their device. She will also propose ways to counterbalance a digital footprint.

How to cite: Singer, K.: Defining Terms for Climate Literacy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15671, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15671, 2021.

EGU21-5714 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

“Young Innovators” story: case study of Latvia

Gunta Kalvane and Santa Krastiņa

STEM teachers in Latvia acknowledge that the climate issue is one of the most difficult and incomprehensible topics for students because of the complexity of the climate system itself and because that students do not see the consequences and responsibilities of their actions. In addition, there is little climate-related teaching materials available in Latvian language.

In 2020, we have implemented the experience of EIT Climate-KIC project “Young Innovators” into the school's curriculum and nonformal education (through Latvian 4Hclub – leading and largest NGO) in Latvia.

“Young Innovators” is a pilot program for youngsters (12-18), to promote their entrepreneurial and social skills, systemic thinking aimed at tackling climate change, reducing environmental problems and improving the living environment. Together with stakeholders they are working on real-life challenges (more about the program: https://younginnovators.climate-kic.org/about-the-programme/).

We started with the webinar cycle for NGO leaders in April (it should be noted, that for many of them it was their first webinar ever), while in August the webinars were organized for geography and STEM teachers. In the summer (when restrictions were lifted) we had workshops with students: using the mind map and photo-voting methods, we identified the most important areas for students and the major environmental problems. Using the project tools, the analytical assessment and visioning of the problem has been done. The last step was – visiting the local authorities.

In addition, at the end of August we organized a 3-hour Climathon (total 250 participants), where we worked on the challenges given by the stakeholder - WWF (Waste food), Enefit Latvija (green energy solutions); national fruit growers (local apples marketing campaigns) etc.

Project methods and tools can be used in both – formal and non-formal education systems and were welcomed by both students and teachers.

Activities were carried out within the framework of EIT Climate-KIC financial support.

How to cite: Kalvane, G. and Krastiņa, S.: “Young Innovators” story: case study of Latvia, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5714, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5714, 2021.

Since the IPCC (2018) 1.5°C Report, the climate emergency is widely recognized. Then 2019 COP25 statement by IPCC Chair Dr H. Lee ,referring to the three recent IPCC Special Reports (2018,2019,2019) is crucial emphasizing that global emissions MUST decline by and from 2020. The Summaries for Policy Makers (SPMs) are convincing for communication as all world governments approve them. Though the IPCC assesses climate change, the environmental health emergency called climate change is climate system disruption from atmospheric greenhouse gas pollution. The IPCC assessments can be used to produce risk assessments. IPCC published climate change science reports are invaluable, especially the FAQs. The most important message in the IPCC (2014) AR5 and 1.5°C Report is that global emissions have to decline rapidly from 2020, via market failure corrections, for a 1.5°C and for a 2°C limit. The greatest impact to humanity is on food security, and from the IPCC we describe regional crop impacts and crop model limitations. We elucidate IPCC reports on confidence, carbon budget, net zero, negative emissions, value judgements, and recommendations. We clarify inertias, commitment, risks, and amplifying feedbacks. Long-term data trends, rather than only model projections, can now be relied on. We relate IPCC scenarios to worst-case, business-as-usual and best case. For risk we use the IPCC upper ranges, because long-term projected temperature increases are underestimated as they do not account for amplifying feedbacks or decline of carbon sinks, and are only based on a single median climate sensitivity (3C). Although the IPCC shows that atmospheric CO2 is "forever," IPCC SPM projections are all now only to 2100.  From the IPCC RCP scenarios the world is tracking closest to the worst case scenario (RCP8.5). On this scenario the IPCC 1.5°C Report projects 1.5°C by 2035 and 2°C  by 2047. The greatest risk to the future of humanity and most life is multiple inter-reinforcing amplifying feedbacks that lead to hothouse Earth and on to runaway. The evidence for multiple Arctic feedback emissions and Amazon die-back can be found in the IPCC 2014 5th assessment. This reinforces the imperative requiring immediate and rapid global emissions decline. 

How to cite: Carter, P.: Using the IPCC for Communicating Both the Full Extent of the Global Climate Emergency and the Required Response, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6315, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6315, 2021.

EGU21-7552 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2 | Highlight

Inclusive Strategies in Climate Change Teaching, Learning and Action

Elena Sparrow, Katie Spellman, Malinda Chase, Christina Buffington, Bonnie Murray, Angela Larson, and Kelly Kealy

Our project “Feedbacks and Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Engaging Learners in STEM Using NASA and GLOBE assets” also called “Arctic and Earth SIGNs” (STEM Integrating GLOBE and NASA) engages in climate change education, audiences underserved and underrepresented in STEM e.g. Alaska Natives, those economically disadvantaged, and those who work in rural regions. We invite and support teams of formal and informal educators and community members from Alaska and beyond to participate in a Climate Change in My Community course and to work with youth on climate learning and a stewardship project relevant to their community. Our strategies include: 1) using a culturally responsive learning model we developed, 2) braiding multiple knowledge systems, 3) negotiating content and process in course planning and implementation, 4) ensuring a voice and a seat at the table for everyone, 5) inquiry-based, experiential and place-based STEM teaching practices, 6) intergenerational teaching and learning, 7) interactive Meet the Scientist live video sessions, 8) building relationships within and beyond participant teams and with the project team of educators, Elders and University of Alaska/NASA scientists, 9) providing skills and citizen science tools to engage youth in addressing climate change issues in their communities or for use in developing their community climate change adaptation plans, and 10) cultivating partnerships such as the Association of Interior Native Educators, Renewable Energy for Alaska Project, Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network, and the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub.

In 2020, ten teams implemented stewardship projects that reflected many of the principles of citizen/community science that effectively engage diverse audiences. Of these course participants, 100% increased their confidence to facilitate real-world inquiry activities (p < 0.001), 77% increased their knowledge of the earth systems, (p < 0.001) and 69% of the students who teams worked with, reported increased critical thinking skills (p< 0.01).  Twelve individuals from these teams were interviewed: 100% of interviewees reported benefits to students, such as learning to collect data, presenting their findings to their peers, exploring STEM careers, and interacting with scientists; 83% reported specific benefits to themselves as an educator which include increased content knowledge and the opportunity to think more deeply about the science and opportunities to connect with students outside of the classroom; 100% reported that the project goals and activities align with and are relevant to the needs and interests of the participants, including contribution to conservation efforts, contribution to science, curricular goals, and a personal connection; 67% reported community engagement, including involving Elders and community members in data collection and storytelling, representatives of local park and water conservation district offering a science talk to the whole community, and advertising their project at the community post office. Those that didn’t report involving the community noted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How to cite: Sparrow, E., Spellman, K., Chase, M., Buffington, C., Murray, B., Larson, A., and Kealy, K.: Inclusive Strategies in Climate Change Teaching, Learning and Action, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7552, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7552, 2021.

EGU21-8576 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2 | Highlight

Using an interdisciplinary MOOC to teach climate science and science communication to a global classroom

Bärbel Winkler and John Cook

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are a powerful educational tool, making scientific content available to a large and diverse audience. The MOOC “Making Sense of Climate Science Denial” applies science communication principles derived from cognitive psychology and misconception-based learning in the design of video lectures covering many aspects of climate change. As well as teaching fundamental climate science, the course also presents psychological and critical thinking research into climate science denial, teaching students the most effective techniques for responding to misinformation. A number of the enrolled “students" have been secondary and tertiary educators, who have adopted the course content in their own classes as well as adapted their teaching techniques based on the science communication principles presented in the lectures. The MOOC—developed by John Cook while at the University of Queensland's Global Change Insitute—integrates cognitive psychology, educational research and climate science in an interdisciplinary online course that has had over 40,000 enrolments from over 180 countries since the MOOC was launched in 2015.

How to cite: Winkler, B. and Cook, J.: Using an interdisciplinary MOOC to teach climate science and science communication to a global classroom, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8576, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8576, 2021.

Challenges abound as our Earth warms, seas rise, and weather extremes become more and more common. Solutions to these challenges requires the collective knowledge of many along with transdisciplinary approaches, resulting in unique, creative, and comprehensive solutions.  In addition, these challenges come in many spatial and temporal sizes, and therefore solutions are needed at local, regional, global levels organized by small scale and larger scale groups. School systems can be a hub of ingenuity when it comes to designing and implementing solutions if guided by a clear pathway. Some states in the United States of America have adopted standards for learning that include climate science and climate change across all subject areas. In these states the vision for standards implementation parallels a vision for meeting the local and regional challenges of climate change. This presentation will outline the new roles afforded schools in our collective effort to reverse climate change and reduce its impact along the way.

How to cite: Holzer, M.: Climate Science and Climate Change Across the Curricula – Seizing Opportunities, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9252, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9252, 2021.

EGU21-10232 | vPICO presentations | EOS3.2

3D Models for web based climate education 

Ronald Sumners, Luisa Vargas Suarez, Jamie Griffiths, and Jason Donev

Effectively informing the public about anthropogenically accelerated climate change and sustainable energy is one of the most immense challenges of our age. However, web-based 3D environments are cost-effective, accessible tools that can combat many of the challenges associated with global outreach, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This presentation explores how 3D CAD modeling, visual texturing, Three.JS (a WebGL rendering software), and web design can coexist to create effective tools for educators across the world. By applying these simulations, learners are able to examine individual components of objects and break down complex systems into their fundamental parts for simpler understanding. Moreover, by breaking down these systems, individuals are able to more effectively understand the complex physical phenomena that drive our world. In addition, these environments are not limited by topic or language and therefore the spectrum to which we can apply these ideas is not limited. Translating the simulations is relatively straightforward and with the expertise of individuals who can lead this front, the reach of this type of technology can grow even wider. Climate change is a global issue and so work in the field must be addressed as such as well. As a result, these models have the ability to transform the way we learn about global issues and can be a powerful tool in education about sustainable energy, climate change and science in general.

How to cite: Sumners, R., Vargas Suarez, L., Griffiths, J., and Donev, J.: 3D Models for web based climate education , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10232, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10232, 2021.

EOS4.2 – Geoethics: Geosciences serving Society

EGU21-2411 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2 | Highlight

Geoethics in a scheme: a simplified way to represent its definition, vision, and theoretical structure

Silvia Peppoloni and Giuseppe Di Capua

Geoethics arises from the awareness that, only partly consciously, human beings have irreversibly modified and are continuing to modify the natural environments and territories in which they live and operate. Humans alter not only physical, chemical and biological characteristics of their niche, but also social and cultural traits that connote social–ecological systems today as in the past, which in turn, in a feedback mechanism, influence people’s economic development, social perspectives and sense-making. It then becomes a responsibility for geoscientists to look beyond their traditional areas of work and each interact proactively with civic communities to promote changes that are needed. The key concepts of geoethics constitute a cultural proposal for the whole society, on which to base new perspectives for the human agent.
Ten years ago, the first session dedicated to geoethics was organized at the EGU General Assembly in order to widen the discussion on ethics in geosciences. Nowadays the theoretical framework of geoethics has consolidated and it has become the proposal on which to base a global ethics of the human agent towards the Earth system. This work synthetizes in a scheme the reference framework on which geoethics developed, its definition, foundations, and main characteristics, highlighting the importance of sharing values and actions among planetary human communities to manage global changes and threats.

How to cite: Peppoloni, S. and Di Capua, G.: Geoethics in a scheme: a simplified way to represent its definition, vision, and theoretical structure, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2411, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2411, 2021.

EGU21-604 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

Geoethics, a Philosophical Hybrid of European Origin

Martin Bohle

European philosophies shape geoethics. The Culture-Nature-Dichotomy (“appropriate behaviours and practices, wherever human activities interact with the Earth system” [1; p.30]) and the associated anthropocentric interpretation of the human condition [1; p.58-60] is an example.

The European post-medieval cultural models [2, 3] led to engage early with scientific studies of Earth [4, 5], to merge science, research, engineering, economy and applied ethics into a massive societal venture [6, 7], and to shape global hegemonic societal practices [8, 9]. These developments provide the socio-historical foundation of geoethics. It implies depicting Culture and Nature differently, respectively using either idealistic or materialistic philosophies.

Tinted by European cultural models, geoethics is based on geosciences knowledge and applies philosophical materialism when inspecting Nature. However, geoethics displays philosophical idealism when inspecting Culture, e.g. the virtuous individual's societal role [1; p.33-43]. Recently, an academic noticed: “not even a single word [in geoethics] about the structural determinations upon individuals in the particular form of social organisation where they live [a].” Such a critical view (absence to apply philosophical materialism) is valuable when considering that geoethics aims to advise about “appropriate [socio-historical/cultural] behaviours and practices”.

Such considerations point at the need to re-inspect the philosophical basis of geoethics. Merely being ‘tinted’ by European cultural models is unsatisfying. Instead, analyses should show whether to apply idealistic and materialistic philosophies. Investigating, for example, whether to inspect Culture like Nature using philosophical materialism, would test the consistency of the current philosophical hybrid, geoethics; subsequently, such analyses should elucidate geoethics’ anthropocentric bearings.

[a] anonymous review published in Quaternary (2019); https://www.mdpi.com/2571-550X/2/2/19/review_report (1st round reviewer 2 report)

How to cite: Bohle, M.: Geoethics, a Philosophical Hybrid of European Origin, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-604, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-604, 2021.

EGU21-16180 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

De complexitate mundi – What a complexful world

Umberto Fracassi

Bare twenty years into the XXI century – and what a treat. Damaging earthquakes with regional impact, climate extremes disrupting weather cycles, water shortages in high-income regions, scarcer (and costlier) energy and mineral resources, rising population. Add a slice of global geopolitical instabilities – even where one would never expect to report them from. And, well, why not: a novel pathogen, so little yet so commanding that the world is still vying with it.

Natural hazards and anthropogenic factors interact in multiple ways and across various scales, close or afar, in time and space. They interweave a web of complexities that can appear deceitful, capricious, or otherwise overwhelming to the citizens of contemporary societies – even in statistically affluent and educated ones. There comes the role of geosciences, from paleontology to high-atmosphere physics, from energy to oceanography, from the solid to the not so solid earth. There comes their transformative, instrumental task – as new and as pressing as ever.

Geosciences are not (and will not) what they used to be, bound as they are to glean lessons learned from the past to provide insight into the future. Geoscientists were once thought to study ancient rocks, fiddle with very slow-moving tectonic plates, and bantering about invisible earth’s features, too large, or too deep, or too far away to even imagine for us earthlings. But this is no longer the case – and maybe never has been. At the core of geosciences’ interests lies Nature, for what it is – with all its grand size, seemingly slow processes that unveil sudden effects, complex interactions among forces and bodies across distances and time. These prove to be paramount tools to probe a world perceived as inscrutable, increasingly richer in risks and poorer in resources.

Therefore, tools of yesterday’s intellectual quests prove instrumental to decipher tomorrow’s societal issues, such as:

- The long records of natural events (hazards);
- Far-flung origins (our solar system and the universe);
- Far-reaching effects (feedback, periodicity, and recurrence times);
- Need to forecast (or at least account for) the irregular behaviors of modern phenomena (not always known or detectable by current means).

The knowledge of compounded risks of natural origin provides an outlook on where and what to call for enduring communities. This applies also to risks resulting from interaction among natural events and anthropogenic components. Since natural phenomena embed complexities due to multiple variables and intrinsic feedback, interaction among natural and non-natural ones brings novel issues, requiring a remarkably broad outlook – global and beyond. The natural consequence is then to envision natural risks against population distribution, spatial extents of natural resources, size, and time window of induced effects.

Picking a selection of examples, this talk thus tries to put into perspective:

- Hazards stemming from multiple, at times unpredictable sources;
- The precious role of geosciences to decipher them – and to forecast them;
- The complexity of natural hazards, the flexibility of human planning;
- Modern issues challenging societies and economies – today, tomorrow, and thereafter.

How to cite: Fracassi, U.: De complexitate mundi – What a complexful world, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16180, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16180, 2021.

EGU21-3079 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2 | Highlight

Geoethics: Recent Art Projects by Ying Kit Chan

Ying Kit Chan

As a visual artist, I have been engaging in art projects that examine environmental ethics for four decades. I propose to present two of my recent bodies of work at the EGU21 EOS4.2 Geothics Session. The titles of these two series of work are Deep Ecology and Red Alert.

Deep Ecology, developed between 2014 and 2016, is a series of multimedia artwork that examines environmental philosophy from the geocentric rather than anthropocentric world view. This body of work comprises artworks in mediums of drawing, photography, print and installation. Deep Ecology is a philosophical study based on Taoist and Buddhist ideas and addresses the moral relationship between human beings and nature.

Red Alert is a series of artwork produced between 2016 to 2000. This series of artwork critiques the increasing hazardous existence of plastic pollution in our environments. Objects in this series are all made of discarded plastic, including products such as grocery bags, household containers, packaging materials, and debris collected from riverbanks and city streets. The red color symbolizes the final warning, signaling an emergency state of our planet of unprecedented magnitude and scope.

How to cite: Chan, Y. K.: Geoethics: Recent Art Projects by Ying Kit Chan, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3079, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3079, 2021.

EGU21-13709 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

Applied geoethics: CITI199’s essays from the Austral University of Chile

Sandor Mulsow, Beatriz Barrales, Nicolas Espinoza, Magdalena Flandez, Leandro Ledezma, Esteban Munzenmayer, Adriana Rivera-Murton, Pablo Salinas, Fernando Valenzuela, Rodolfo Valenzuela, and Marco Valle

Geoethics is a term that describes the internal knowledge of values ​​which must be reflected in the interaction with other people and with the physical and biological environment that surrounds us.

When talking about ethics or specifically geoethics, exact definitions are sought which always seem to be short and very difficult to write in a sentence. One of the reasons may be is that it is about minimizing a life process to a noun, adjective or adverb. "It is a life process," is an awareness of the maximum expression of that part that we call human, internal, which maintains a balanced posture. This self-awareness is essential since it allows to relate to the environment (including peers) in the same way, tolerant, dignified, respectful humanly and environmentally speaking

In 2020, during the pandemic, we have undertaken a challenge at our University by teaching a course on Geoethics in Earth Sciences (CITI199). This course was designed following the general guidelines of IAPG. The adaptation to the Chilean reality was given by the same students. After assimilating the bases of ethics, values ​​and moral principles, through the interventions of anthropologists, sociologists, geographers and native peoples, we have generated 2 unpublished activities in Chile, a student survey on the state of knowledge of geoethics in the School of Geology and applied the geoethical foundations in the daily life of Chile.

In this series of presentations we report the results and analysis of the survey and recommendations to continue with the process of offering the university community the value of having an initial geoethical position in professional development. Later in the session, 4 situations in which society interacts with the environment from a geoethical perspective are evaluated and analyzed: 1) degradation and use of soils, 2) massive production of exotic salmon, 3) use of fresh water and 4 ) privatization of the common heritage of humanity in international waters.

How to cite: Mulsow, S., Barrales, B., Espinoza, N., Flandez, M., Ledezma, L., Munzenmayer, E., Rivera-Murton, A., Salinas, P., Valenzuela, F., Valenzuela, R., and Valle, M.: Applied geoethics: CITI199’s essays from the Austral University of Chile, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13709, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13709, 2021.

Humans and their environment are inherently linked, especially in coastal and estuarine regions, and scientific and social values often must be balanced in ecosystem management and decision-making. Graduate students discuss these balances in a 1-credit seminar offered via the Marine, Estuarine and Environmental Science (MEES) program, an inter-institutional program within the University System of Maryland. The MEES program uses an interdisciplinary approach to train students in scientific discovery, integration, and application to generate new knowledge and to solve environmental problems, including social sciences. In the seminar, graduate students examine these problems through the lens of Geoethics, the ethical, social and cultural implications of geoscience research and practice, using a case-study approach. After a brief introduction to the concept, students develop a list of topics to examine throughout the seminar. In Spring 2020, these topics included climate-change communication, field harassment, community-based science, sustainability science, and preserving biodiversity. At the end of the semester, students give a presentation on ethical aspects of their own research.

How to cite: Palinkas, C.: Teaching and learning about ethical aspects of environmental science with graduate students, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5782, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5782, 2021.

EGU21-1763 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2 | Highlight

Geoethics education and climate literacy: Bridging the gap – interactively

David Crookall, Pimnutcha Promduangsri, and Pariphat Promduangsri

In previous years, the authors have addressed questions related to geoethics education, or what we have called geo-edu-ethics (GEE), in relation to geo-problems in general (such as global warming, pollution, sea-level rise, deforestation, ocean acidification, biodiversity).

In this session we wish to focus in on the greatest of all geo-problems, that of climate change (CC), which necessarily entails the urgent need for massive, widespread climate literacy (CL) – both education and learning.  We wish to examine the relationships between GEE and CL, their overlaps and differences, and how they may mutually reinforce each other.  In so doing, we will also touch on the ethics of educational and learning methods that are used to help people learn about geoethics and CC.

Currently, it seems that the two areas work in parallel, maybe even separated by a mindset of splendid isolation, and yet the apparent overlap, not least in their visons and missions, beckons us to bring the two closer together.  This is what we will attempt in our presentation.  The questions that we plan to address include the following:

  • Is it true, or a misconception, that GEE and CL tend to work separately, often ignorant of each other?
  • What do GEE and CL have in common?
  • Their ethos, their content, their methods, their audience?
  • Is it possible to unify the GEE and CL into an overarching rational and thereby form a coherent community of practice?
  • What can practitioners in each bubble learn from each other? What will it take for the two bubbles to merge?
  • How can each group maintain its own professional identity (if that is deemed important) and yet work hand in hand with the other, to their mutual benefit?
  • What are the most effective ways forward, given the geoethical urgency of acting to slow CC?

The presentation will be interactive, as we will invite the audience to contribute their own ideas and experience.  If we are permitted to have breakout rooms, we will divide into small groups for a short time, and then bring everyone together for a plenary sharing.

How to cite: Crookall, D., Promduangsri, P., and Promduangsri, P.: Geoethics education and climate literacy: Bridging the gap – interactively, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1763, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1763, 2021.

EGU21-6285 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

Values in (climate) science: What model-based assessments of climate sensitivity teach us about value-judgements and demands on norms thereon

Sabine Undorf, Karoliina Pulkkinen, Frida Bender, and Per Wikman Svahn

The need for norms ensuring ethical decision-making in policy is well established, extending to decisions made in the scientific practice that informs policy. Values, including non-epistemic ones such as social values, may guide decision-making in the scientific research process where evidence supports more than one decision given uncertainty, and are thus targeted by many normative suggestions from the philosophical literature. How value-judgements enter the body of research that underlies climate change information, with its immediate relevance for urgent mitigation and adaptation decisions, and how the norms may apply here, is however unclear.

In a practical contribution to the debate on values in climate science, we discuss the process of assessing equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), an idealised property of the real world of high scientific and societal relevance that has as the ‘holy grail’ of climate science been regularly assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. We develop a framework consisting of the steps ​model building​, ​deriving ECS​, ​combining model results​, and communicating the findings​ along with the overarching choice of research question​ and ​publishing​, and present and summarise uncertainties, choices, and possible value-judgements involved in each step. We discuss this in the context of scientific objectivity, scrutinise existing normative, action-guiding literature on values, and suggest requirements for applicable norms and ideas.

We find that both epistemic and non-epistemic values are likely to come into play in scientific practice, with the latter arguably playing a relatively larger role further along the assessment steps. A review of existing literature shows that many of the norms proposed do not reflect the characteristics and complexities of assessments drawing on climate modelling: We find that, among others, it is particularly the distribution of epistemic agency; the technical nature of many of the choices; the unpredictability of a decision for further/future model outcomes; the multi-purposeness of models; and the type of value-judgements -other than risk preferences- involved that pose challenges for existing normative ideas. This calls for the development of new such framings more easily applicable to climate science, potentially guided by the insights presented including the step-framework suggested as a way to structure the analysis of the assessment process.

2.11.0.0

How to cite: Undorf, S., Pulkkinen, K., Bender, F., and Wikman Svahn, P.: Values in (climate) science: What model-based assessments of climate sensitivity teach us about value-judgements and demands on norms thereon, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6285, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6285, 2021.

The continuing acceleration of climate change and its impacts point to a need to consider climate interventional solutions. Climate restoration solutions can join climate mitigation and adaptation measures to bring a needed third option to climate stability.  Such solutions require thorough vetting through research and development, including climate modeling, materials evaluation, safety testing, and small-scale field testing conducted with permissions, transparency, and collaboration with the community, to allow careful evaluation of effectiveness, safety, and cost. International policy and governance are required to determine, given the information developed in the R&D, what solutions are in the best interests of humanity, so they can be funded and implemented at a scale to stabilize climate, in time to prevent or reduce climate-change-related harms. 
Ice loss in the Arctic, initially an outcome of global temperature rise, is now a driver accelerating global temperature rise, as the Earth’s Arctic ice cover has diminished rapidly. NOAA reported in 2018 that 95% of the most-reflective multi-year ice has disappeared over the past 40 years. The effect of this lost Arctic reflectivity is to increase the net energy influx to the Arctic, accelerating heating locally and worldwide, leading to increasing climate- related impacts on populations and ecosystems.
Arctic Ice Project’s focus is on evaluating and developing an innovative solution to artificially restore lost Arctic reflectivity using thin layers of hollow glass microspheres to reverse the increased summer radiative forcing from the Ice-Albedo Feedback Effect. We will report on the physical characterization of the HGMs proposed for this use, the approach taken for field testing and safety evaluations, and the strategy for evaluating and modeling where to conduct limited deployment of this restoration method to achieve the most leveraged positive impact.
Restoring Arctic ice reflectivity has the potential to be the largest single safe lever that could be practically and effectively deployed in the short term to give the world the time needed to complete the needed transition to sustainable practices, while reducing climate devastation. 
The Arctic Ice Project is focused on developing this needed information, through extensive international collaborations, to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of a proposed localized intervention to restore ice reflectivity in the Arctic. 

How to cite: Field, L.: Evaluation of Safety and Effectiveness of  Localized Arctic Ice Albedo Restoration Method to Slow Climate Change Impacts, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16538, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16538, 2021.

EGU21-8597 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

Co-production of knowledge: towards a co-design of geothermal heat utilization

Eva Schill, Florian Bauer, Katharina Schätzler, Christine Rösch, Melanie Mbah, Christina Benighaus, Sophie Kuppler, and Judith Krohn

In regions with favourable subsurface condition, geothermal resources provide a significant contribution to the reduction of man-made CO2 emissions. Its economic utilization often requires reservoir engineering that bears the risk of a number of environmental challenges such as induced seismicity, groundwater pollution or radioactive scaling.

In order to develop a socially feasible geothermal utilization concept in the Upper Rhine Graben close to the city of Karlsruhe we designed a research approach in which interdisciplinary (between natural and social sciences) knowledge production is combined with transdisciplinary knowledge production. This means that besides the collaboration of scientists of various disciplines, stakeholder and citizens s from surrounding communities get the possibility to take part in the project through workshops and interviews. The results of those transdisciplinary interactions will be integrated through translation into technical parameters in the technical design of a geothermal utilization concept. For the development of utilization scenarios, technical criteria were adopted into technical parameter ranges. Furthermore, socio-ecological criteria such as “no induced seismicity” are translated into technical parameters by an experience-based approach. The resulting scenarios are substantiated by numerical models that address the energy outcome. They will be reflected in a second stakeholder workshop. Finally, recommendations for a geothermal heat utilisation concept will be formulated.

How to cite: Schill, E., Bauer, F., Schätzler, K., Rösch, C., Mbah, M., Benighaus, C., Kuppler, S., and Krohn, J.: Co-production of knowledge: towards a co-design of geothermal heat utilization, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8597, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8597, 2021.

Geoethics is intended to provide a conceptual and practical framework for all human agents engaging with the ethical challenges that arise from their interaction with the Earth.  In recent years, it has chiefly focused on the professional roles of geoscientists and allied professionals.  Great progress has been made towards putting geoethics in its rightful place at the heart of all geoscience, elaborating and applying its principles across a wide variety of disciplines and sectors, and promoting its importance in geoscience education, training, research and professional practice.  Geoethical thinking has been developed and applied in the mining sector, through initiatives such as the IAPG White Paper on Responsible Mining, through multidisciplinary research on responsible and sustainable mining, and through responsible exploration, production and associated activities in mining companies. 

Addressing the global challenges expressed in the UN Sustainable Development Goals will depend on a vast range of mined raw materials.  It is vital that we find, extract, manage and use these resources in a responsible way, minimising environmental and social harm, and sharing the benefits we derive from them equitably.  But achieving these objectives cannot depend on geoscientists and their colleagues in the mining sector alone.  It will also require the active engagement of manufacturers sourcing raw materials across complex mineral supply chains; investors and other value chain actors; and a wide range of other stakeholders including civil society organisations, policy-makers and citizens.

There is rapidly growing recognition among this wider set of actors of the need for a transition to more sustainable systems of production and consumption of raw materials, and of the roles they can play in delivering these alongside responsible mining companies.  This presentation will consider the suitability of geoethics, as currently framed and articulated, as a basis for engagement and action by this wider set of actors, in particular for manufacturers seeking to behave responsibly.  It will draw lessons from a recent project to help a multinational consumer-facing company to develop its responsible sourcing programme, and will suggest how the principles of geoethics can best be operationalised and communicated in such settings.

How to cite: Bilham, N.: Responsible production and consumption of mineral resources: mobilising geoethics as a framework for mining companies, manufacturers and other stakeholders, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10403, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10403, 2021.

EGU21-5413 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

Geoethics needs multi-dimensional research agendas and practice

Cornelia E. Nauen

Geoethics have been developed as global ethics to face grand challenges for humanity by Peppoloni and Di Capua in 2020. Complementary to the UN Declaration of Human Rights the proposal of a responsible human development charter formulates universal duties to demonstrate ecological humanism. Commensurate with the need to operationalise such ambitions this paper suggests a multi-pronged approach.

Similar to conversations focused primarily on other scientific fields research agendas and practice in the earth and marine sciences would benefit from a more representative participation of actors from all fields of knowledge, genders, geographical areas, ethnic backgrounds and world views. Journals like Nature and other high-impact publications start giving more space to voices arguing for gendered research, more opportunities in academia and publishing to women and under-represented societal groups to achieve higher quality research for beneficial approaches to societal challenges.

One essential aspect is identifying and overcoming their tacit and not so tacit discrimination with a view to enable the much needed diversification of perspectives, cultures and knowledge sources in the search for a more viable trade-off between different possible responses.

Another, often linked, aspect is to ask questions in ways explicitly addressing a wider spectrum of societal risks and benefits. This is particularly obvious in health research mostly based on white male participants in clinical trials with high percentages of costly failures. But as recently becoming apparent, it also applies e.g. to AI research, now an ubiquitous tool in many research, production and service areas. Among the responses is the obligation for European research proposals to address gender in most thematic areas, including the geosciences, a requirement that almost certainly needs greater attention to avoid tokenism.

Moreover, particular attention is warranted to seek understanding and solutions for and with the substantial small-scale and artisanal sectors in mining, fisheries and other natural resource areas reviewed in earlier research. While traditional social structures can be important in some regions, unintended consequences of demand in globalised markets with strong wealth stratification are prone to create opportunistic rushes. Such attempts to get out of poverty very often come at a high cost to human and environmental health.

These challenges are best addressed by interdisciplinary and otherwise diversified research teams and inclusive forms of field testing conditions and impact of measures. These should be able to cover the multiple dimensions through in-depth, interactive study and exploration of practical approaches with socially, economically and environmentally acceptable trade-offs. Investment in inclusive quality education is expected to underpin longer-term advances towards living the principles of geoethics.

How to cite: Nauen, C. E.: Geoethics needs multi-dimensional research agendas and practice, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5413, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5413, 2021.

EGU21-6311 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2 | Highlight

Earthquake loss alerts to save victims

Max Wyss, Philippe Rosset, Stavros Tolis, and Michel Speiser

Large earthquakes are unavoidable because globally the plate motions accumulate stress, which leads to ruptures of the crustal rocks hundreds of kilometers long. In developed areas, this brings buildings to collapse, which injures and kills occupants. Potential rescuers are never well informed about the extent of an earthquake disaster because communication along the rupture is interrupted. We have documented that the underestimate of fatality numbers lasts for at least the crucial first few days, often for weeks. For earthquakes that cause thousands of casualties, the extent of underestimation is usually an order of magnitude. To reduce this uncertainty of whether help is required and how much, we have assembled a data set and constructed algorithms to estimate the number of fatalities and injured within  an hour of any earthquake worldwide in the computer tool QLARM. Our estimates of the population and the makeup of the built environment comes from government and internet sources. For large earthquakes, the hypocenter and magnitude is calculated and distributed by the GEOFON group at the Geoforschungszentrum (GFZ) in Potsdam, Germany and the Geological Survey (USGS) in Golden, USA within 6 to 10 minutes. Based on this information, the QLARM operator responds with an estimate of the number of casualties within 30 minutes of the earthquake, on average. These estimates are available to anyone by email alerts without charge. Since 2003, the QLARM operator has issued more than 1,000 casualty alerts at any time of the day pro bono. The USGS delivers a similar service called PAGER, which is based on different data sets and algorithms. The two loss estimates are usually close, which should give governments and news organizations confidence that these alerts are to be taken seriously. The QLARM research group also publishes research results, estimating the likely numbers of future casualties in repeats of historical large earthquakes. In such efforts the QLARM group has discovered that, contrary to the general assumption, the rural population suffers more by an order of magnitude under very large earthquakes than the urban population. It is also clear that the poorer segment of the population in cities and countryside suffer more than the affluent members of society because the former’s houses are weaker and collapse more readily. To be even more useful, a worldwide data set of hospitals and schools is needed in order to provide first responders with locations and likely damage to these critical facilities. Crucially, reliable school location data would enable first responders to focus rescue efforts on schoolchildren who die beneath the rubble of their schools in the hundreds to thousands in large earthquakes. Unfortunately, such data are not available from official sources in most developing countries, and we are not aware of good alternatives. The data on schools in open data platforms such as OpenStreetMap is sporadic. UNICEF runs a global school mapping initiative, but we have been unable to obtain their assistance to date.

How to cite: Wyss, M., Rosset, P., Tolis, S., and Speiser, M.: Earthquake loss alerts to save victims, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6311, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6311, 2021.

EGU21-12746 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

Detection of land subsidence phenomena in Kopais plain, Boeotia county, central Greece. Preliminary results

Elissavet Chatzicharalampous, Constantinos Loupasakis, Theodora Rondoyanni, and Issaak Parcharidis

Deposition of organic soils takes place in fresh water and coastal swamps. Due to water presence no oxidation procedure takes place and therefore organic material decomposes slightly. Balance is maintained because accumulation rate is higher than decomposition-oxidation rate. However, drainage of these areas disturbs this balance and creates the appropriate aerobic conditions under which organic matter oxidizes, usually with slow and steady rate. Oxidation is “accompanied” by land subsidence, the rate of which depends on the type of organic matter, depth of the aquifer and temperature.

Kopais plain has general W-E direction, is located in Boeotia county about 100km NW of Athens. It extends in an area of about 250,000 acres and came from the drainage of the homonymous lake, which was extending at the Eastern part of the basin with length of 23km, width 13km and maximum depth 4m. The bottom of the lake consists of a solid layer of clay up to 4 meters thick, rich in organic matter from the decay of plant debris. The lake sides were swamps covered with reeds, shrubs and flowering plants.

Mycenaeans who lived in Orchomenos town were the first to successfully drain the lake in 16th century BC carrying out important and impressive works. After the decline of Mycenaeans the drainage works were abandoned, destroyed and gradually, in the 13th BC century, the area flooded again and the lake was re-formed.

New drainage works were carried out in period 1882-1886 by "French Kopaida Company". On 1886 discharge of the lake took place and Kopais was drained again.

However, the organic matter located at the bottom of the lake (peat), immediately after drying, self-ignited. The fire spread throughout the whole area of drained Kopais and burned all the peat located close to the surface, resulting to the subsidence of the ground surface by 4m. Consequently, drainage works appeared to be suspended above the ground and unable to drain the water. In 1887 Kopais became a lake again.

In 1895 the English company "Lake Copais Co. Ltd” undertook the continuation of the draining project which was completed in 1931, with the drainage of 241,000 acres of arable land.

In the recent years due to climate change and occurrence of heavy rainfall, the plain floods and parts of it are temporarily turned back into a lake.

After drainage of the lake, the plain has been cultivated intensively. Also, stockraising activity and industry were further developed. Economic development brought the expansion of existing settlements and the creation of new ones mainly in the western area of the dried lake.

The current research presents the results of an ongoing  investigation revealing extencive deformations  causing damages to buildings and infrastructure at the town of Aliartos and at the villages of Alalkmones, Agios Athanasios, Mavrogia, Agios Dimitrios, Karya and Agios Spyridonas. It is considered that these damages are resulted by land subsidence, mainly induced by the oxidation of the remaining organic material but also amplified by water pumping for watering, industrial and livestocking purposes or even more from the natural compaction of the upper strata.

How to cite: Chatzicharalampous, E., Loupasakis, C., Rondoyanni, T., and Parcharidis, I.: Detection of land subsidence phenomena in Kopais plain, Boeotia county, central Greece. Preliminary results, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12746, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12746, 2021.

EGU21-8269 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

Virtual outcrops: Field work on lockdown conditions using Drones

Fernando Borrás, Joaquín Hopfenblatt, Adelina Geyer, and Meritxell Aulinas

The year 2020 was full of challenges in many aspects, and it was not an exception for Earth Science education. Field work, which is the most effective tool for developing the capacity of spatial visualization of Geology students, was restricted, or even banned, during long time periods. The lockdown conditions highlighted the immediate need of techniques that “could” bring the field to our classrooms and homes through electronic devices.

The use of “Remotely Piloted Aircraft System” (RPAS), commonly known as drones, for geological purposes is increasing year after year involving different fields of geology, such as hazard assessment, monitoring, volcanology, structural geology among others. Drones allow obtaining, for an affordable price (compared to airplane or helicopter renting) and under safe conditions, updated aerial photography from any perspective resulting in a more efficient fieldwork. At present, there are different working teams using drones mainly for geological research purposes. However, those focused on teaching innovation systems by combining science and drone technology are still limited.

We propose the use of this technology to create 3D virtual outcrops with research or teaching purposes. Indeed, in those cases in which face-to-face teaching is not possible or the outcrop is located in a hard-to-reach or hazardous areas, virtual fieldtrips can be a valuable and safe alternative. Moreover, it approaches geological outcrops to people with physical disability or with reduced mobility promoting a more inclusive environment. Virtual outcrops also offer scientist, students and the general public the opportunity to visit, explore and study remote places all over the world with the possibility of creating a worldwide virtual catalog of outcrops with importance in Earth Sciences. Among other interesting applications there is the possibility of combining drone generated products with geographic information systems (GIS), photogrammetry and virtual modelling software’s, widely used by research institutions and universities which would open a full new scope of studies for students and professors.

Since the second half of year 2020, “Drones4Geology” cooperative, in collaboration with universities and research centers, is building a collection of high-quality 3D virtual outcrops and orthomosaics obtained from drone photogrammetry of different sites of Catalonia considered of geological interest, (e.g., Southern Pyrenean fold and thrust belt, Hercynian intrusive rocks of la “Costa Brava”) aiming to put these 2D and 3D tools at the disposal of students and researchers.

How to cite: Borrás, F., Hopfenblatt, J., Geyer, A., and Aulinas, M.: Virtual outcrops: Field work on lockdown conditions using Drones, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8269, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8269, 2021.

EGU21-14287 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

Geological Hazards Focused Geopark Proposal, Armenia

Khachatur Meliksetian, Ara Avagyan, Lilit Sahakyan, Ghazar Galoyan, Hayk Melik-Adamyan, Arshavir Hovhanissyan, Arayik Grigoryan, Taron Grigoryan, Dmitry Arakelyan, Hrach Shahinyan, Kristina Sahakyan, Hayk Hovakimyan, Tatul Atalyan, Edmond Grigoryan, Marine Misakyan, and Seda Avagyan

This contribution refers to ongoing research project funded by the Government of the Republic of Armenia titled “Geopark as an impetus for sustainable economic development and environmental protection in Gegharkunik and Vayots Dzor Provinces, Armenia” currently implemented by the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Armenian NAS. 

Tectonically and volcanically active territory of Armenia, located in Arabia-Eurasia continent-continent collision zone, is characterized by a complex geological history and the presence of a mosaic of different geological blocks and terranes, for instance, continental blocks, ophiolites and arcs merged together by long-lasting convergent plate geodynamics. The presence of internationally significant geological sites combined with rich archeological, historical and cultural context strongly supports the idea of establishment of Geopark in Armenia, also taking into account potential economic benefits both at country level and for more than one hundred local communities.

The suggested area for the first Armenian Geopark comprises several thousand sq.km, mostly in Gegharkunik and Vayots Dzor provinces. The selected area Geopark is unique also in its diverse mountain landscapes and volcanic landforms. Given the presence of active faults, volcanoes and significant examples of volcano-tectonic interactions, as well as certain well-pronounced evidence of hazardous geological phenomena, such as surface ruptures, Holocene volcanism, tectonically induced landslides, sedimentological and paleontological evidence of past mass extinction events, geothermal activity, etc., it is proposed to establish a Geopark focused on geological hazards.

Post-collisional volcanism is one of the key features of geology of Armenia and volcanological geosites play a significant role in the proposed Geopark, particularly, some of Pleistocene-Holocene volcanoes, lava flows, lava tubes, lava falls, crater lakes, as well as thick obsidian flows with records of Paleolithic use and other sites.

To date, 40 geosites, classified according to geological phenomena having an international or regional significance, have been selected and documented according to local experience and international approaches. Some of the selected geosites are characterized by a complex geological record, with a long history of research and multidisciplinary studies.

The proposed Armenian Geopark aims at wider sharing of the accumulated geological knowledge with society and attracting tourists as a factor of sustainable development. It is suggested that the establishment of Geopark in Armenia will strongly support the protection of rich geological heritage and geoconservation, contributing to sustainable management of protected areas and spreading Earth sciences oriented knowledge and education in Armenia and beyond, in the entire region.

How to cite: Meliksetian, K., Avagyan, A., Sahakyan, L., Galoyan, G., Melik-Adamyan, H., Hovhanissyan, A., Grigoryan, A., Grigoryan, T., Arakelyan, D., Shahinyan, H., Sahakyan, K., Hovakimyan, H., Atalyan, T., Grigoryan, E., Misakyan, M., and Avagyan, S.: Geological Hazards Focused Geopark Proposal, Armenia, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14287, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14287, 2021.

EGU21-575 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

Applying the Values of Geoethics for Sustainable Speleotourism Development

Aleksandar Antić, Giuseppe Di Capua, and Silvia Peppoloni

Establishing sustainable and responsible speleotourism development is a major challenge and involves complex activities. Adequate theoretical starting point is the application of geoethical values related to the conservation and protection of the caves to be used for touristic purposes. Positive and negative cases of human behaviors towards speleological geoheritage are discussed, in order to highlight what should be done in cave management to avoid malpractices and on what elements could be founded adequate strategies aimed at promoting sustainable speleotourism. This is important to tourism management organizations involved in the promotion of caves and in creating economic opportunities for local populations, while respecting cave ecosystems. Modern cave management must be focused on the protection of the cave ecosystems, finding ways to achieve at the same time an economic development of local communities. But this approach needs the adoption of a geoethical framework of values to be shared by all stakeholders involved so that successful cooperation can be achieved despite differences in interests and expectations. The aim of this paper is to raise the awareness about the need to apply the values of geoethics to speleotourism, stimulating new fields of discussion within the scientific and technical communities involved in studies and activities related to geotourism and geoheritage. The possibilities of developing new ways to manage caves, in order to promote a sustainable socio-economic development of local communities, have to be balanced with the protection of natural environments as much as possible. The proposed theoretical frameworks have the goal to increase the discussion on the best ways of connecting speleotourism to sustainable and responsible cave management, presenting two case studies, and pointing out potential solutions.

How to cite: Antić, A., Di Capua, G., and Peppoloni, S.: Applying the Values of Geoethics for Sustainable Speleotourism Development, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-575, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-575, 2021.

EGU21-5794 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

AGI's Framework on Addressing Equity in the Geoscience Societies and the Challenge of Defining Success

Christopher Keane, Susan Sullivan, and Leila Gonzales

The American Geosciences Institute in cooperation with its member societies has developed the Framework for Addressing Racial and Ethnic Equity in Geosciences Professional Societies.  The geoscience societies are a pivotal area to influence the culture of the geosciences, and in response to the events of June 2020, many societies determined they needed to directly act on the issue of equity in the geosciences. Being birthed from a federation of US-centric organizations, the Framework has clear US-aligned approaches and boundaries.  However, the baseline proposed actions are fundamentally universal and meet the goal of the authoring committee to provide a framework from which we hope geoscience organizations of all types would use it to craft their own specific action plan and policies.   A critical component of this framework for the committee was to ensure definable actions were included.   Some of these suggested actions and their intended extensions will be discussed.  Additionally, ongoing conversations among the societies, with the US National Academy of Sciences Board on Earth Science and Resources, and other science organizations have begun to examine what the path forward looks like.   One area that AGI particularly is concerned about is the process of measuring progress.   Understanding and recognizing the impacts of efforts like this is critical to ensure agile responses for success.   But with AGI's intimate knowledge of much of the U.S. federal data, some of the ambiguities and definitional challenges within the US system complicates the ability to directly measure progress and for which further discussion of what success looks like is critically needed.  

How to cite: Keane, C., Sullivan, S., and Gonzales, L.: AGI's Framework on Addressing Equity in the Geoscience Societies and the Challenge of Defining Success, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5794, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5794, 2021.

EGU21-6988 | vPICO presentations | EOS4.2

The Global Network for Geoscience and Society: Connecting Science to Serve the Public Good

Gregory Wessel and Rose Hendricks

The challenges we face today, global warming, environmental degradation, resource depletion, habitat loss, and their associated social impacts, require coordination and collaboration between geoscientists and other societal stakeholders for us to craft effective solutions.  These same problems often require coordinated actions across borders, and the people trying to solve these problems, locally and regionally, often suffer from a lack of resources and insufficient access to scientific expertise.

It is especially important for geoscientists to participate in and advance a culture of civic science, in which societal needs and diverse perspectives shape science, and scientific discoveries inform public understanding, decisions, and policies. This is done by expanding our capacity to support scientists who engage with decision makers and members of the public, both individually and collectively. 

It is for this reason that a group of geoscientists and educators have come together to create the Global Network for Geoscience and Society.  Our mission is to strengthen cooperation and catalyze actions that support the global geoscience community by providing a network that enables collaboration and extends to all an opportunity to partner with others to advance resilience and sustainability.

Founded by volunteers from the GSA, the EGU, the AGU, Geology in the Public Interest, Geology for Global Development, the Geological Survey of Sweden, the Geological Society of London, and several universities and other organizations, the Network will bridge the gap between geoscientists and other communities so that they can collaborate to develop sustainable, context-appropriate solutions.  It will highlight opportunities for civic-minded geoscientists and others to address societal challenges related to natural resource exploitation, environmental contamination, natural hazards, and climate change. 

Building upon existing successful programs such as AGU’s Thriving Earth Exchange, the Network will create avenues to connect programs and people to advance resilience and sustainability.  It will provide civic science resources for geoscientists and advocate for effective and equitable collaborations to advance locally expressed development priorities.  It will promote the elevation of community voices that are not always heard, such as indigenous groups, women, the impoverished, and communities of faith, and it will establish a mechanism to advise community groups and organizations that require assistance with problems that involve the geosciences and sustainability.

If you are a geoscientist interested in sustainability, or if you represent a government agency, a foundation or nonprofit, or a forward-looking for-profit corporation, we invite you to join us.  Send us an email (info@thegngs.org) and we’ll be in touch.  

How to cite: Wessel, G. and Hendricks, R.: The Global Network for Geoscience and Society: Connecting Science to Serve the Public Good, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6988, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6988, 2021.

The IAPG (https://www.geoethics.org) was founded in August 2012 with the aim to increase the awareness of the geoscientific community on ethical, social and cultural implications of geoscience knowledge, research, practice, education, and communication.
In this perspective, geoethics has been initially developed in the context of geosciences, as a rediscovery by geoscientists, and in some cases as a real process of consciousness-raising, of the social role that they can and should play in support of society to face global anthropogenic changes.
Currently the IAPG can count on more than 2600 geoscientists (belonging to 130 countries) and its IAPG network includes also 32 national sections, working to develop geoethics by focusing on local specific issues of each country, and 3 task groups. Many international organizations recognize, appreciate and support results achieved by the association, through affiliations, agreements of cooperation and partnerships.
The IAPG has coordinated numerous publications, both books and articles, supports a book series on geoethics and a new scientific, open-access, not-for-profit, peer-reviewed journal on geoethics and social geosciences, and promotes a school on geoethics.
This presentation provides an update on the status of IAPG activities, and on future perspectives.

How to cite: Di Capua, G. and Peppoloni, S.: The activities of the IAPG - International Association for Promoting Geoethics: status and future perspectives, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2347, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2347, 2021.

EOS5.1 – Promoting and supporting equality, diversity and inclusion in the geosciences

EGU21-3231 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender inequality: the case of the Italian Astronomy & Astrphysics Community

Laura Inno, Alessandra Rotundi, and Arianna Piccialli

Among European countries, Italy was the first to be heavily hit by the outbreak of COVID-19 and quickly decreed on 9 March 2020 that the entire national territory be locked down to prevent its further spread, establishing an unprecedented situation for its citizens, including researchers. Italy hosts a large (~2000) and lively community of researchers in the fields of Astronomy and Astrophysics, which contains the largest fraction of female researchers (~30%) among the world’s leading countries in astronomy (defined as the ones with IAU members >150). Therefore, the Italian community poses as an ideal testbed to investigate the consequences of the lockdown on research productivity, also by gender. 

In order to do so, we used the INAF and MIUR websites to compile a complete database of the Italian researchers, considered by gender, and matched it with the first authors of preprints posted on the largest preprint archive of natural science publications, arXiv, for each year from 2017 to 2020.

The submission rate over the previous three years is about 38.6 ± 8.2 (one standard deviation, σ) papers per month,  with the fraction of papers published by women consistently close to 30%, which well reflects the percentage of women in the community. As expected, the overall production in the first semester of 2020  (i.e. during the first lockdown) was lower than the average value estimated above. But if we break down this difference by the assigned first-author gender, we find that the decrease only concerns the submissions by female researchers, while submissions by male researchers actually increased during the lockdown by up to 10% (or a difference of 3.5σ).  We discuss this difference in productivity between male and female researchers during the lockdown as a possible reflection of the unbalanced distribution of the unpaid workload at home between partners.

How to cite: Inno, L., Rotundi, A., and Piccialli, A.: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender inequality: the case of the Italian Astronomy & Astrphysics Community, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3231, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3231, 2021.

EGU21-8565 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1 | Highlight

An impact of COVID-19 pandemic on research activities and work-life balance for geoscientists in Japan

Rie Hori, S., Natsue Abe, and Chiaki Oguchi, T. and the The Committee for Diversity Management and Talent Pool of JpGU

The rapid spread out of the COVID-19 continuous to have a great impact on not only social life but also academic and educational activities. The geoscience fields in Japan are no exception. The committee for Diversity Management and Talent Pool, Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) launched an urgent survey between 28 June and 9 July, 2020 by. The goal of the survey was quantifying the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on research activities and work-life balance for geoscientists in Japan. The questionnaire was published two languages: Japanese and English. Although the questionnaire system was opened for a short period of time (12 days), over 400 answers were obtained, of which 351 in Japanese and 65 in English. The results revealed that activities of female geoscientists have been damaged by increasing burden of housework and childcare during confinement period by a state of coronavirus emergency, more than male. We present here some highlights of these results of COVID-19 survey by JpGU.

In the free text of the responses, there were specific and earnest appeals regarding the support necessary and expected. The support requests were targeted to various entities, namely JpGU, workplaces, schools, etc. The most common requests made to JpGU were to provide online educational materials and online lecture know-how, and to introduce virtual options to future conferences. Survey responders with childcare responsibilities pointed out the difficulties to attend conferences from home.

In conclusion, we need to reevaluate our consideration for the diverse members, possessing various background and impairments, who are easily left behind in the rapid changes, in academic activities due to COVID-19.

How to cite: Hori, S., R., Abe, N., and Oguchi, T., C. and the The Committee for Diversity Management and Talent Pool of JpGU: An impact of COVID-19 pandemic on research activities and work-life balance for geoscientists in Japan, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8565, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8565, 2021.

EGU21-12727 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Diversity in ERC populations: applicants, grantees and reviewers

Claudia Jesus-Rydin and Luis Fariña-Busto

The European Research Council (ERC), Europe’s premiere funding agency for frontier research, views equality of opportunities as an essential priority and a vital mission to ensure credibility in the review process. The ERC monitors closely various demographic data yearly on every call and has taken actions to tackle imbalances and potential implicit and explicit biases.

This presentation is focused on demographic data for the three main funding schemes: Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant and Advanced Grant. Attention is directed mainly to gender and geographic distribution. The demographics presented here consider various stakeholders, such as reviewers, applicants and grantees.

After more than 10 years of existence, ERC data provides an insight on demographical evolution. In the first framework programme (FP7, 2007-2013), 25% of applicants were women. In the last years (Horizon 2020, 2014-2019), this percentage increased by 4%, with 29% of women applied for ERC grants. In the same periods of time, the share of women as grantees has also increased from 20% to 29%. In the last years, men and women enjoy equal success rates. This presentation also sheds light on the population diversity of ERC reviewers, both panel members and external reviewers.

The ERC knows that work to ensure equality of opportunities is never finished. This presentation analyses critically the institutional efforts and considers possible steps to consolidate the accomplished results.

How to cite: Jesus-Rydin, C. and Fariña-Busto, L.: Diversity in ERC populations: applicants, grantees and reviewers, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12727, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12727, 2021.

Geoscience is being increasingly embedded in collaborative research related to the management of natural resources and the environment, alongside engineering and social sciences.  Masters students exercise rigorous choices in selecting their study courses that enhance employability, considering carefully the kind of learning experience they are likely to have. The interdisciplinary M.Sc. programme ‘Global Management of Natural Resources’ (in Chemical Engineering, University College London, UK) has generated a lot of interest since its initiation in 2016. The geoscience module ‘Geology for Global Managers and Engineers’ (GGME), is a part of the above taught programme, studied by students from diverse academic background considered in four sets, namely, set 1 (geologists), set 2 (chemists, environmentalists, ecologist) set 3 (engineers) and set 4 (others, without science background such as economics and finances).

Traditional assessment methods for geology include written examination papers, field trip reports and essays and, practical based on hand specimen and microscopic studies. But, the role of assessment is no longer solely associated with awarding a grade but, should enhance inclusion and serve as effective teaching tools (Hounsell et al., 2005; Kaur et al., 2017). This can be better achieved by applying diverse assessment methods taking into account the different skill sets of the students, ensuring fairness and consistency with consideration of increased workload for both lecturers and students (Brown, 2012). Here we studied the effectiveness of multiple assessment for the taught GGME module including a combination of software based coursework, fieldtrip activities and hands on specimen studies, spread over the term, followed by an end of term multiple-choice questions’ based sit-in examination.

Our study indicates that prior academic background did affect students’ scores in the assessments. The students from set 4 had the lowest average score, although ~ 15 % attained higher marks comparable to set 1, attributable to a combination of factors including the set multiple assessments. The students performed better in course works involving smaller learning components where there was more time for reflection. But, they scored lower when the course works were set too early or late during the term. Assessing the same learning outcome by more than one method with provided feedback worked as effective, continuous learning activities with a reduced attainment gap in the final examination between the students from sets 1 and 4, for components already covered in the course works. Noteworthy that although the students were from diverse ethnic background, there was no attainment gap attributable to their ethnicity. A combination of assessment methods with both individual and group work components proved to be effective in closing any attainment gaps between diverse groups of students.

References

Brown, S. (2012). AISHE-J 4(2), 85.1–85.12.

Hounsell, D., Entwistle, N., Anderson, C., Bromage, A., Day, K.,  Hounsell, J., Land, R., Litjens, J., McCune, V., Meyer, E., Reimann, N. and Xu, R. (2005). Final Report to the Economic and Social Research Council, on TLRP Project L139251099.

Kaur, A., Noman, M. and Nordin, H.  (2017). 42(5), 756-771.

How to cite: Basu, S.: The importance of implementing diverse assessment methods in geosciences to promote inclusion, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15093, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15093, 2021.

Many institutes have equal opportunity or gender equality officers. They are usually responsible to ensure that equal opportunity and gender equality laws are applied at their institute but also offer local support. The actions from these officers might greatly help to improve equal opportunities and gender equality.

At MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany, a collective of three women was elected in January 2019 as decentralised women’s representatives. Our overarching goal is to advice and support all scientists and students at MARUM, as well as the director and committees, in the implementation of the legally-fixed gender equality duty (Bremisches Hochschulgesetz / Higher Education Act of the State of Bremen). As such, we have implemented several actions to promote gender equality at MARUM.

With the present contribution, we would like to present the activities with which we have been engaged and discuss how successful they were, in order to help other gender equality officers in their role. We also hope to hear about other successful actions that have been implemented in order to broaden our actions. Generally, we would like to discuss ideas of useful future actions and exchange with colleagues in this field. A long-term goal is to create a repository of actions which can be taken by equal opportunity and gender equality officers.

Our actions were implemented at a range of levels: directly with the women from MARUM (e.g. network meetings, support in case of conflict, pregnancy checklist), sensibilisation (e.g. invited talk on gendered wording in job advertisement, workshop on writing letters of recommendation, screening of “Picture a Scientist”), institutional (e.g. bi-annual meeting with director, meetings with the other gender equality actors at the university), monitoring (e.g. analysis of the gender of job applicants and selected candidates).

Most actions are very beneficial and well received. We feel it is profitable to act at these different levels, to provide support directly to the women, but also to inform a wide range of actors on gender inequalities. The resources we have at MARUM allows a funding of some activities, which is particularly useful. Because we are scientists ourselves, we have a good and productive exchange with the other women on a peer level. We are greatly encouraged and supported by the fact that people in leadership positions take us seriously and carefully listen to our opinion and feedback. A difficulty which we encounter is that, although the position of women’s representative is officially recognised by the law, we are not given specific time for it. Therefore, the work that we do as gender equality officer is done in addition to our scientific work.

How to cite: Lefebvre, A., Bender, V. B., and Schnieders, L.: Gender equality officers: which activities can we do to improve gender equality in STEM? Examples from MARUM women’s representatives, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-4012, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4012, 2021.

EGU21-1290 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Integrating an ED&I Strategy at the Met Office

Freya Garry, Aidan Green, and Carol Rosati

Diverse perspectives combined with an inclusive culture where people can bring their authentic selves to work, stimulates innovation, improves decision making and leads to greater performance and resilience. In the past, colleagues at the Met Office have set up excellent staff-led initiatives, which over the last year have been built on to deliver a coordinated institutional wide approach and instil a sustainable culture change. The Met Office has created a comprehensive Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) Strategy to address how the organisation will lead and invest in our people and culture to make the Met Office a great place to work for all. We are publishing equality objectives to publicly demonstrate our commitment and focus to enhance ED&I:

  • engaging with and understanding the diversity of our people,
  • advancing equality of opportunity,
  • increasing representation of under-represented groups at all levels,
  • zero tolerance to bullying, harassment and discrimination.

To fulfil these objectives our actions include using comprehensive staff surveys, data collection, Equality Impact Assessments, an ongoing review of recruitment and progression practices and seeking external accreditations. As an organisation, we have employed specialist consultants with ED&I sector knowledge to help us implement these actions. A programme of extensive internal communications has shared activities, experiences and new initiatives to engage all staff.

We outline the joined-up structures that we are delivering to fulfil our strategy, which has ultimate oversight by the top levels of our organisation. However, it engages all staff with the Strategy in their day-to-day work and through a new Ally Community and a Diversity Council comprising staff representation from all existing staff-led ED&I networks. An example staff network of focus is the Women in Climate network, a joint network with the University of Exeter to support the retention of women in weather and climate science and promote diversity whilst fostering cross-institutional support, idea-sharing and networking. Other Met Office staff led networks include the Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME), LGBTQ+, Autism, Internationals in the UK, Accessibility and Disability, Menopause, Dementia/Carer and Mental Health and Wellbeing Awareness networks. The Met Office also has a team of Dignity and Respect at Work advisors and encourages young people from a range of backgrounds to consider STEM careers through outreach in schools and Science Camps. We present our strategy as a model for best practise for other geoscience organisations, whilst highlighting some of the challenges that we have faced and how we are working to overcome them.

How to cite: Garry, F., Green, A., and Rosati, C.: Integrating an ED&I Strategy at the Met Office, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1290, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1290, 2021.

EGU21-9196 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1 | Highlight

How HERI (Human Evolution Research Institute) is disrupting, transforming and decolonising long held patriarchal narratives of human evolution in South Africa.

Robyn Pickering, Rebecca Ackermann, Wendy Black, Yonatan Sahle, and Jayne Wilkins

South Africa has an extraordinary record of human evolution spanning from our early hominin ancestors in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site, through to more recent evidence for the emergence of modern humans.  Human evolution research in South Africa has received international attention for nearly a hundred years and has been vast and broad in terms of research foci, as well as researcher participation. However, the leading researchers in South Africa have been almost entirely men, with women and people of colour under-represented, and black women largely absent. Since its inception in 2016, the Human Evolution Research Institute (HERI) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) has developed a tangible plan to change this: to disrupting, transform and decolonise the long held patriarchal narrative of human evolution in South Africa. Our intervention has a three-tiered design, focusing on the institutional (UCT), the current undergraduate and postgraduate student body, and the public. Using HERI, we are creating more inclusive and diverse spaces for the production and dissemination of high-quality research into human origins, through both physical changes and interactive programmes (e.g. seminars, workshops). We bring young, black women into this space, facilitate cohort-building, and give them knowledge, skills and courage to be the future of scholarship into human evolution in South Africa. We have programmes in place to support and graduate a new cohort of young, black woman PhD students, as well as postdoctoral support that will provide a stepping-stone for these young women to continue in their scientific careers. Field camps are used to demystify the fieldwork experience and encourage interaction between undergraduate and postgraduate women – as well as academics – and help younger women receive the skills they need, as well as the experiences necessary to spark their interest and imagine themselves entering the discipline. Finally, in order to reach beyond the bounds of higher education institutes and out into the public domain, we are developing a new, permanent museum exhibition on human evolution at the Iziko Museum of South Africa, in Cape Town. The exhibition reframes the human origins narrative to centre on the diversity of all people in South Africa, exploring how evolution produced that diversity through a lens of inclusivity and aiming to demystify the topic in an environment that is not alienating but welcoming.

How to cite: Pickering, R., Ackermann, R., Black, W., Sahle, Y., and Wilkins, J.: How HERI (Human Evolution Research Institute) is disrupting, transforming and decolonising long held patriarchal narratives of human evolution in South Africa., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9196, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9196, 2021.

EGU21-1192 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Career obstacles facing Early Career Scientists (ECS) and a first look at solutions 

Jenny Turton, Nienke Blom, Meriel Bittner, Michaela Wenner, and Emily Mason

Despite the growing number of PhDs awarded in the geosciences in the last decade, the availability of permanent or more senior positions hasn’t matched this trend. Recent estimates suggest that less than 1% of graduates become professors/senior lecturers and only 30% stay in academic roles after graduation (The Royal Society, 2010). To analyse the impact of these developments on the Early Career Scientist (ECS) community, the ‘Careers and Jobs Working Group’ of the EGU representatives designed a survey. The survey focused on the motivation as well as obstacles faced by ECS in their decision to pursue a career in academia and on suggestions for resources to help them with their career decisions. The survey was distributed to ECS via social media platforms, webinars and newsletters.

Here, we present the preliminary outcome of the survey, received up until December 2020. The survey highlights that despite high interest in remaining in academia, many scientists are also interested in alternative careers, but face a number of barriers in their quest for both academic and non-academic positions. Some of the most prominent hurdles to a continued career in academia include poor job security and lack of support for families. The interest in non-academic careers varies by career stage and family status (whether single, in a relationship or a parent). The importance of this research is underlined by the recent ‘Graduate student happiness and wellbeing report’ conducted at the University of California, Berkley, which identified job insecurity and low career prospects as having a large negative impact on the mental health of ECS.

ECS are particularly interested to learn more about work fields that are related to their subject of study, about transferable skills and are keen to participate in events such as webinars and networking events. These findings highlight the role that international organisations (such as EGU, AGU, ERC) can play to help and guide ECS in finding a career path. Through their extensive networks both inside and outside of academia, such organisations are in a powerful position to facilitate interactions between members of different career stages and work fields. We suggest that a stronger focus on career development within such organisations – for example by creating a dedicated point of contact for careers information and regularly organising career-related events- will create a better outlook for ECS whilst also contributing to their mental health and overall wellbeing.

How to cite: Turton, J., Blom, N., Bittner, M., Wenner, M., and Mason, E.: Career obstacles facing Early Career Scientists (ECS) and a first look at solutions , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1192, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1192, 2021.

EGU21-11050 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Geoscience (EDIG) initiative: A time to listen, learn, and act.

Aileen Doran, Anna Bidgood, Aoife Blowick, Jennifer Craig, Halleluya Ekandjo, Arron Fox, Jana Foxe, Jess Franklin, Murray Hitzman, Fergus McAuliffe, Roland Neofitu, Koen Torremans, Helen Twigg, and Elspeth Wallace

The Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Geoscience (EDIG) initiative was created to better understand the experiences of the geoscience community with respect to prejudice, inequity, bias, exclusion, sexism, and discrimination. EDIG aims to provide a platform for learning for the wider geoscience community and promote progressive action to make geoscience more inclusive and equitable.

As part of our initiatives, we organised the virtual EDIG conference in December 2020 entitled: A time to listen, learn, and act. This virtual event aimed to facilitate learning on equality, diversity, and inclusion related topics relevant to the geosciences. It hosted sessions on where we have come from, where we are now, and where we are going. The conference especially focused on raising awareness around the challenges experienced by minoritized geoscientists, helping to involve more people in these conversations. The conference hosted 17 speakers on a range of different topics, from the history of diversity in geoscience, to how we can become more inclusive, to how we can move forward together, as well as a workshop on unconscious bias sponsored by the Institute of Geologists of Ireland (IGI) and the Irish Centre for Research in Applied Geology (iCRAG).

Prior to the EDIG conference, we launched a global survey to carry out research on equality, diversity, and inclusion in the geosciences. The survey asked people about their own experiences (or lack of) around EDI related topics. The survey received a large response, with 708 participants from 58 countries. The main themes from the survey data were used to structure our conference programme.

We will present the results of this survey, and our experiences of the EDIG conference. With these and future events we hope to bring together several online initiatives, establish a community of support and learning, and to help us all come together to make the geosciences more welcoming, accessible, inclusive, and equitable.

How to cite: Doran, A., Bidgood, A., Blowick, A., Craig, J., Ekandjo, H., Fox, A., Foxe, J., Franklin, J., Hitzman, M., McAuliffe, F., Neofitu, R., Torremans, K., Twigg, H., and Wallace, E.: Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Geoscience (EDIG) initiative: A time to listen, learn, and act., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-11050, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11050, 2021.

EGU21-12986 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

ENGIE Promoting gender balance in the area of earth science and engineering

Adrienn Cseko, Éva Hartai, Lívia Majoros, Máté Leskó, Kristina Johansson, Samuel Heimann, Silvia Giuliani, Armida Torregiani, Renata Łapińska-Viola, Isabel Pino de Juana, Ariadna Ortega Rodriguez, Iva Kolenković Močilac, Ana Maričić, Ruth Allington, Anita Stein, Tamás Miklovicz, and María López

In recent years, several documents have been published in Europe on the shortage of skilled employees in key scientific professions. Geosciences, especially the raw materials and mining engineering sectors are no exception. One possible factor that contributes to this phenomenon is that the overall gender pattern in geosciences is imbalanced. It is characterised, more or less, by men in almost all parts of the business clusters, in society and professional communities as well as in education, research & innovation and in policy & decision making. The project ENGIE aims to improve the situation by turning the interest of young girls to study geosciences and geo-engineering with the help of a stakeholder collaboration network implementing a set of concrete actions in more than 20 EU countries.

The project is funded by EIT RawMaterials and started in January 2020 and, despite the challenges caused by COVID-19, it has achieved some significant results. First and foremost, the recent status of geo-education and the interest of young girls for geosciences was assessed via a concise survey targeting specifically secondary school students and teachers. This survey also aimed to identify any possible bottlenecks dissuading young girls to embark on a geoscientific profession. In addition to a comprehensive analysis and national workshops in 20 countries, an international online event was organised with the participation of successful women – all being role models within the global geoscientific and engineering community – in order to better understand the motivation that influenced their career choices, as well as obstacles that they were facing pursuing their career choices.

Regarding the actions focused on the target group, we organised an online video contest where girls were asked to film what they think geoscientists do at work. Additionally, some geo-activities linked to Researchers' Night events were held throughout Europe during autumn 2020. However, most of the ENGIE actions targeting young girls are planned to be carried out in 2021 and 2022 and should include the following: activities organised at University Open Days and Girls’ Day side events, family science events and school science clubs, fieldtrips, mine visits, mentoring programmes, Researchers’ Nights geoscience events, webinars, photo contest for girls, methodology course for science teachers and last but not least publishing the ENGIE Magazine. The current health crisis will, however, undoubtedly have an effect on the nature and or the schedule of the implementation of these actions as many of them might need to be moved to the online spheres or might be delayed by a few months.

The implementation of these actions at the national level will serve as the basis for the development of a long-term EU-level initiative, bringing together a stakeholder network focused on the continuous motivation of girls to embark on geoscientific careers.

Thus, the prolongation of project activities, supported by a sustainability plan, is envisaged. It is expected that future employers will be willing to invest in maintaining the ENGIE network, a 'network that works’ and thus help create a strong and more gender-balanced workforce in Europe.

How to cite: Cseko, A., Hartai, É., Majoros, L., Leskó, M., Johansson, K., Heimann, S., Giuliani, S., Torregiani, A., Łapińska-Viola, R., Pino de Juana, I., Ortega Rodriguez, A., Kolenković Močilac, I., Maričić, A., Allington, R., Stein, A., Miklovicz, T., and López, M.: ENGIE Promoting gender balance in the area of earth science and engineering, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12986, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12986, 2021.

EGU21-10841 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

GeoLatinas’ vision: Nurturing, promoting and fostering leadership, teamwork and collaboration to sustain synergies between academia and industry

Adriana Guatame-García, Sofia Barragán Montilla, Monica Alejandra Gómez Correa, Clara Rodríguez-Rondón, Adriana Crisóstomo-Figueroa, Rocío Paola Caballero-Gill, Catalina Llano-Ocampo, Gabriela González Arismendi, Andrea Balza Morales, Clairet Guerra, and Dariana Isamel Avila Velasquez

Substantial differences in academia and industry’s working culture create challenges in establishing collaborations and raise obstacles for professionals transitioning across sectors. For minoritised groups and young generations in Latin America, the absence of role models in leadership positions, language barriers, lack of staff retention, gender discrimination and non-inclusive working spaces result in an even more challenging environment. 

In light of current and historical social challenges that our demographics and other marginalised groups face, GeoLatinas’ visionary purpose offers a platform to empower Latinas in Earth and Planetary sciences. Our community intends to create an inclusive, safe space for students, scientists and professionals from different backgrounds to converge. Since its foundation in 2018, GeoLatinas has established synergies between academia and industry by actively encouraging participation with other organisations and professional associations, and among its members. The intentional balance between academia and industry’s perspectives —as reflected in our circular organisational structure— has allowed GeoLatinas to effectively embrace professionals at different career stages. As a result, we have built a community to share experiences, personal successes, challenges, and coping mechanisms. We aim to mitigate barriers that prevent the successful transition between sectors by developing and implementing initiatives. In this way, we strengthen connections in our network and our community, focusing on key best practices and innovative actions for change. 

At GeoLatinas, we focus on nurturing, promoting and fostering leadership, teamwork, and collaboration in our members to thrive in academia and industry. Our organisation provides visibility and access to role models around the world. They represent a wide spectrum of knowledge, experience and background, offering students and professionals a platform to strengthen their skills in a safe environment. During a nurturing phase, GeoLatinas stimulates members’ accountability and individual efforts through the creation and proactive management of local teams and initiatives. Their implementation leads to the promoting phase, where we motivate representation and leadership by recognising and broadcasting our community’s accomplishments worldwide in the GeoLatinas Newsletter and social media channels. Initiatives focused on career development, like our Mentoring programme and the PERLA (Professional exchange for Resilience, Leadership and Advancement) initiative, facilitate direct communication of professionals working in academia and industry with our members. These actions create exposure and awareness of real-world barriers faced in both sectors, providing strategies to address them. As a result, our leaders thrive in project management, delegation, negotiation or collaborative teaching, applicable in every professional environment. Other initiatives, like our Scholarship & Jobs database gather data that our members use to find academic and industry positions, while our Dry Runs & Peer Review subcommittee provides members with feedback on, for example, their application process. Finally, in a fostering phase, a collaborative culture allows us to put our gained skills and outputs from the GeoLatinas’ initiatives at the service of the broader scientific community, leading to the emergence of new role models.

GeoLatinas intentional efforts have proven that nurturing, promoting and fostering members in impactful platforms can lead to career advances to stimulate collaborations and support career transitions within our community, bringing academia and industry closer.

How to cite: Guatame-García, A., Barragán Montilla, S., Gómez Correa, M. A., Rodríguez-Rondón, C., Crisóstomo-Figueroa, A., Caballero-Gill, R. P., Llano-Ocampo, C., González Arismendi, G., Balza Morales, A., Guerra, C., and Avila Velasquez, D. I.: GeoLatinas’ vision: Nurturing, promoting and fostering leadership, teamwork and collaboration to sustain synergies between academia and industry, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10841, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10841, 2021.

EGU21-15331 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Creating community and empowering underrepresented geospatial professionals at Women in Geospatial+

Sabrina H. Szeto, Julia Wagemann, Heather Porter, Sharon Omoja, and Cristina Vrinceanu

Women in Geospatial+ is a professional network to promote gender-equality and diversity in the geospatial industry and academia. We are a vibrant and active community with more than 2,200 registered members from all over the world and over 14,000 followers on Twitter & LinkedIn. We have a range of activities all with the aim to inspire, unite and empower us as individuals but also us as a community.

This community brings together women and other people from underrepresented gender backgrounds in the geospatial field by providing a safe platform on Slack for open communication and exchange, which is especially crucial for networking during the COVID-19 era. We promote and foster the professional development of our members by sharing geospatial news and job vacancies as well as articles about diversity and tips about leadership and career development. We regularly run online career development workshops and panel discussions. Each week, we post a profile on LinkedIn to feature the work and achievements of women geospatial leaders. In 2020, our second international mentorship programme cohort grew to over 110 participants. We also launched a global speakers database which allows event organisers to search for and invite speakers from underrepresented gender backgrounds. 

This presentation will highlight key activities of the Women in Geospatial+ network, tapping into some current facts and figures on diversity in the geospatial field. We will explain how to join the community and how you can contribute to its success and expansion. Let us change the status quo together by creating a strong network of Women in Geospatial+ leaders and changemakers.

How to cite: Szeto, S. H., Wagemann, J., Porter, H., Omoja, S., and Vrinceanu, C.: Creating community and empowering underrepresented geospatial professionals at Women in Geospatial+, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15331, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15331, 2021.

EGU21-8010 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Promotion of women in science: the Soapbox Science outreach platform in Belgium

Christine Bingen, Lê Binh San Pham, Lucie Lamort, Karolien Lefever, Arianna Piccialli, and Marie Yseboodt

Soapbox Science is quite a novel public outreach platform that was initiated in the UK in 2011 to promote women in science, and that was spread worldwide since then. Between 2011 and 2018, 40 cities hosted the initiative in not less than 8 countries over 4 continents, and in 2020, despite the pandemic, 56 events were organized in 14 countries around the world. 

In 2019, a small team of scientists and science communicators from two Belgian Scientific Federal Institutes decided to organise a Soapbox Science event in Belgium to promote the visibility and the role of women in science in Belgium. The first Belgian event took place in fall 2020, not in the centre of Brussels as initially planned, but as a virtual event live-streamed via YouTube and Facebook due to physical limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We present an overview of the preparation and the conduct of this first Soapbox Science Brussels event, and describe the motivations, challenges, issues and opportunities encountered throughout the process, as well as the outcome and perspectives of Soapbox Science in Belgium.

How to cite: Bingen, C., Pham, L. B. S., Lamort, L., Lefever, K., Piccialli, A., and Yseboodt, M.: Promotion of women in science: the Soapbox Science outreach platform in Belgium, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8010, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8010, 2021.

EGU21-1741 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1 | Highlight

Recommendation for combatting the diversity crisis in Geography, Earth and Environmental Science research; perspectives from the UK

Alicia Newton, Natasha Dowey, Jenni Barclay, Ben Fernando, Sam Giles, Jacqueline Houghton, Christopher Jackson, Anjana Khatwa, Anya Lawrence, Keely Mills, Steven L Rogers, and Rebecca Williams

The roots of modern geoscience lie in early colonial principles that land could belong to those willing to use its products, regardless of indigenous territories and practices. The production of geoscience knowledge has therefore been historically tied to a desire to explain the distribution and extractability of resources, largely for the benefit of the colonising force. This knowledge now has an essential role to play in equitable and sustainable development, but it cannot be successfully applied without diverse representation amongst geoscientists. However, Geoscience in the Global North is disproportionately white. Following on from the work of Bernard and Cooperdock in the USA, we highlight dismal representation data from Geography, Earth and Environmental Science (GEES) disciplines in UK HE and make recommendations for positive action based on evidenced effective practice.

Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences are the three worst Physical Science subjects for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic student undergraduate participation in UK HE, and are very poor for retention of these students into postgraduate research (PGR). Physical Geography had just 5.2% PGR students who identified as Black, Asian, Mixed or Other (HESA data categories) in 2018/19. On average, over the past 5 years just 1.4% of postgraduate Geology PGR students were Black (HESA, 2020). By comparison, in the 2011 Census, 18.5% of UK 18-24 year olds were from Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic backgrounds, and 3.8% were Black. In two years out of the last five, no Black women have started PGR study in Geology or Physical Geography. Retention of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Physical Geography and Environmental Science students into PGR was worse in 2018/2019 than over the five years from 2014 to 2019; the situation is not improving with time (HESA, 2020)

We summarise well-documented factors involved in inequity in research training across UK HE, and review subject-specific structural and cultural barriers to ethnic diversityin GEES subjects. These include early pipeline issues around access to nature, a scarcity of diverse role models, careers perceptions, and a lack of acknowledgement that the geosciences are deeply rooted in colonialism and white power.

Our recommendations are wide-reaching, and build upon effective practice elsewhere. We take a whole-pipeline approach, making proposals that include both advocacy to remove barriers to entry (for example by combatting structural bias in application processes and accreditation requirements), and action to broaden participation (for example, by creating paid ambassador and internship schemes, and through decolonisation and inclusive pedagogic redesign).

We must acknowledge the hostile environments that deter ethnic minority students from applying to, and continuing with, our discipline.  We must address bias and be actively anti-racist.  We must act now, to create a modern geoscience research culture that reflects the diverse nature of the planet we study.

How to cite: Newton, A., Dowey, N., Barclay, J., Fernando, B., Giles, S., Houghton, J., Jackson, C., Khatwa, A., Lawrence, A., Mills, K., Rogers, S. L., and Williams, R.: Recommendation for combatting the diversity crisis in Geography, Earth and Environmental Science research; perspectives from the UK, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1741, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1741, 2021.

EGU21-7982 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1 | Highlight

EPSC 2020 Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon

Arianna Piccialli, Camelia Boban, Anita Heward, Karolien Lefever, Ann Carine Vandaele, Marina Molla, Lena Noack, and Victoria Pearson

Background

Wikipedia is an open source, web-based encyclopedia, allowing anonymous and registered users to create, edit and improve articles. A survey in 2018 showed that as many as 90% of Wikipedia's editors were male and as many as 81% of contributors were from the Global North [1].  

In addition, there are fewer contributions about women, especially in STEM fields, and they are usually less developed [2]. In October 2014, only 15.53% of English Wikipedia's biographies were about women [3]. The WikiProject Women in Red was founded in July 2015 with the objective to address this gender bias in Wikipedia content. They succeeded in increasing the above-mentioned percentage to 18.71% as of 11 January 2021 [2].

Today, Wikipedia is within the 20 most popular websites [4] and every month it attracts more than 1 billion unique visitors [5]. Wikipedia therefore has a huge potential to change publics perception of who is doing science and what a scientist ‘looks’ like.

(Women) planetary scientists on Wikipedia?

In June 2020, there were only 189 planetary scientist biographies on the English Wikipedia, including 48 biographies of female planetary scientists (25%). This percentage is in agreement with the percentage of women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA’s Member States (24%) [6], but planetary scientists are clearly underrepresented on Wikipedia. Many of them either do not have a Wikipedia biography yet, or if they do, they are often misclassified under the category of “astronomers” or “astrophysicists”.

A Planetary Sciences Edit-a-thon    

The Diversity Committee of the Europlanet Society aims to highlight diversity within the planetary science community. Therefore, they organised, in collaboration with Women in Red and WikiDonne, the first Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon during the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2020 [7]. An Edit-a-thon (‘edit marathon’) is an organized event where editors from an online community (such as Wikipedia in this case) write, translate and improve articles on a specific topic [2]. Thirty persons received a basic editing training, resulting in 1 new article and 5 translated ones. A small subgroup still meets every month to continue the project.

References

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/2018_Report

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red  

[3] Eduardo Graells-Garrido, Mounia Lalmas, Filippo Menczer, "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia", arXiv, 9 February 2015, p. 3.

[4] "Wikipedia.org Traffic, Demographics and Competitors". www.alexa.com. Retrieved October 1, 2019.

[5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects

[6] Piccialli A., et al., Participation of women scientists in ESA Solar System missions: a historical trend, Adv. Geosci., 53, 169–182, https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-53-169-2020, 2020.

[7] https://www.europlanet-society.org/epsc-2020-planetary-science-wiki-edit-a-thon/    

How to cite: Piccialli, A., Boban, C., Heward, A., Lefever, K., Vandaele, A. C., Molla, M., Noack, L., and Pearson, V.: EPSC 2020 Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7982, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7982, 2021.

EGU21-7414 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Practical recommendations on how to combat discriminatory work environments in the geosciences

Andrea L. Popp, Caitlyn A. Hall, and Yeliz A. Yilmaz

Even as discussions about the need for diverse, equal, and inclusive work environments have increased in recent years, discriminatory and hostile work climates are sadly still widespread within academia. Discriminatory and hostile working conditions negatively affect science and scientists at the individual, community, institutional, and societal levels, ultimately causing researchers mental health issues and hampering scientific progress. Those most affected by abusive research environments are early-career scientists of underprivileged, historically oppressed, and underrepresented groups. Thus, one step to increase diversity and equality within geosciences is to combat discriminatory work environments. While the burden of addressing hostile working conditions should not be on those experiencing bullying and discrimination, guidance and support are needed until we see real systemic change. To help make a change, we provide ten concrete strategies for all scientists experiencing any form of discrimination to overcome an unhealthy research environment (Popp et al., 2020).

 

References

Popp, A.L., Hall, C.A. and Yilmaz, Y.A. (2020) How to combat bullying and discrimination in the geosciences, Eos, 101, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EO151914

How to cite: Popp, A. L., Hall, C. A., and Yilmaz, Y. A.: Practical recommendations on how to combat discriminatory work environments in the geosciences, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7414, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7414, 2021.

EGU21-761 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

 Embracing equity and cultivating inclusion

Saman Razavi

This presentation first provides an overview of a recent opinion piece by the author published in University Affairs, titled “Celebrate diversity, embrace equity and cultivate inclusion”, and then reviews anonymously some of the feedbacks the author received from the community. A main message is that diversity is easy to define and measure, and thus manage, but equity and inclusion are not and require much greater effort. We need to be innovative in this effort, as inclusion and equity, unlike diversity, are essentially qualitative, possibly with social perceptions that vary over time.

 

References:

Razavi, S., (2020), Celebrate diversity, embrace equity and cultivate inclusion, University Affairs, In My Opinion (Accessible at https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/celebrate-diversity-embrace-equity-and-cultivate-inclusion/).

How to cite: Razavi, S.:  Embracing equity and cultivating inclusion, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-761, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-761, 2021.

EGU21-9350 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1 | Highlight

Empowering geoscientists to transform workplace climate through behavioral and institutional change, results from a workplace climate survey by the ADVANCEGeo Partnership

Erika Marín-Spiotta, Emily Diaz Vallejo, Vicki Magley, Blair Schneider, Allison Mattheis, Rebecca Barnes, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Meredith Hastings, Christine Fabian Bell, Julie Maertens, and Billy Williams

The geosciences are one of the least diverse fields in the U.S., despite their societal relevance. Bias, discrimination, harassment and bullying create hostile climates that present serious hurdles to diversifying the field. These behaviors persist due to severe power imbalances, historical structures of exclusion, persistent marginalization of non-majority groups, and inadequate policies against misconduct. Here we discuss findings from a workplace climate survey of the earth and space sciences distributed via five professional associations: American Geophysical Union, Geological Society of America, Soil Science Society of America, Earth Science Women’s Network and the Association for Women Geoscientists. The survey asked about attitudes and experiences of support, inclusion, exclusion, psychological safety, incivility, and sexual harassment, as well as representation in the workplace. Quantitative results are complemented with qualitative data from the survey and focus groups. This is one of the first such community-wide surveys in the U.S. geosciences and is currently being replicated in the ecological sciences. 

We present the findings of the survey in the context of other work done by the ADVANCEGeo Partnership team and provide recommendations for moving forward. Our approach is informed by critical feminist approaches that seek to disrupt unequal power dynamics in strongly hierarchical workplaces. Expanding the focus from a gender equity program emphasis on sexual harassment to hostile climates, and centering how intersectionality shapes the experiences of those disproportionately impacted by exclusionary behaviors is key for addressing persistent demographic trends in the geosciences. A feminist ethics of care approach informs ADVANCEGeo’s main organizational change intervention, which is a community-based model for bystander intervention and workplace climate education that identifies harassment, bullying and discrimination as scientific misconduct and promotes the adoption of ethical codes of conduct.

How to cite: Marín-Spiotta, E., Diaz Vallejo, E., Magley, V., Schneider, B., Mattheis, A., Barnes, R., Berhe, A. A., Hastings, M., Bell, C. F., Maertens, J., and Williams, B.: Empowering geoscientists to transform workplace climate through behavioral and institutional change, results from a workplace climate survey by the ADVANCEGeo Partnership, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9350, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9350, 2021.

EGU, the European Geosciences Union, is Europe’s premier geosciences union, dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the Earth, planetary, and space sciences for the benefit of humanity, worldwide. Every year, the EGU awards and medals programme recognises eminent scientists for their outstanding research contribution in the Earth, planetary and space sciences. In addition, it identifies the awardees as role models for the next generation of early career scientists to foster geoscience research.

Nominations for all the medals and awards are submitted every year online by 15 June by the members of the EGU scientific community. Any person can be nominated except the EGU president, vice-president council members (not including ex- officio members) and chairs of the EGU committees. The EGU Council, the medal and award committees’ members and the Union and division officers are committed to soliciting nominations of deserving individuals by avoiding conflicts of interest. Each EGU medal or award is selected through a rigorous assessment of the candidates and their merits through the respective committee. The procedures for nomination, selection of candidates and the time schedule are described in detail on EGU websites.

It is a strict necessity when recognizing scientific excellence by any scientific association providing equal opportunities and ensuring balance. The processes and procedures that lead to the recognition of excellence has to be transparent and free of gender biases. However, establishment of clear and transparent evaluation criteria and performance metrics in order to provide equal opportunities to researchers across gender, continents and ethnic groups can be challenging since the definition of scientific excellence is often elusive.

This presentation aims to present the experience and the efforts of the European Geosciences Union to ensure equal opportunities. Data and statistics will be presented in the attempt to provide constructive indications to get to the target of giving equal opportunities to researchers across gender, continents and ethnic groups.

How to cite: Blunier, T.: Equality of opportunities in geosciences: The EGU Awards Committee experience, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-651, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-651, 2021.

EGU21-12631 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Geographical representation at EGU General Assemblies in the period of 2015-2019

Claudia Jesus-Rydin, Alberto Montanari, Lisa Wingate, Anouk Beniest, Andrea Popp, and Elenora van Rijsingen

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is the leading organisation for Earth, planetary and space science research in Europe. Each year the EGU holds a General Assembly that is the largest and most prominent European geosciences event, attracting over 16,000 scientists from all over the world. This presentation provides an overview of the geographical representation of participants to the EGU General Assembly in recent years.

The presentation focuses on a five-year dataset spanning 2015 to 2019 and provides an insight on growth rates of the different countries individually and in comparison to the EGU General Assembly average growth (38% during the period 2015-2019).

China has the fastest-growing representation at the EGU General Assembly with a growth rate close to 300% in the period 2015-2019. The growth rates of the Republic of Korea and Canada have also climbed, and now represent the second and third fastest-growing countries attending the EGU respectively, with growth rates just over 80%.

The representation of Central and Eastern European countries (also known as EU-13 countries) at the EGU General Assembly has also grown steadily at a rate comparable with the EGU average, i.e. around 38%. Western European countries are the most represented at the annual general assembly accounting on average for 58% of the total participants over the 2015-2019 period. In addition the participation of Western Europeans to the general assembly continues to grow at the EGU but a slightly slower pace 29% than for Eastern Europe, but at a rate similar to participants from the USA.

This analysis leads to the conclusion that participation at the EGU General Assembly has grown both in the total number of attendees and in their geographical diversity. The most striking shift in the representation of countries has been towards an increase in the participation of Asian countries (China, Taiwan, Rep. of Korea & Japan) that collectively now exceeds the participation of North American participants (USA + Canada). In particular, if the current rate of growth in participation is sustained by China over the coming years this dataset suggests that their representation will surpass that of the USA shortly. It was also clear that the EU-13 countries continue to participate in the EGU General Assembly in growing numbers and with particular representation in certain scientific divisions such as Soil System Sciences (SSS), Hydrological Sciences (HS) and Climate: Past, Present & Future (CL). Overall, the above data provide valuable guidance in how to shape future EGU actions to promote diversity, equality and inclusivity at the annual EGU meeting.

How to cite: Jesus-Rydin, C., Montanari, A., Wingate, L., Beniest, A., Popp, A., and van Rijsingen, E.: Geographical representation at EGU General Assemblies in the period of 2015-2019, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12631, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12631, 2021.

EGU21-12031 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Diversity amongst Early Career Scientist attendees and their participation at the annual EGU General Assembly: from in-person to online meetings

Anouk Beniest, Claudia Alves de Jesus-Rydin, Lisa Wingate, Elenora van Rijsingen, Andrea Popp, and Alberto Montanari

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is the leading organisation for Earth, planetary and space science research in Europe. Each year the EGU holds its General Assembly (GA), which is the largest and most prominent geosciences event in Europe, attracting over 16,000 scientists from all over the world in the year 2019. In 2020 the General Assembly transitioned to a completely virtual format in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, with approximately 20,000 members participating. Using self-declared data provided by participants during the registration phase of the annual general assembly we were interested to learn how the attendance of Early Career Scientists (ECS) at the general assembly had evolved over recent years and especially during the transition to the fully online format. Within the EGU an ‘Early Career Scientist’ is defined as ‘a student, a PhD candidate or a practicing scientist who received their highest degree (e.g. BSc, MSc or PhD) within the past seven years’, with some exceptions to this time-frame that account for research career breaks. As ECS account for about half of the total EGU membership we tested whether there were any emerging trends in the database regarding the number of ECS attending the meeting between 2015 and 2020 and whether there were any shifts in the diversity of ECS with respect to gender and age during the same timeframe.

We observed a general increase (5-30%) in ECS participation from 2015 until 2020 irrespective of gender. In 2019, the total increase of all participants stalled, but the overall number of ECS participants still increased with 12%.

Around 55% of the ECS fall within the age-group ‘26-35 years' and a further 10% in the '18-25 years' group. These percentages have been very constant through the years, apart from the age-group ’36-45 years, which has seen a slight increase from 10-14% over the past years. All groups have seen an increase in the absolute number of ECS participants during the physical meetings. However, a continuation of this trend is less clear during the online GA, as about 60% of the ECS members refrained from sharing their age.

We also investigated to what extent ECS participate as conveners in scientific sessions. About 10-12% of the ECS members are active as conveners during the GA, with the majority self-declaring as male. Only during the virtual GA in 2020 did the number of women conveners equal the numbers for men. We observed an increase in the representation of ECS of the total convener’s pool from 30% to 43% during the physical GA’s. During the online GA in 2020 ECS representation was 31%.

One consideration with the ECS status of members, is that depending on someones career stage, privacy reasons, and the awareness of our members about the ECS definition, not all members who would qualify for the ECS status, are in our system as such, because it is a self-declared status. This data is extremely important as it allows the EGU to track the success and developments of initiatives that support ECS career and conference experiences.

How to cite: Beniest, A., Alves de Jesus-Rydin, C., Wingate, L., van Rijsingen, E., Popp, A., and Montanari, A.: Diversity amongst Early Career Scientist attendees and their participation at the annual EGU General Assembly: from in-person to online meetings, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12031, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12031, 2021.

EGU21-14241 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

New EGU General Assembly logo to promote the principles of equality, diversity, and inclusion in the Earth, planetary, and space sciences

Peter van der Beek, Claudia Jesus-Rydin, Anouk Beniest, and Terri Cook

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) recognises the importance of the principles of equality, diversity, and inclusion as a crucial foundation for the collaborative scientific research needed to answer fundamental scientific questions and address key societal and environmental challenges. As such, EGU is committed to improving the equality, diversity, and inclusion of opportunities within and beyond the Earth, planetary, and space science community, including providing a safe, open, accessible, and respectful environment for participants at all Union events. As a means of fostering diversity, conveners who are organising sessions at the annual EGU General Assembly have been asked to consider their team’s diversity with respect to career stage, gender, geography, and scientific approaches.    

To emphasise this guidance and further promote these principles, EGU piloted a new EDI logo in the EGU General Assembly 2021 programme. For a session to be awarded the new logo, it must have fulfilled all three of the following EDI criteria:

1. Include conveners from multiple countries and institutes, preferably with a diverse representation of geoscientists from the wider European community or beyond;
2. Have conveners from different career stages, including at least one ECS (but not only ECS); and
3. Include conveners that represent more than one form of gender identity

This presentation will discuss the foundations and evolution of this member-led proposal; the logo design; challenges encountered during its implementation and how these were solved; and initial data resulting from this initiative. The authors, on behalf of EGU’s Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Working Group, also welcome feedback regarding the implementation and effectiveness of the EDI logo initiative during this session and via email at edi@egu.eu.

How to cite: van der Beek, P., Jesus-Rydin, C., Beniest, A., and Cook, T.: New EGU General Assembly logo to promote the principles of equality, diversity, and inclusion in the Earth, planetary, and space sciences, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14241, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14241, 2021.

EGU21-15004 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Who attended and presented at EGU General Assemblies 2015-2019?

Johanna Stadmark, Claudia Jesus-Rydin, and Daniel J. Conley

The first step for institutions committed to equality, diversity and inclusion is to know their demographics. This presentation includes descriptive statistics for 5 consecutive years (2015–2019) based on paid registrations to the physical EGU General Assembly. EGU data is not perfect nor complete, but provides an insightful overview of who attended and presented at the EGU General Assembly for a period of 5 years.

In total more than 71 000 participants attended the EGU General Assemblies during the years 2015-2019 from a wide range of countries. More than 11400 (16%) of the participants were from Germany, followed by almost 6400 (8.9%) from the UK, 5300 (7.4%) from France, 5000 (7.0%) from Italy, 4600 (6.5%) from the US, and 3500 (4.9%) each from Austria and China. We found that the number of participants to the EGU General Assembly has increased continuously from 2015 to 2019 and that the largest proportions of participants are aged between 26 and 45.

Among the PhD students attending there are 7 females for every 10 males, and among the regular members there are around 4 females for every 10 males. The proportion of female participants decreases with increasing age. However, the ratio of females to males among participants has continuously increased from 0.48 in 2015 to 0.51 in 2018. Four countries had more females than males attending the EGU General Assembly (Bulgaria, Morocco, Iceland and Slovenia).

There are great possibilities to present one’s research at the meetings with ninety percent of the participants as first author on presentations (2015-2018, 94% 2019) and there was no difference between females and males. More than half (52-61%) of the male participants had oral presentations, while slightly fewer (46-52%) of the female participants had oral presentations. The major differences in oral presentations are found between participants from different countries. Note that the data do not reveal the participants’ preferred choice of presentations, only the outcome at the meetings. Around 70% of the participants presented a poster, with no differences between genders, which indicate that men had more presentations than women. On average males had 6.5% more presentations per person. Finally a slightly higher proportion of the male participants were convenors (15-18% versus 12-15% for females).

EGU General Assembly is the largest geosciences conference in Europe and still growing. Understanding the demographic evolution of various groups is a critical tool for EGU governing body to draw targeted actions ensuring that procedures are fair and that all in the community are being and feeling included.

How to cite: Stadmark, J., Jesus-Rydin, C., and Conley, D. J.: Who attended and presented at EGU General Assemblies 2015-2019?, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15004, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15004, 2021.

EGU21-13133 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at AGU:  New Leadership Commitments and Progress Under an Updated Strategic Plan  

Billy Williams, Margaret Fraiser, Lisa White, Pranoti Asher, and Brooks Hanson

The American Geophysical Union (AGU), a global scientific society of >60,000 members, has a series of initiatives underway to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Earth and space sciences, including the well-known issues of harassment and its impact on women scientists, and the closely related issues of systemic racism, sexism, ableism, discrimination against LGBTQ community, and their related intersectional issues. Building on its earlier work of establishing an updated AGU Ethics Policy which defines harassment and discrimination as scientific misconduct, AGU has taken additional significant steps over the past 12 months to further advance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) practices— including work lead by the AGU Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee to launch a public facing AGU D&I dashboard, steps under the updated AGU Strategic plan to provide additional resources for supporting a more equitable and inclusive culture, and work and commitments by AGU leadership to address systemic racism through its “Eight Deliberate Steps.”  This presentation will highlight new AGU DEI-related initiatives most recently underway, including the role of partnerships in helping to achieve the broader DEI culture change objectives, and the associated work across AGU Meetings, Publications, and Honors. Progress to date on these and other emerging new AGU Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI)-related resources and partnership initiatives, including metrics to track the impact of these changes, will be discussed.

How to cite: Williams, B., Fraiser, M., White, L., Asher, P., and Hanson, B.: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at AGU:  New Leadership Commitments and Progress Under an Updated Strategic Plan  , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13133, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13133, 2021.

EGU21-8573 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.1

LANDInG (Leadership Academy and Network for Diversity & Inclusion in Geosciences): AGU’s New Program to Build, Develop, and Sustain DEI Leaders

Margaret Fraiser, Billy Williams, Stephanie Goodwin, and Pranoti Asher

An equitable and inclusive geosciences discipline requires a systemic cultural shift. Despite four decades of consideration and federal investment, persons identifying as both white and men overwhelmingly outnumber people from marginalized groups in geosciences courses of study and professions. Cultural shifts can be facilitated by leadership, and research indicates that diversity and inclusion initiatives are more often effective when championed from the top. AGU, in strong partnership with other organizations and institutions, created the LANDInG program based on the rationale that both increasing capacity for DEI leadership within the geosciences and fostering recognition for the value for DEI champions are needed to significantly improve DEI outcomes across geosciences. LANDInG comprises: (1) a sustainable DEI Community of Practice Network, to engage and support a broad representation of DEI champions within the geosciences; and (2) a DEI Leader Academy, to build the DEI leadership capacity of select cohorts of DEI champions in the geosciences through intensive, cohort-based professional development tailored for them. The LANDInG DEI Leader Academy will include opportunities for direct experience leading DEI initiatives in the geosciences. Also part of the LANDInG program will be increasing the visibility and recognition of DEI champions and leaders in order to elevate their value within the discipline. Our model for change draws from research and theory spanning social and organizational sciences, including the literatures on professional networks/mentoring, and implementing effective diversity and leader training. Our methods for enacting change are evidence-based and framed by national models for cohort-based professional development within higher education/STEM. A steering committee and an advisory board of leading DEI scholars, social scientists, and representatives of other geoscience societies will broaden the expertise and diversity perspectives over the project’s life.

How to cite: Fraiser, M., Williams, B., Goodwin, S., and Asher, P.: LANDInG (Leadership Academy and Network for Diversity & Inclusion in Geosciences): AGU’s New Program to Build, Develop, and Sustain DEI Leaders, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8573, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8573, 2021.

EOS5.3 – The evolving open-science landscape in geosciences: open data, software, publications and community initiatives

EGU21-16547 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

Can you make your science more reproducible?

David Rosenberg

Science and engineering rest on the concept of reproducibility. Yet across numerous fields like psychology, computer systems, and water resources there are great problems to reproduce research results. In this presentation, I identify reasons for low reproducibility in science. I share tools to make results more reproducible. I introduce financial incentives and awards to encourage you and our colleagues to make our research more reproducible. Finally, I advance a vision for what our future reproducible science should look like and I ask each attendee to identify and commit to take at least one step to make their research results more reproducible.

 

How to cite: Rosenberg, D.: Can you make your science more reproducible?, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16547, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16547, 2021.

EGU21-605 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

A Hydrologist’s Guide to Open Science

Caitlyn Hall, Sheila Saia, Andrea Popp, Stan Schymanski, Niels Drost, Nilay Dogulu, Tim van Emmerik, Rolf Hut, and Lieke Melsen

To have lasting impact on the scientific community and broader society, hydrologic research must be open, accessible, reusable, and reproducible. With so many different perspectives on and constant evolution of open science approaches and technologies, it can be overwhelming for hydrologists to start down the path towards or grow one’s own push for open research. Open hydrology practices are becoming more widely embraced by members of the community and key organizations, yet, technical (e.g., limited coding experience), resource (e.g., open access fees), and social barriers (e.g., fear of being scooped) still exist. These barriers may seem insurmountable without practical suggestions on how to proceed. Here, we propose the Open Hydrology Principles to guide individual and community progress toward open science. To increase accessibility and make the Open Hydrology Principles more tangible and actionable, we also present the Open Hydrology Practical Guidelines. Our aim is to help hydrologists transition from closed, inaccessible, not reusable, and not reproducible ways of conducting scientific work to open hydrology and empower researchers by providing information and resources to equitably grow the openness of hydrological sciences. We provide the first version of a practical open hydrology resource that may evolve with open science infrastructures, workflows, and research experiences. We discuss some of the benefits of open science and common reservations to open science, and how hydrologists can pursue an appropriate level of openness in the presence of barriers. Further, we highlight how the practice of open hydrology can be expanded. The Open Hydrology Principles, Practical Guide, and additional resources reflect our knowledge of the current state of open hydrology and we recognize that recommendations and suggestions will evolve. Therefore, we encourage hydrologists all over the globe to join the open science conversation by contributing to the living version of this document and sharing open hydrology resources at the community-supported repository at open-hydrology.github.io.

How to cite: Hall, C., Saia, S., Popp, A., Schymanski, S., Drost, N., Dogulu, N., van Emmerik, T., Hut, R., and Melsen, L.: A Hydrologist’s Guide to Open Science, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-605, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-605, 2021.

EGU21-801 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

A Community Perspective on Research Software in the Hydrological Sciences 

Robert Reinecke, Tim Trautmann, Thorsten Wagener, and Katja Schüler

Software development has become an integral part of the earth system sciences as models and data processing get more sophisticated. Paradoxically, it poses a threat to scientific progress as the pillar of science, reproducibility, is seldomly reached. Software code tends to be either poorly written and documented or not shared at all; proper software licenses are rarely attributed. This is especially worrisome as scientific results have potential controversial implications for stakeholders and policymakers and may influence the public opinion for a long time. 

In recent years, progress towards open science has led to more publishers demanding access to data and source code alongside peer-reviewed manuscripts. Still, recent studies find that results in hydrology can rarely be reproduced. 

In this talk, we present first results of a poll conducted in spring 2021 among the hydrological science community. Therein, we strive to investigate the causes for that lack of reproducibility. We take a peek behind the curtain and unveil how the community develops and maintains complex code and what that entails for reproducibility. Our survey includes background knowledge, community opinion, and behaviour practices regarding reproducible software development.  

We postulate that this lack of reproducibility might be rooted in insufficient reward within the scientific community, insecurity regarding proper licencing of software and other parts of the research compendium as well as scientists’ unawareness about how to make software available in a way that allows for proper attribution of their work. We question putative causes such as unclear guidelines of research institutions or that software has been developed over decades by researchers' cohorts without a proper software engineering process and transparent licensing. 

To this end, we also summarize solutions like the adaption of modern project management methods from the computer engineering community that will eventually reduce costs while increasing the reproducibility of scientific research. 

How to cite: Reinecke, R., Trautmann, T., Wagener, T., and Schüler, K.: A Community Perspective on Research Software in the Hydrological Sciences , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-801, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-801, 2021.

EGU21-1005 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

Science storms the cloud

Chelle Gentemann, Chris Holdgraf, Ryan Abernathey, Daniel Crichton, James Colliander, Edward Kearns, Yuvi Panda, and Richard Signell

The core tools of science (data, software, and computers) are undergoing a rapid and historic evolution, changing what questions scientists ask and how they find answers. Earth science data are being transformed into new formats optimized for cloud storage that enable rapid analysis of multi-petabyte datasets. Datasets are moving from archive centers to vast cloud data storage, adjacent to massive server farms. Open source cloud-based data science platforms, accessed through a web-browser window, are enabling advanced, collaborative, interdisciplinary science to be performed wherever scientists can connect to the internet. Specialized software and hardware for machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI/ML) are being integrated into data science platforms, making them more accessible to average scientists. Increasing amounts of data and computational power in the cloud are unlocking new approaches for data-driven discovery. For the first time, it is truly feasible for scientists to bring their analysis to the data without specialized cloud computing knowledge. Practically, for scientists, the effect of these changes is to vastly shrink the amount of time spent acquiring and processing data, freeing up more time for science. This shift in paradigm is lowering the threshold for entry, expanding the science community, and increasing opportunities for collaboration, while promoting scientific innovation, transparency, and reproducibility. These changes are increasing the speed of science, broadening the possibilities of what questions science can answer, and expanding participation in science.

How to cite: Gentemann, C., Holdgraf, C., Abernathey, R., Crichton, D., Colliander, J., Kearns, E., Panda, Y., and Signell, R.: Science storms the cloud, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1005, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1005, 2021.

EGU21-3356 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

V-FOR-WaTer: A Virtual Research Environment for Environmental Research

Marcus Strobl, Elnaz Azmi, Sibylle K. Hassler, Mirko Mälicke, Jörg Meyer, and Erwin Zehe

The virtual research environment V-FOR-WaTer aims at simplifying data access for environmental sciences, fostering data publications and facilitating data analyses. By giving scientists from universities, research facilities and state offices easy access to data, appropriate pre-processing and analysis tools and workflows, we want to accelerate scientific work and facilitate the reproducibility of analyses.

The prototype of the virtual research environment consists of a database with a detailed metadata scheme that is adapted to water and terrestrial environmental data. Present datasets in the web portal originate from university projects and state offices. We are also finalising the connection of V-FOR-WaTer to GFZ Data Services, an established repository for geoscientific data. This will ease publication of data from the portal and in turn give access to datasets stored in this repository. Key to being compatible with GFZ Data Services and other systems is the compliance of the metadata scheme with international standards (INSPIRE, ISO19115).

The web portal is designed to facilitate typical workflows in environmental sciences. Map operations and filter options ensure easy selection of the data, while the workspace area provides tools for data pre-processing, scaling, and common hydrological applications. The toolbox also contains more specific tools, e.g. for geostatistics and soon for evapotranspiration. It is easily extendable and will ultimately also include user-developed tools, reflecting the current research topics and methodologies in the hydrology community. Tools are accessed through Web Processing Services (WPS) and can be joined, saved and shared as workflows, enabling more complex analyses and ensuring reproducibility of the results.

How to cite: Strobl, M., Azmi, E., Hassler, S. K., Mälicke, M., Meyer, J., and Zehe, E.: V-FOR-WaTer: A Virtual Research Environment for Environmental Research, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3356, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3356, 2021.

EGU21-7797 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

Towards Open and FAIR Hydrological Modelling with eWaterCycle

Niels Drost, Jerom P.M. Aerts, Fakhereh Alidoost, Bouwe Andela, Jaro Camphuijsen, Nick van de Giesen, Rolf Hut, Eric Hutton, Peter Kalverla, Gijs van den Oord, Inti Pelupessy, Stef Smeets, Stefan Verhoeven, and Ben van Werkhoven

The eWaterCycle platform (https://www.ewatercycle.org/) is a fully Open Source system designed explicitly to advance the state of Open and FAIR Hydrological modelling. While working with Hydrologists to create a fully Open and FAIR comparison study, we noticed that many ad-hoc tools and scripts are used to create input (forcing, parameters) for a hydrological model from the source datasets such as climate reanalysis and land-use data. To make this part of the modelling process better reproducible and more transparent we have created a common forcing input processing pipeline based on an existing climate model analysis tool: ESMValTool (https://www.esmvaltool.org/). 

Using ESMValTool, the eWaterCycle platform can perform commonly required preprocessing steps such as cropping, re-gridding, and variable derivation in a standardized manner. If needed, it also allows for custom steps for a hydrological model. Our pre-processing pipeline directly supports commonly used datasets such as ERA-5, ERA-Interim, and CMIP climate model data, and creates ready-to-run forcing data for a number of Hydrological models.

Besides creating forcing data, the eWaterCycle platform allows scientists to run Hydrological models in a standardized way using Jupyter notebooks, wrapping the models inside a container environment, and interfacing to these using BMI, the Basic Model Interface (https://bmi.readthedocs.io/). The container environment (based on Docker) stores the entire software stack, including the operating system and libraries, in such a way that a model run can be reproduced using an identical software environment on any other computer.

The reproducible processing of forcing and a reproducible software environment are important steps towards our goal of fully reproducible, Open, and FAIR Hydrological modelling. Ultimately, we hope to make it possible to fully reproduce a hydrological model experiment from data pre-processing to analysis, using only a few clicks.

How to cite: Drost, N., Aerts, J. P. M., Alidoost, F., Andela, B., Camphuijsen, J., van de Giesen, N., Hut, R., Hutton, E., Kalverla, P., van den Oord, G., Pelupessy, I., Smeets, S., Verhoeven, S., and van Werkhoven, B.: Towards Open and FAIR Hydrological Modelling with eWaterCycle, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7797, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7797, 2021.

EGU21-13763 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

An Approach for Open and Reproducible Hydrological Modeling using Sciunit and HydroShare

YoungDon Choi, Jonathan Goodall, Raza Ahmad, Tanu Malik, and David Tarboton

It is widely acknowledged that the reproducibility of published computational results is critical to advancing science. Creating reproducible computational workflows, however, is burdensome and requires significant work to share the complete package that efficiently encapsulates all required data and software. Computational hydrology is one field that has seen rapid advancements through fast-evolving technologies for supporting increasingly complex computational hydrologic modeling and analysis. This growing model complexity, along with rapidly evolving underlying software technologies, makes the options and approaches for achieving computational reproducibility extremely challenging to settle. We argue that the technologies needed to achieve open and reproducible hydrological modeling can be grouped into three general categories: 1) data (and metadata) sharing, 2) containerizing computational environments, and 3) capturing and executing modeling workflows. While a growing set of science gateways and virtual research environments have been created to support one or more of these technologies to improve reproducibility, the integration and interoperability across all three needs are still lacking, making end-to-end systems still out of reach. The objective of this research is to advance such an end-to-end solution that can support open and reproducible hydrological modeling that effectively integrates data sharing, containerization, and workflow execution environments. Our approach emphasizes 1) well-documented modeling objects shared with meaningful metadata through the HydroShare open repository, 2) version control with efficient containerization using the Sciunit software, and 3) immutable, but flexible, computational environments to use newly developing software packages. A key to this work is advancing Sciunit, a tool for easily containerizing, sharing, and tracking deterministic computational applications, to minimally containerize reproducible hydrologic modeling workflow objects into the same container with version control capabilities. We present how to add new model input and modeling dependencies into the Sciunit container for flexibility and how to create Docker images through Sciunit containers for compatibility with popular containerization tools. In this presentation, we will emphasize both the underlying technological developments made possible through this research along with a user-centric case study showing the application of the technology from a hydrologic modeler’s perspective.

How to cite: Choi, Y., Goodall, J., Ahmad, R., Malik, T., and Tarboton, D.: An Approach for Open and Reproducible Hydrological Modeling using Sciunit and HydroShare, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13763, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13763, 2021.

EGU21-4613 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

GemGIS – GemPy Geographic: Open-Source Spatial Data Processing for Geological Modeling

Alexander Jüstel, Arthur Endlein Correira, Florian Wellmann, and Marius Pischke

Geological modeling methods are widely used to represent subsurface structures for a multitude of applications – from scientific investigations, over natural resource and reservoir studies, to large-scale analyses and geological representations by geological surveys. In recent years, we have seen an increase in the availability of geological modeling methods. However, many of these methods are difficult to use due to preliminary data processing steps, which can be specifically difficult for geoscientific data in geographic coordinate systems.

We attempt to simplify the access to open-source spatial data processing for geological modeling with the development of GemGIS, a Python-based open-source library. GemGIS wraps and extends the functionality of packages known to the geo-community such as GeoPandas, Rasterio, OWSLib, Shapely, PyVista, Pandas, NumPy and the geomodelling package GemPy. The aim of GemGIS, as indicated by the name, is to become a bridge between conventional geoinformation systems (GIS) such as ArcGIS and QGIS, and geomodelling tools such as GemPy, allowing simpler and more automated workflows from one environment to the other.

Data within the different disciplines of geosciences are often available in a variety of data formats that need to be converted or transformed for visualization in 2D and 3D and subsequent geomodelling methods. This is where GemGIS comes into play. GemGIS is capable of working with vector data created in GIS systems through GeoPandas, Pandas and Shapely, with raster data through rasterio and NumPy, with data obtained from web services such as maps or digital elevation models through OWSLib and with meshes through PyVista. Support for geophysical data and additional geo-formats are constantly added.

The GemGIS package already contains several tutorials explaining how the different modules can be used to process spatial data. It was decided against creating new data classes in case users are already familiar with concepts such as (Geo-)DataFrames in (Geo-)Pandas or PolyData/Grids in PyVista.

The GemGIS package is hosted at https://github.com/cgre-aachen/gemgis, the documentation is available at https://gemgis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html. GemGIS is also available on PyPi. You can install GemGIS in your Python environment using ‘pip install gemgis’.

We welcome contributions to the project through pull requests and are open to suggestions and comments, also over Github issues, especially about possible links to other existing software developments and approaches to integrate geoscientific data processing and geomodelling.

How to cite: Jüstel, A., Endlein Correira, A., Wellmann, F., and Pischke, M.: GemGIS – GemPy Geographic: Open-Source Spatial Data Processing for Geological Modeling, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-4613, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4613, 2021.

EGU21-7655 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

Repeatable and reproducible workflows using the RENKU open science platform

Louis Krieger, Remko Nijzink, Gitanjali Thakur, Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan, Rok Roskar, and Stan Schymanski

Good scientific practice requires good documentation and traceability of every research step in order to ensure reproducibility and repeatability of our research. However, with increasing data availability and ability to record big data, experiments and data analysis become more complex. This complexity often requires many pre- and post-processing steps that all need to be documented for reproducibility of final results. This poses very different challenges for numerical experiments, laboratory work and field-data analysis. The platform Renku (https://renkulab.io/), developed by the Swiss Data Science Center, aims at facilitating reproducibility and repeatability of all these scientific workflows. Renku stores all data, code and scripts in an online repository, and records in their history how these files are generated, interlinked and modified. The linkages between files (inputs, code and outputs) lead to the so-called knowledge graph, used to record the provenance of results and connecting those with all other relevant entities in the project.

We will discuss here several use examples, including mathematical analysis, laboratory experiments, data analysis and numerical experiments, all related to scientific projects presented separately. Reproducibility of mathematical analysis is facilitated by clear variable definitions and a computer algebra package that enables reproducible symbolic derivations. We will present the use of the Python package ESSM (https://essm.readthedocs.io) for this purpose, and how it can be integrated into a Renku workflow. Reproducibility of laboratory results is facilitated by tracking of experimental conditions for each data record and instrument re-calibration activities, mainly through Jupyter notebooks. Data analysis based on different data sources requires the preservation of links to external datasets and snapshots of the dataset versions imported into the project, that is facilitated by Renku. Renku also takes care of clear links between input, code and output of large numerical experiments, our last use example, and enables systematic updating if any of the input or code files are changed.

These different examples demonstrate how Renku can assist in documenting the scientific process from input to output and the final paper. All code and data are directly available online, and the recording of the workflows ensures reproducibility and repeatability.

How to cite: Krieger, L., Nijzink, R., Thakur, G., Ramakrishnan, C., Roskar, R., and Schymanski, S.: Repeatable and reproducible workflows using the RENKU open science platform, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7655, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7655, 2021.

EGU21-7755 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

Creating a more fluent conversation between data, model and users through interactive Jupyter Notebooks

Andres Peñuela and Francesca Pianosi

Reproducibility and re-usability of research requires giving access to data and numerical code but, equally importantly, helping others to understand how inputs, models and outputs are linked together. Jupyter Notebooks is a programming environment that dramatically facilitates this task, by enabling to create stronger and more transparent links between data, model and results. Within a single document where all data, code, comments and results are brought together, Jupyter Notebooks provide an interactive computing environment in which users can read, run or modify the code, and visualise the resulting outputs. In this presentation, we will explain the philosophy that we have applied for the development of interactive Jupyter Notebooks for two Python toolboxes, iRONS (a package of functions for reservoir modelling and optimisation) and SAFE (a package of functions for global sensitivity analysis). The purposes of the Jupyter Notebooks are two: some Notebooks target current users by demonstrating the key functionalities of the toolbox (‘how’ to use it), effectively replacing the technical documentation of the software; other Notebooks target potential users by demonstrating the general value of the methodologies implemented in the toolbox (‘why’ use it). In all cases, the Notebooks integrate the following features: 1) the code is written in a math-like style to make it readable to a wide variety of users, 2) they integrate interactive results visualization to facilitate the conversation between the data, the model and the user, even when the user does not have the time or expertise to read the code, 3) they can be run on the cloud by using online computational environments, such as Binder, so that they are accessible by a web browser without requiring the installation of Python. We will discuss the feedback received from users and our preliminary results of measuring the effectiveness of the Notebooks in transferring knowledge of the different modelling tasks.

How to cite: Peñuela, A. and Pianosi, F.: Creating a more fluent conversation between data, model and users through interactive Jupyter Notebooks, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7755, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7755, 2021.

EGU21-14724 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

German Reproducibility Network - a new platform for Open Science in Germany

Bernadette Fritzsch and Daniel Nüst

Open Science has established itself as a movement across all scientific disciplines in recent years. It supports good practices in science and research that lead to more robust, comprehensible, and reusable results. The aim is to improve the transparency and quality of scientific results so that more trust is achieved, both in the sciences themselves and in society. Transparency requires that uncertainties and assumptions are made explicit and disclosed openly. 
Currently, the Open Science movement is largely driven by grassroots initiatives and small scale projects. We discuss some examples that have taken on different facets of the topic:

  • The software developed and used in the research process is playing an increasingly important role. The Research Software Engineers (RSE) communities have therefore organized themselves in national and international initiatives to increase the quality of research software.
  • Evaluating reproducibility of scientific articles as part of peer review requires proper creditation and incentives for both authors and specialised reviewers to spend extra efforts to facilitate workflow execution. The Reproducible AGILE initiative has established a reproducibility review at a major community conference in GIScience.
  • Technological advances for more reproducible scholarly communication beyond PDFs, such as containerisation, exist, but are often inaccessible to domain experts who are not programmers. Targeting geoscience and geography, the project Opening Reproducible Research (o2r) develops infrastructure to support publication of research compendia, which capture data, software (incl. execution environment), text, and interactive figures and maps.

At the core of scientific work lie replicability and reproducibility. Even if different scientific communities use these terms differently, the recognition that these aspects need more attention is commonly shared and individual communities can learn a lot from each other. Networking is therefore of great importance. The newly founded initiative German Reproducibility Network (GRN) wants to be a platform for such networking and targets all of the above initiatives. GRN is embedded in a growing network of similar initiatives, e.g. in the UK, Switzerland and Australia. Its goals include 

  • Support of local open science groups
  • Connecting local or topic-centered initiatives for the exchange of experiences
  • Attracting facilities for the goals of Open Science 
  • Cultivate contacts to funding organizations, publishers and other actors in the scientific landscape

In particular, the GRN aims to promote the dissemination of best practices through various formats of further education, in order to sensitize particularly early career researchers to the topic. By providing a platform for networking, local and domain-specific groups should be able to learn from one another, strengthen one another, and shape policies at a local level.

We present the GRN in order to address the existing local initiatives and to win them for membership in the GRN or sibling networks in other countries.

How to cite: Fritzsch, B. and Nüst, D.: German Reproducibility Network - a new platform for Open Science in Germany, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14724, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14724, 2021.

EGU21-3091 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

Facilitating reproducible science: a workflow for setting up SUMMA simulations anywhere on the globe

Wouter Knoben, Shervan Gharari, and Martyn Clark

Setting up earth system models can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Model-agnostic tasks are typically the same regardless of model used and include definition and delineation of the modeling domain and preprocessing of forcing data and parameter fields. Model-specific tasks include conversion of preprocessed data into model-specific formats and generation of model inputs and run scripts. We present a workflow that includes both model-agnostic and model-specific steps needed to set up the Structure for Unifying Multiple Modeling Alternatives (SUMMA) anywhere on the planet, with the goal of providing a baseline SUMMA set up that can easily be adapted for specific study purposes. The workflow therefore uses open source data with global coverage to derive basin delineations, climatic forcing, and geophysical inputs such as topography, soil and land use parameters. The use of open source data, an open source model and an open source workflow that relies on established software packages results in transparent and reproducible scientific outputs, open to verification and adaptation by the community. The workflow substantially reduces model configuration time for new studies and paves the way for more and stronger scientific contributions in the long term, as it lets the modeler focus on science instead of set up.

How to cite: Knoben, W., Gharari, S., and Clark, M.: Facilitating reproducible science: a workflow for setting up SUMMA simulations anywhere on the globe, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3091, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3091, 2021.

EGU21-7070 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

The GEOframe system: a modular, expandible, open-source system for doing hydrology by computer according to the open science paradigms.

Riccardo Rigon, Marialaura Bancheri, Giuseppe Formetta, Francesco Serafin, Michele Bottazzi, Niccolò Tubini, and Concetta D'Amato

The scope of this work is to present new insights of the GEOframe system. GEOframe is an open-source, semi-distributed, component-based hydrological modeling system. It is developed in Java and in Python and based on the environmental modeling framework Object Modeling System V3 (OMS3). Each part of the hydrological cycle is implemented in a self-contained building block, commonly called component. Components can be joined together to obtain multiple modeling solutions that can accomplish from simple to very complicated tasks. More than 50 components are available for the estimation of all the variables of the hydrological cycle. Starting from the geomorphic and DEM analyses, GEOframe allows the spatial interpolation of the meteorological forcing data, the simulation of the radiation budget, the estimation of the ET and of the snow processes. Runoff production is performed by using the Embedded Reservoir Model (ERM) or a combination of its reservoirs. Model parameters can be calibrated using two algorithms and several objective functions. The graph-based structure, called NET3, is employed for the management of process simulations. NET3 is designed using a river network/graph structure analogy, where each HRU is a node of the graph, and the channel links are the connections between the nodes. In any NET3 node, a different modeling solution can be implemented and nodes (HRUs or channels) can be connected or disconnected at run time through scripting.  Thanks to its solid informatics infrastructure and physical base, GEOframe proved a great flexibility and a great robustness in several applications, from small to big scale catchments. GEOframe is open source, is chain of development is based on open source products, and its codes are engineered to be inspectionable. This because it helps the reproducibility and replicability of research. Developers and users can easily collaborate, share documentation, and archive examples and data within the GEOframe community. We believe that these are a priori condition to verify the reliability and the robustness of models. GEOframe modular structure allows for the fair comparison of model structure units and algorithms implementations because just the component performing that specific task has to be changed. In this contribution we list the components available and discuss some applications at different scales whit different modeling tools which return what we think realistic results. We show that there exist no perfect model of a process but that the modelling art and science can  be made more evolutionary even when they are revolutionary. 

How to cite: Rigon, R., Bancheri, M., Formetta, G., Serafin, F., Bottazzi, M., Tubini, N., and D'Amato, C.: The GEOframe system: a modular, expandible, open-source system for doing hydrology by computer according to the open science paradigms., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7070, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7070, 2021.

A high resolution mangrove map (e.g., 10-m), which can identify mangrove patches with small size (< 1 ha), is a central component to quantify ecosystem functions and help government take effective steps to protect mangroves, because the increasing small mangrove patches, due to artificial destruction and plantation of new mangrove trees, are vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise, and important for estimating mangrove habitat connectivity with adjacent coastal ecosystems as well as reducing the uncertainty of carbon storage estimation. However, latest national scale mangrove forest maps mainly derived from Landsat imagery with 30-m resolution are relatively coarse to accurately characterize the distribution of mangrove forests, especially those of small size (area < 1 ha). Sentinel imagery with 10-m resolution provide the opportunity for identifying these small mangrove patches and generating high-resolution mangrove forest maps. Here, we used spectral/backscatter-temporal variability metrics (quantiles) derived from Sentinel-1 SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and sentinel-2 MSI (Multispectral Instrument) time-series imagery as input features for random forest to classify mangroves in China. We found that Sentinel-2 imagery is more effective than Sentinel-1 in mangrove extraction, and a combination of SAR and MSI imagery can get a better accuracy (F1-score of 0.94) than using them separately (F1-score of 0.88 using Sentinel-1 only and 0.895 using Sentinel-2 only). The 10-m mangrove map derived by combining SAR and MSI data identified 20,003 ha mangroves in China and the areas of small mangrove patches (< 1 ha) was 1741 ha, occupying 8.7% of the whole mangrove area. The largest area (819 ha) of small mangrove patches is located in Guangdong Province, and in Fujian the percentage of small mangrove patches in total mangrove area is the highest (11.4%). A comparison with existing 30-m mangrove products showed noticeable disagreement, indicating the necessity for generating mangrove extent product with 10-m resolution. This study demonstrates the significant potential of using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images to produce an accurate and high-resolution mangrove forest map with Google Earth Engine (GEE). The mangrove forest maps are expected to provide critical information to conservation managers, scientists, and other stakeholders in monitoring the dynamics of mangrove forest.

How to cite: Hu, L., Yao, W., Yu, Z., and Huang, Y.: An updated national-scale mangrove forest map in China Using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Time-Series Data with Google Earth Engine, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5310, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5310, 2021.

EGU21-5772 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

Developing open-source tools for reproducible inverse problems: the PyLops journey

Matteo Ravasi, Carlos Alberto da Costa Filho, Ivan Vasconcelos, and David Vargas

Inverse problems lie at the core of many geophysical algorithms, from earthquake and exploration seismology, all the way to electromagnetics and gravity potential methods.

In 2018, we open-sourced PyLops, a Python-based framework for large-scale inverse problems. By leveraging the concept of matrix-free linear operators – together with the efficiency of numerical libraries such as NumPy, SciPy, and Numba – PyLops solves computationally intensive inverse problems with high-level code that is highly readable and resembles the underlying mathematical formulation. While initially aimed at researchers, its parsimonious software design choices, large test suite, and thorough documentation render PyLops a reliable and scalable software package easy to run both locally and in the cloud.

Since its initial release, PyLops has incorporated several advancements in scientific computing leading to the creation of an entire ecosystem of tools: operators can now run on GPUs via CuPy, scale to distributed computing through Dask, and be seamlessly integrated into PyTorch’s autograd to facilitate research in machine-learning-aided inverse problems. Moreover, PyLops contains a large variety of inverse solvers including least-squares, sparsity-promoting algorithms, and proximal solvers highly-suited to convex, possibly nonsmooth problems. PyLops also contains sparsifying transforms (e.g., wavelets, curvelets, seislets) which can be used in conjunction with the solvers. By offering a diverse set of tools for inverse problems under one unified framework, it expedites the use of state-of-the-art optimization methods and compressive sensing techniques in the geoscience domain.

Beyond our initial expectations, the framework is currently used to solve problems beyond geoscience, including astrophysics and medical imaging. Likewise, it has inspired the development of the occamypy framework for nonlinear inversion in geophysics. In this talk, we share our experience in building such an ecosystem and offer further insights into the needs and interests of the EGU community to help guide future development as well as achieve wider adoption.

How to cite: Ravasi, M., da Costa Filho, C. A., Vasconcelos, I., and Vargas, D.: Developing open-source tools for reproducible inverse problems: the PyLops journey, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5772, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5772, 2021.

EGU21-8549 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

An open-source R-package and web application for high-quality probabilistic predictions in hydrology

Jason Hunter, Mark Thyer, Dmitri Kavetski, and David McInerney

Probabilistic predictions provide crucial information regarding the uncertainty of hydrological predictions, which are a key input for risk-based decision-making. However, they are often excluded from hydrological modelling applications because suitable probabilistic error models can be both challenging to construct and interpret, and the quality of results are often reliant on the objective function used to calibrate the hydrological model.

We present an open-source R-package and an online web application that achieves the following two aims. Firstly, these resources are easy-to-use and accessible, so that users need not have specialised knowledge in probabilistic modelling to apply them. Secondly, the probabilistic error model that we describe provides high-quality probabilistic predictions for a wide range of commonly-used hydrological objective functions, which it is only able to do by including a new innovation that resolves a long-standing issue relating to model assumptions that previously prevented this broad application.  

We demonstrate our methods by comparing our new probabilistic error model with an existing reference error model in an empirical case study that uses 54 perennial Australian catchments, the hydrological model GR4J, 8 common objective functions and 4 performance metrics (reliability, precision, volumetric bias and errors in the flow duration curve). The existing reference error model introduces additional flow dependencies into the residual error structure when it is used with most of the study objective functions, which in turn leads to poor-quality probabilistic predictions. In contrast, the new probabilistic error model achieves high-quality probabilistic predictions for all objective functions used in this case study.

The new probabilistic error model and the open-source software and web application aims to facilitate the adoption of probabilistic predictions in the hydrological modelling community, and to improve the quality of predictions and decisions that are made using those predictions. In particular, our methods can be used to achieve high-quality probabilistic predictions from hydrological models that are calibrated with a wide range of common objective functions.

How to cite: Hunter, J., Thyer, M., Kavetski, D., and McInerney, D.: An open-source R-package and web application for high-quality probabilistic predictions in hydrology, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8549, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8549, 2021.

An efficient method to solve a significant weakness in hydrological modelling to compute backwater effects in low lying catchments is presented. The re-usable and transferable method is implemented in the open source software KalypsoNA (KalypsoHydrology) and validated with results of a tidal influenced low lying catchment study. 
Especially in low lying (marshy) catchments, the pressure on current storm water drainage systems raises due to combined impacts of enlarged urbanisation on the one hand and mean sea level rise and heavy storm events on the other hand. Models are applied to analyse and assess the resulting consequences by these impacts on the flood routing along a stream using different hydrological approaches: (i) pure black box (namely empirical, lumped), (ii) hydrological conceptual or (iii) hydrodynamic-numerical approaches. The computation of flow depths, velocities and backwater effects in streams as well as on forelands are not yet modelled with hydrological approaches, but using simplified hydrodynamic-numerical approaches. A requirement for accurate hydrodynamic-numerical modelling is high resolution data of the topography of the main channel and the flood plain in case of bank overflow. Hence, the availability of suitable detailed profile data from measurements is crucial for hydrodynamic-numerical modelling. The comparatively long computing time for hydrodynamic-numerical model simulations is no limitation for answering special research questions, but it poses a limitation in real-time operational application and for meso to regional scale catchment modelling (>100 km2). 
To resolve the shortcomings in hydrological approaches to model water depths and backwater effects, new concepts are required which are applicable for catchments with scarce data availability, efficient for real-time operational model application, open for further model developments and re-useable for other hydrological model implementations.
This contribution presents the development, implementation and evaluation of a method for modelling backwater effects based on a hydrological flood routing approach and a backwater volume routing according to the water level slope. The developed method computes the backwater effects in two steps. First, the inflow from sub-catchments and the non-backwater affected flood routing processes are computed. Secondly, the afflux conditions are calculated which cause backwater effects in upstream direction. Afflux conditions occur mainly at tributary inlets or control structures (for example, tide gates, weirs, retention ponds or sluices). The input parameters comprise simplified or complex geometrical data per stream segment. Therefore, the model is applicable for catchments with a good or scarce availability of data. Computation time is in the range of max 3 minutes even for large catchments (> 150 km² with several sub- and sub-sub-catchments) using a time step size of 15 minutes for a 14 days simulation and is therefore applicable for real-time operational simulations in flood forecasting. 
The proposed method is re-useable and transferable to other hydrological numerical models which use conceptual hydrological flood routing approaches (e.g. Muskingum-Cunge or Kalinin-Miljukov). The open source software model KalypsoHydrology and the calculation core KalypsoNA are available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/kalypso/ and http://kalypso.wb.tu-harburg.de/downloads/. Open access for developments and user application is supported by an online accessible commitment management via SourceForge and a wiki as an online manual.

How to cite: Hellmers, S., Sauer, C., and Fröhle, P.: Computation of backwater effects in low lying (marshland) catchments – a re-usable and efficient method in an open source hydrological model, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-11714, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11714, 2021.

EGU21-15008 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

PyEt - a Python package to estimate potential and reference evapotranspiration

Matevž Vremec and Raoul Collenteur

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a major component of the hydrological cycle and accurate estimates of the flux are important to the water and agricultural sector, among others. Due to difficulties in the direct observation of ET in the field, the flux is often estimated from other meteorological data using empirical formulas. There is a wide variety of such formulas, with different levels of input data and parameter requirements. While some Python packages are available in the Python ecosystem for these tasks, they typically focus on one specific formula or data type. The goal of PyEt is to provide a Python package for the estimation of ET that works with many different data types, is well documented and tested, and simple to use. The source code is hosted at GitHub (https://github.com/phydrus/PyEt) and Pypi can be used to install the package. PyEt currently contains nine different methods to estimate ET and various methods to estimate surface and aerodynamic resistance. The methods are tested against other open source data to ensure proper functioning of the methods. While the methods currently are only implemented for 1D data (e.g. time series data), future work will focus on enabling the methods on 2D and 3D data as well (such as Numpy Arrays, XArray, and NetCDF files). The package allows hydrologists to compute and compare evapotranspiration estimates using different approaches with minimum effort. The presentation will focus on the problems associated with reproducibility in ET estimation and linkage with existing Python libraries to perform complex sensitivity and uncertainty analyses.

How to cite: Vremec, M. and Collenteur, R.: PyEt - a Python package to estimate potential and reference evapotranspiration, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15008, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15008, 2021.

EGU21-2519 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

The Seismica initiative: a community-led Diamond Open Access journal for seismological research

Martijn van den Ende, Lucile Bruhat, Gareth Funning, Alice-Agnes Gabriel, Stephen Hicks, Romain Jolivet, Thomas Lecocq, Christie Rowe, and The Seismological Community

On 24 November 2020, the Springer Nature publishing group announced the introduction of Open Access (OA) journals in Nature and its sibling journals. The corresponding OA publication fee (charged directly to the authors) was set to €9,500/$11,390/£8,290, an amount that may be well out of reach for researchers with limited financial means. This is especially a problem for researchers in developing countries, and for early-career researchers on small, personal fellowships. Funding agencies often demand that research be published under an OA license, forcing authors to accept the high publication fees.

The high cost of these and similar OA fees for other Earth science journals prompted a discussion among the seismological community on Twitter, during which the idea was raised to start a free-to-publish, free-to-read journal for seismological research. The concept of Diamond Open Access was previously adopted by Volcanica (www.jvolcanica.org) for volcanological research, providing a precedent and directives for similar initiatives (like Seismica, but also Tektonika for the structural geology community). Following the community discussion on Slack with over 100 participants, a small "task force" was formed to investigate in detail the possibility of starting a Diamond OA seismology journal, taking Volcanica as a model. In this contribution, we report the progress that has been made by the task force and the seismological community in the conceptualisation of the journal, and the steps that remain to be taken. Once the initiation of the journal is completed, Seismica will offer a platform for researchers to publish and access peer-reviewed work with no financial barriers, promoting seismological research in an inclusive manner. We invite all interested members of the seismological and earthquake community to participate in the discussions and development of this OA journal, by contacting the authors listed on this abstract.

How to cite: van den Ende, M., Bruhat, L., Funning, G., Gabriel, A.-A., Hicks, S., Jolivet, R., Lecocq, T., Rowe, C., and Seismological Community, T.: The Seismica initiative: a community-led Diamond Open Access journal for seismological research, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2519, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2519, 2021.

EGU21-7168 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

A recipe for launching a diamond open-access journal with a century of geological knowledge in the pantry: Lessons learned from GEUS Bulletin

Catherine Jex, Wiliiam Colgan, Michael Bryld Wessel Fyhn, Adam A Garde, Jon R Ineson, Adam Hambly, Kim Hyojin, Julian Koch, Thomas Find Kokfelt, Signe Hillerup Larsen, Sofie Lindström, Stefanie Lode, Rasmus Bødker Madsen, Mette Olivarius, Kerstin Saalmann, Sara Salehi, Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz, Lars Stemmerik, and Kristian Svennevig

One active journal. Fourteen legacy titles. More than 3000 articles published since 1893 – some digitised, some not. One full-time member of staff. A small team of dedicated geoscientists. Limited budget. PlanS. Open-source journal software. If these are the ingredients, what is the recipe? 

Like many surveys, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) has a long history of publishing. Our full catalogue of titles extends back to 1893 and our current title, GEUS Bulletin (www.geusbulletin.org; formerly Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin), has been active since 2003. Our journals have always been grassroots initiatives – run by scientists, for scientists. But two years ago, amid the fast-changing demands of digital publishing, the Survey faced a quandary: should we continue publishing our own journal? At a time of rapid proliferation of journals for any discipline imaginable, what niche did a geographically-focused journal fill? What should we modernise? Could we relaunch as an online, diamond open-access journal on our existing budget? Could we implement more of the services our authors wanted and attract more authors beyond our traditional audience? 

Two years later, we have successfully re-launched our collection of journals, without increasing our overall budget. Using open-source solutions, we have transformed our print-focused publication workflow to a new online, open-access platform and data repository. We are currently migrating our entire back catalogue of legacy titles to the same platform. Although we only have visitor data for our new platform since November 2020, we can see early signs of increased article views (c. +82% in Nov–Dec 2020, compared with the same months in 2018 and 2019) and a jump in traffic from external websites like Google Scholar (from 5% before re-launch to 35% after re-launch). In this presentation, we present a recipe that we hope other geological surveys, societies and institutions can follow when launching (or relaunching) their own journals using open-source solutions. We review the options available to small survey or society publishers on a limited budget, from journal hosting to typesetting. We highlight the advantages of non-profit open-access publishing and open source, community-driven solutions that currently exist. We close by highlighting the barriers that remain for small non-profit publishers when balancing discoverability, journal impact and compliance with the latest open-access initiatives such as Plan S, and web accessibility regulations.  

It is still early days for GEUS Bulletin, but we see the adoption of open-source platforms as the key ingredient to our potential for success in the coming years. Such platforms allow us to offer diamond open-access publishing and a data repository, while maintaining our non-profit, publishing model with neither author nor reader fees. 

How to cite: Jex, C., Colgan, W., Fyhn, M. B. W., Garde, A. A., Ineson, J. R., Hambly, A., Hyojin, K., Koch, J., Kokfelt, T. F., Larsen, S. H., Lindström, S., Lode, S., Madsen, R. B., Olivarius, M., Saalmann, K., Salehi, S., Seidenkrantz, M.-S., Stemmerik, L., and Svennevig, K.: A recipe for launching a diamond open-access journal with a century of geological knowledge in the pantry: Lessons learned from GEUS Bulletin, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7168, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7168, 2021.

EGU21-11146 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

τeκτoniκa, a journal for an open future

Mohamed Gouiza, David Fernández Blanco, Clare Bond, Dave McCarthy, Amicia Lee, Lucia Pérez-Díaz, and τeκτoniκa community

τeκτoniκa is an up-coming community-led diamond open access (DOA) journal, which aims to publish high-quality research in structural geology and tectonics. It is a grass-roots community-driven initiative that relies on the involvement of Earth Scientists from around the globe; that together represent the wide and diverse spectrum of the structural geology and tectonics community. 

Beyond the obvious objective of publishing novel research on structural geology and tectonics, it is intended to offer an alternative to traditional publishing models, which hide scholarly work behind exclusive and expensive paywalls. τeκτoniκa is a new addition to the growing set of DOA journals that have appeared in recent years. Along with preprint platforms, data and software repositories, it is part of an expanding movement within academia focused on breaking the barriers inherited from the pre-internet publishing era, to ensure free and open access to knowledge.

This contribution aims to showcase the value of this ambitious project as well as our vision for how DOA journals in general (and Tektonika in particular) might shape the future of geoscience publishing.

How to cite: Gouiza, M., Fernández Blanco, D., Bond, C., McCarthy, D., Lee, A., Pérez-Díaz, L., and community, Τ.: τeκτoniκa, a journal for an open future, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-11146, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11146, 2021.

EGU21-15938 | vPICO presentations | EOS5.3

Growing a diamond open access community initiative: Volcanica 3 years on

Fabian Wadsworth, Jamie Farquharson, Alexandra Kushnir, Michael Heap, Ben Kennedy, Oryaëlle Chevrel, Rebecca Williams, and Pierre Delmelle

The case for open access research is well established. At the core of the pro-openness argument is a philosophy that it is good if research outputs are widely accessible, breaking down the walls that stand between the world of research and the public. Moreover, openness ensures that scientists can access resources worldwide, even if their institutions cannot afford subscription fees, thereby breaking down economic barriers and access disparities that exist globally. In large part, publishers and publications are adopting this philosophy, and ensuring that the costs of publication are covered by charging them to the authors (via Article Processing Charges, or APCs) rather than the readers of research – this is the ‘gold’ openness model. However, these charges for publication are often very high, which discourages submission to gold open access forums and maintains an academic environment that favours the older ‘subscription’ models of publication.

At the journal Volcanica, we have found a way to remove both costs – costs to readers and costs to authors – by building a community journal that maintains exceptionally low running costs, paid for by a university press publisher – this is the ‘diamond’ openness model. We can achieve this by relying on volunteer time provided at no cost. In this presentation, we explore the current state of our journal three years after the publication of our first article. We survey the challenges faced by Volcanica as we grow, handle more submissions, and expand our reviewing, typesetting, and back-end work-flow. To meet these challenges, we have expanded our technical and editorial personnel.

Here we explore the growth challenges that are still to come, and compare our volunteer model with the model of the ‘academic society journal’, in which relatively minimal staff costs are paid for by a mixed model. The mixed model is still driven by article processing charges, but keeps those costs comparatively low, and offers fee-waivers on a needs basis, acknowledging that not all authors are well-funded. In doing so, we take a nuanced approach to the realities of growing a community-led endeavour, and examine the extent to which our model could be scaled to the size of the leading journals in our field. While we do not reach a definitive conclusion as to the role that Diamond publishing models will play in the future landscape of research dissemination, we hope that the presentation of our experiences is informative to the geo-scientific community, especially as new ‘diamond’ open journals – Seismica and Tektonika – are slated for launch in the coming years.

How to cite: Wadsworth, F., Farquharson, J., Kushnir, A., Heap, M., Kennedy, B., Chevrel, O., Williams, R., and Delmelle, P.: Growing a diamond open access community initiative: Volcanica 3 years on, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15938, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15938, 2021.

Open Science, as we commonly define it, has grown steadily over the past two to three decades, thanks to the proliferation of electronic data and information, as well as ease of access to computers with high speed Internet connectivity. What began as a mechanism to share the products of our scientific research has evolved into a global movement involving journal article manuscripts, source code, copyright, access, and intellectual property negotiations, digital repositories, cloud-based tools, and data in a variety of formats.

This presentation will briefly define Open Science, and enumerate and describe common elements of Open Science through a brief history of the movement. It will also touch on both triumphs and challenges faced by proponents, discuss the role of professional publishers, aggregators, and other traditional gatekeepers, and will propose scenarios for the future of the movement. Questions, anecdotes, vexations, and suggestions from attendees are welcomed at the end of the presentation, with the goal of generate deeper discussion around the future and sustainability of Open Science. 

How to cite: Coward, C.: Open Science – The Great Equalizer: Decolonizing the tools, technologies, and results of science in the 21st century, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14830, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14830, 2021.

EOS7.3 – Effective communication of scientific & place-based knowledge of Arctic change: understanding interactions between indigenous & local knowledge, and natural & social science perspectives

The town of Tiksi and the nearby indigenous village of Bykovskiy are located in northern Yakutia, where the Lena River meets the Arctic Ocean. Both owe their existence to Soviet policies and development plans, one tied to the Northern Sea Route, and the other to a fishing enterprise based on the labor of political prisoners. Post-Soviet transformations since the 1990s have severely altered the economic base of these communities, typically resulting in social, cultural and economic shocks and hardships. At the same time, both communities are affected by environmental change, most visibly in Bykovskiy, where coastal erosion caused by permafrost thaw has been destructing the local graveyard and endangers the housing infrastructure.

Interestingly, when we conducted fieldwork there in 2019, our interlocutors seemed to pay very little attention to these environmental problems in the narratives they shared with us. While it might be tempting to accuse local residents of ignoring permafrost thaw and other environmental changes, the situation, we argue, is more complex. In fact, indigenous residents, especially, those making a living by practicing “traditional” activities, such as fishing and reindeer herding, have been observing extreme weather events, shifts in seasonal patterns, and changes in the behavior of land animals and fish for a long time. Similarly, to other parts of the Arctic, this accumulated traditional ecological knowledge has been helpful for adapting to the dramatically changing environment. At the same time, on the discursive and political level, this knowledge has been devalued or, at best, rated as a secondary source of information in relation to a more “advanced” institutionalized expert knowledge. Moreover, the Soviet modernization ideologies and discourses about human-environmental relations have impacted local knowledge, ethics and perceptions of the changing environment. This presentation calls for attention to historical and regional contexts and explores how hierarchical relations between different knowledge systems and how state modernization ideologies inform the ways in which indigenous communities in northern Russia relate to the effects of climate change today.

How to cite: Schweitzer, P. and Povoroznyuk, O.: Ignoring Environmental Change in Bykovskiy, Yakutia? Thawing Permafrost, Indigenous Knowledge and Modernization Ideologies in Northern Russia, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6765, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6765, 2021.

EGU21-12584 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.3

An Arctic transformation; from an in-person international summer school to a digital MOOC 

Grace E. Shephard, Carmen Gaina, Alla Pozdnakova, Elana Wilson Rowe, Nita Kapoor, Siri Jønnum, Svein Harald Kleivane, Turi Lindalen, Karoline Niklasson, Audun Bjerknes, Trine Merete Kvernmo, Kristine Aall Knudsen, Lars Lomell, Sissel Drevsjø, and Brit Lisa Skjelkvåle

The Arctic, Nordic, Scandinavian and “global north” regions have, individually and collectively, gained increased public, political, commercial, and academic interest over the last decade. For example, regarding issues ranging from climate change to polar ecosystems, and from shipping routes to indigenous knowledge. As such, there is an increasing demand for state-of-the-art knowledge about the region from truly interdisciplinary viewpoints and multi-scale perspectives (e.g. past, present and future changes, as well as feedbacks between and within the environment and society).

To address such issues, members of the University of Oslo (UiO) and the UiO International Summer School (ISS) developed an interdisciplinary MSc-level course, titled "A Changing Arctic" [1] worth 15 ECTS. The course was structured around three major modules with the opportunity for cross-thematic discussions and knowledge transfer;  Natural Sciences and Technology, Law and Legal Regimes, and Governance and Society. From 2014-2018, for 6-weeks over the northern hemisphere summer, this in-person course welcomed between 15-25 enrolled students annually. It was coordinated by representatives from the Faculties of Law, Natural Sciences (PI from the Department of Geosciences), and Humanities, and also involved a number of guest lecturers from Norway, Europe, and internationally.

Since 2018, we have been in discussions to develop an additional digital, or hybrid (in-person and online), version of the course to alleviate financial and summertime availability constraints. In 2020, the pandemic further brought to light the need for more flexible, wide-reaching teaching options. A “MOOC” - Massive Open Online Course - offers a framework for a formal, high quality, free and widely accessible educational resource. This particularly exciting avenue for reaching people in remote Arctic areas, those who do not fit the traditional university-admissions profiles, as well as people in the global south who may not be familiar with northern processes.

In 2020, we secured funding from UArctic, and other partners, to begin this process, and as of Jan 2021 have begun with digital course preparations for a interdisciplinary Arctic MOOC to be released in late 2021 (in addition to an ISS enrolled-student stream in summer 2021). We aim to share some of the opportunities and challenges associated with this transition, including coordinating a very large thematic project and many international lecturers/contributers, switching from in-person lectures to "flipped-classroom" and video-style lectures, interdisciplinary pedagogical considerations, Nordic educational frameworks, financial challenges and funding opportunities, typical student profiles, as well as more practical filming and digital elements.

[1] https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/iss/sommerskolen/ISSMN4030/index.html 

How to cite: Shephard, G. E., Gaina, C., Pozdnakova, A., Wilson Rowe, E., Kapoor, N., Jønnum, S., Kleivane, S. H., Lindalen, T., Niklasson, K., Bjerknes, A., Kvernmo, T. M., Knudsen, K. A., Lomell, L., Drevsjø, S., and Skjelkvåle, B. L.: An Arctic transformation; from an in-person international summer school to a digital MOOC , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12584, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12584, 2021.

EGU21-16269 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.3

Float Your Boat - Norway. School students, small wooden boats and marine research in the Arctic

Kjetil Lygre, Bjørnar Hallaråker Røsvik, Espen Storheim, David Forcucci, Ignatius Rigor, Helene R. Langehaug, Hanne Sagen, and Lasse H. Pettersson

This communication project aims to increase our understanding of climate processes, the Arctic and the importance of research through the active involvement of primary to junior high school students. The project is based on NERSC's ongoing activity in the Arctic Sea, collaborating with several projects and utilizing a concept introduced by the US Coast Guard. Students of four primary schools in western Norway produced a total of 230 small wooden boats.  Together with a comparable number of boats produced by US students they were subsequently launched on the ice in the Arctic Ocean by the coast guard ship KV Svalbard in August and November 2020 as part of scientific cruises. Scientific buoys were also launched, transmitting their position and surface temperature. Through a dedicated web-site students and teachers could follow the drift in near real time. Boats are uniquely branded with a web address, so they may be reported if found after drifting ashore.

The project website serves both as a communication hub between scientists and students and teachers and to reach out to a wider audience. Several films were produced in this regard. Webinars were held by NERSC scientists on climate and ocean science topics and crew members from K/V Svalbard on work and life onboard a coast guard vessel. Feedback from the teachers will also be presented.

How to cite: Lygre, K., Hallaråker Røsvik, B., Storheim, E., Forcucci, D., Rigor, I., Langehaug, H. R., Sagen, H., and Pettersson, L. H.: Float Your Boat - Norway. School students, small wooden boats and marine research in the Arctic, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16269, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16269, 2021.

EGU21-16365 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.3 | Highlight

Topological mapping: new method to map, analyze, and visualize humanistic data in the Arctic

Levi Westerveld

Maps have always played a central role in the analysis, visualization, and communication of environmental scientific data. In recent years, a growing number of social scientists have turned to mapping and Geographic Information Science (GIS) tools, to visualize and map human experiences, including in the Arctic. At the same time, social and theoretical critiques of GIS as a tool wielded chiefly by and for those in power have increased awareness of its limitations, particularly for studying human perceptions, experiences, and the meanings of place. Indeed, many places tied to human experience, such as emotions, sounds, or memories, cannot be mapped in a conventional GIS: they do not fit the rigidity of the Cartesian grid. They may lack coordinates, or simply have ambiguous boundaries. In this presentation, I discuss how a new mapping methodology – topological mapping – developed in the context of Holocaust research, can be applied for integrating traditional knowledge, or human experience, in Arctic geographical research. This new method pushes the field of GIScience in new directions, providing new opportunities for trans-disciplinary research, which better integrates humanistic data in mapping for analysis and communication. Using examples from using topological mapping whilst working with Saami reindeer herders youth, I demonstrate the potential for this new mapping method in the Arctic.  

How to cite: Westerveld, L.: Topological mapping: new method to map, analyze, and visualize humanistic data in the Arctic, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16365, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16365, 2021.

EGU21-16449 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.3

Using art to explore children’s perceptions of their Arctic community in a changing climate 

David Lipson, Kim Reasor, and Kååre Sikuaq Erickson

In this project we analyze artwork and recorded statements of 5th grade students from the community of Utqiaġvik, Alaska, who participated in a science-art outreach activity. The team consisted of a scientist (Lipson), an artist (Reasor) and an outreach specialist (Erickson) of Inupiat heritage from a village in Alaska. We worked with four 5th grade classes of about 25 students each at Fred Ipalook Elementary. The predominantly Inupiat people of Utqiaġvik are among those who will be most impacted by climate change and the loss of Arctic sea ice in the near future. Subsistence hunting of marine mammals associated with sea ice is central to the Inupiat way of life. Furthermore, their coastal homes and infrastructure are increasingly subject to damage from increased wave action on ice-free Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. While the people of this region are among the most directly vulnerable to climate change, the teachers reported that the subject is not generally covered in the elementary school curriculum.

The scientist and the local outreach specialist gave a short presentation about sea ice and climate change in the Arctic, with emphasis on local impacts to hunting and infrastructure. We then showed the students a large poster of historical and projected sea ice decline, and asked the students to help us fill in the white space beneath the lines. The artist led the children in making small paintings that represent things that are important to their lives in Utqiaġvik (they were encouraged to paint animals, but they were free to do whatever they wanted). We returned to the class later that week and had each student briefly introduce themselves and their painting, and place it on the large graph of sea ice decline, which included the dire predictions of the RCP8.5 scenario. Then we added the more hopeful RCP2.6 scenario to end on a positive note.

Common themes expressed in the students’ artwork included subsistence hunting, other aspects of traditional Inupiat culture, nature and family. Modern themes such as sports and Pokémon were also common. The students reacted to the topic of climate change with pictures of whales, polar bears and other animals, and captions such as “Save the world/ice/animals.” There were several paintings showing unsuccessful hunts for whales or seals. Some students displayed an understanding of ecosystem science in their recorded statements. For example, a student who painted the sun and another who painted a krill both succinctly described energy flow in food webs that support the production of whales (for example, “I drew krill because without krill there wouldn’t be whales”). Some of the students described the consequences of sea ice loss to local wildlife with devastating succinctness (sea ice is disappearing and polar bears will go extinct). The overall sense was that the children had a strong grasp of the potential consequences of climate change to their region and way of life.

How to cite: Lipson, D., Reasor, K., and Erickson, K. S.: Using art to explore children’s perceptions of their Arctic community in a changing climate , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16449, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16449, 2021.

EGU21-16368 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.3 | Highlight

Working with an Indigenous Advisory Council to facilitate effective communication and collaboration between researchers and Arctic communities 

Nicole Herman-Mercer, Karen Cozzetto, and Keith Musselman

The Arctic Rivers Project is a National Science Foundation – Navigating the New Arctic funded project aimed at increasing our understanding of the impacts of climate change on rivers, fish, and Indigenous communities across the Northern Alaska and the Yukon River Watershed in Alaska and Canada.  This will be accomplished through water-quality monitoring, a variety of modeling activities, and the development of narratives of change from community members themselves.  Combined these methods will create storylines of climate change in the arctic.  Storylines combine experiential narrative information with model outputs to make the predicated future more tangible regarding potential impacts.  The project team is comprised of researchers from the natural and social sciences as well as the modeling community and two Indigenous organizations focused on science, outreach, and engagement.  To increase the research team’s ability to co-produce knowledge with Indigenous communities across a large study domain we are working with an Indigenous Advisory Council (IAC).  The IAC is comprised of 11 Indigenous community members, leaders, elders and students representing diverse communities across our study domain. The IAC meets via online video conferencing monthly to tackle tasks such as developing knowledge co-production and inclusion and protection of Indigenous Knowledge protocols to guide the project.  Additionally, the IAC is working with a subset of the research team to create the goals, objectives, and agenda for an Arctic Rivers Summit that will bring together Tribal and First Nation resource managers, Arctic and Boreal community members, and academic, Indigenous, federal, state, and provincial researchers to unify the state of knowledge on Arctic Rivers as a community of observers, investigators, knowledge holders, and stewards.  This presentation will discuss the steps taken to form the IAC, the role of the IAC in guiding project implementation, providing advice, and facilitating connections with Indigenous communities.  It is our hope that we may provide an example of successful implementation and design to communicate and co-produce knowledge with communities across a large study domain from which other projects may learn.

How to cite: Herman-Mercer, N., Cozzetto, K., and Musselman, K.: Working with an Indigenous Advisory Council to facilitate effective communication and collaboration between researchers and Arctic communities , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16368, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16368, 2021.

EGU21-16516 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.3

An integrated system of observations driven by societal benefit

Jan Rene Larsen and Sandy Starkweather

Sustaining Arctic Observing Networks (SAON) and its committees have emerged as a vital regional facilitator for advancing sustained investments in Arctic observing and data management across a partnership of Arctic and non-Arctic countries, regional and global organizations, including those of Arctic Indigenous Peoples. The lack of a consistent, equitable and holistic planning mechanism has hampered efforts to strategically improve these systems. In response, SAON set forth a vision in its 2018-2028 strategic plan to develop a Roadmap for Arctic Observing and Data Systems (ROADS) to address this systemic shortcoming and improve linkages across independently funded efforts. ROADS will address this short-coming through generating a systems-level view of observing and data system impacts, requirements and implementation strategies under its Roadmap and engaging a diverse and inclusive group of actors to deliver it. A critical success factor for ROADS is the equitable inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in the design and development process, which presents specific challenges. These challenges include differing world views of knowledge systems and historical and current inequities that have limited the degree to which Indigenous communities and organizations can make their voices heard or support the human capacity required to engage in planning. ROADS is embedding strategies to address these challenges, particularly focused on funding Indigenous expertise.

 

ROADS is both a holistic concept, building from the societal benefit-based approach of the International Arctic Observing Assessment Framework, and one that can proceed step-wise so that the most imperative Arctic observing elements can be rapidly improved and accessed through interoperable data systems. The concept of Shared Arctic Variables (SAVs) occupies a central place in the ROADS planning process (Fig. 1). SAVs are linked to the essential variable strategies of broader global networks (e.g. Global Ocean Observing System, Global Atmospheric Watch), and through an emphasis on broadly shared societal benefit, extend their definitions in support of Indigenous-led benefit and regionally identified science and decision-making needs. Guided by a principle of benefit sharing, the ROADS process is designed to engage diverse partnerships of experts across sectors in support of integrated Arctic observing and data system development

How to cite: Larsen, J. R. and Starkweather, S.: An integrated system of observations driven by societal benefit, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16516, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16516, 2021.

EOS7.4 – Exploring the Art-Science Interface

I am a photographic artist, a PhD student and a Lecturer in Photography at the University of Sunderland. Through the still and moving image, my practice reimagines ubiquitous photography through new perspectives, engaged with place and encounter—in my practice-led PhD, I am exploring astronomy at Kielder Observatory, Northumberland, UK (KOAS). I propose a display of lens-based art (demonstrating methods), and a paper to provide context and discussion. This session is significant in engaging a 'global’ audience with creative perspectives from a ‘local’ observatory.

‘Stargazing at the ‘Invisible’: Photography and the Power of Obscured Light – A Research Partnership with Kielder Observatory’ explores how lens-based art can operate within and in response to an observatory in an International Dark Sky Park in Northern England, questioning:

  • what new encounters with dark skies emerge when a fine-art photographer works in partnership with an astronomy organisation?
  • can photography visualise the experience of dark sky observation in Northern England?
  • how can lens-based art communicate a speculative practice of astronomy?

Funded by the National Productivity Investment Fund (part of the UK government’s Industrial Strategy, impacting industrial needs through researcher-industry partner collaborations), my project is designed to mutually benefit the photographic field and KOAS (supporting a new art programme), whilst offering a model for future art and ‘science outreach’ collaborations.

The multi-method work combines image-making, conversations, exhibitions and reflective practice. In addition, an extended artist residency and planned display of practice at KOAS (website, e-newsletters, site-specific contexts and pre-event film screenings) expand the potential for new photographic narratives on astronomy. An immersive encounter with the dark skies at Kielder is crucial to the work, departing from sublime starry-skies that usually illustrate astronomy.

A virtual photography exhibition and paper at EGU21 will introduce my current outcomes to STEM and creative colleagues, provoking dialogues on photography's ability to communicate complex ideas to non-specialist audiences. Concepts include speculative dark skies, encounter, and the perspective of looking from Northern England. 


www.helenmcghie.com
www.invisiblestargazing.blog 

                       
'Dark Adaptation', 2019                                                                                                               SDSS plate, 2019

             
'Wanderers', 2017-19

                     
Vintage trade card, 2019                                                 Install, Sunderland Museum, 2019-20

   
'KOas' film stills

How to cite: McGhie, H.: Stargazing at the 'Invisible': Photography and the Power of Obscured Light – A Research Partnership with Kielder Observatory. , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8348, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8348, 2021.

EGU21-551 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Bedding into Bags: The material and temporal assemblages of upcycling

Clare Holdsworth

This paper presents an upcycling creative project: bedding into bags. The premise of the project is straightforward; to take an unused everyday household item (a duvet cover) and upcycle this into new products (8 different types of bags). The project develops a growing body of geographical research on the embodied practices of making, wherein the researcher is maker rather than observer. Through close attention to the materiality of making this project reveals the intricate assemblages of  materials and time that upcycling requires. This project responds to calls for a practice-based approach to sustainability that can reveal the possibilities and limitations of ‘doing’ sustainability.

How to cite: Holdsworth, C.: Bedding into Bags: The material and temporal assemblages of upcycling, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-551, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-551, 2021.

This multidisciplinary dissertation investigates in detail, visual art as a method of communication, in particular about a scientific topic: microplastics and human health. Primary and secondary research conducted suggest that microplastics have potential to cause health problems in humans due to the leaching of toxic chemicals and that over 8% of an educated western sample had never heard of microplastics before. Over 30% of participants reported that a painting was a more effective form of communication about microplastics and human health than a scientific poster on the same topic, opening areas for further study into the value and process of communication through visual art.

How to cite: Peters, S.: Understanding microplastics, and visual art as a method of communication: scientific poster versus painting, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-600, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-600, 2021.

EGU21-686 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

CORES: Interactions of artistic and scientific perspectives

Bernard Guelton

CORES: Interactions of artistic and scientific perspectives

Bernard GUELTON, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, ANR CORES

 

Artistic context

The research team Fictions & Interactions of the University Paris 1 and the media company ORBE have developed since 2013 collective artistic experiments between distant cities (Paris, Shanghai, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro). Using specially designed interactive applications and creative scenarios, the goal was to connect remote walkers between one or the other of these cities. The project was to hybridize urban spaces of different conformities through physical, virtual and fictional interactions between participants.

The artistic practices of space and especially the interactions between distant walkers do not simply provide a context for study here, but form a kind of anticipation of the post-representational paradigm of cartography with examples such as the psycho-geography of the situationists in the late 1950s. As early as 1994, an artist like Fujihata used GPS technology in his project Impressing Velocity. The data collected by Fujihata models the itinerary by producing a contraction of the form during a rapid movement, or an expansion of the form during a slow movement. However, it is from the 2000s that groups of artists from participatory theater such as Blast Theory use GPS technologies, visual and verbal interactions to connect walkers in tasks of exploration or playful interaction.

Scientific implications

After several years of experimentation on collective walks using instrumental and shared CTs, a central scientific question has clearly emerged: to what extent are instrumental and shared maps likely to modify our behaviours and spatial representations?

To answer the question of the impact of mapping tools and collective interactions on collective representations, the CORES project associates and crosses geography, geomatics, cognitive psychology, computer science, artistic practices of walking, design and data visualization. Each of these disciplines contributes to the proposed methodology. Spatial cognition from cognitive psychology is now extended and transformed by the neurophysiology of brain areas dedicated to spatial behaviors. If the study of representations in space has long associated cognitive psychology and geographical sciences, the CORES project renews this association in an original way by closely linking representations of space to behaviours with an approach that is no longer only static, but above all dynamic. Thus, a dynamic approach to the trackings of walkers in relation to a dynamic approach to drawn representations forms an important stake at the level of the proposed methodology.

How to cite: Guelton, B.: CORES: Interactions of artistic and scientific perspectives, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-686, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-686, 2021.

EGU21-705 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Geosciences and the Art of Children's book.

Daniele Ingredy Silva

Given the current environmental crises locally and globally, it became more evident that the level of understanding on the part of most citizens, about the importance of preserving the environment, and even the importance of science and professionals who study the functioning of planet Earth, such as Geosciences and more specifically Geology, is still very precarious and little known in Brazil. It is clear the importance of introducing geosciences since primary education so that with the development of students and the training of these citizens, we can have a better-educated society, not only at the academic level but also with a better environmental awareness directed towards conservation and preservation of the planet. In order to improve this understanding and create children's interest, through a more accessible language about complex processes, a book with artistic illustrations was produced, called “The grand story of a Grain of sand”. The book aimed at children from 6 to 10 years old, describes and illustrates the journey of a grain of sand, from the formation of magma, through the volcanic eruption, rock formation, transport processes, and weathering. The book uses informal language and the association of such processes with everyday situations and experiences commonly lived by children regardless of the socioeconomic situation. The story is fully illustrated and comes with a glossary with more scientific explanations of the terms described in the narrative, to assist parents and teachers who read the book with the children. The illustrations in the book follow in the same direction, both with the literal illustration of the text and with the complementation of the narrative. The character that accompanies the journey narrated by the grain of sand was also created to represent and include the children who read the book in the text. The use of support tools such as the book object of this work has great importance in the dissemination and popularization of geosciences and extension actions such as the one exemplified in this abstract, has to be increasingly worked on by the scientific community so that we can communicate with each other and in a more effective way with the population outside the academic environment.

How to cite: Silva, D. I.: Geosciences and the Art of Children's book., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-705, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-705, 2021.

This research considers the educational role of art in finding pathways towards accessing mathematics and science, particularly those abstract concepts usually only accessible to people with an advanced algebraic vocabulary.

In the light of the narrowing of the school curriculum in recent decades, and particularly the reduction in timetabling of art and music in English schools, this research actively explores the use of topic overlap between sciences and art to investigate how abstract concepts can be made tangible through visual and aural stimulation.

Kinetic sculpture is employed that visibly and audibly demonstrates particular phenomena, e.g. wavelike behaviour, harmonic ratios or resonance. The sculpture encompasses two or more tangible aspects such as shape, pattern, scale, sound, resonant frequencies, motion, recorded film that illuminates differences in different latitudes, and reversed or translated perspectives.

Feedback is sought through exhibitions of the sculpture. Through observation, survey and interview, key metrics are captured and analysed. These include the degree to which interest has been captured, curiosity aroused, and particularly comprehension aided by the art designed to maximise observation, questioning, critical thinking and learning.

The longer term goal of the research is to initiate a conversation in the wider public domain as to the value of art in accessing abstract concepts. It will bring to the broadest forum the value of art in its uniqueness, breadth of language, immediacy and power of communication by visibly and audibly shedding light on physical phenomena and enabling people the potential for greater success and enjoyment in learning.

 

How to cite: Smith, L. E.: Making the Conceptual Tangible: The Role of Art in Understanding Mathematics and Physics, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-960, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-960, 2021.

EGU21-1405 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Drumming the waves: conveying coastal geoscience with rhythm

Cormac Byrne and Ronadh Cox

It is difficult to educate the public about geoscience and to create a message that will be heard in a noisy world. Coastal geoscience in particular—despite its growing importance as sea-level rises and storminess increases—has not penetrated effectively into the public sphere. High-energy coasts attract increasing numbers of visitors, most unaware of hazards related to stochastic wave behaviour. Photo-seekers in the Instagram era are driving up accidents in extreme environments, and it’s increasingly common for people to be caught off guard and dragged into the ocean by rogue waves. Creative ways are needed to build awareness of the hazards, as well as the beauty, of high-energy coasts.

"Drumming the Waves", a musical representation of wave interactions with boulder beaches, is an NSF-funded musician-geoscientist collaboration. Informed by the shared physics of sound and water waves, the composition will showcase how mutual interference among wave sets gives rise to chaotic seas, rogue waves, and ocean swell; and how waves can be amplified unpredictably in the coastal zone. Minimalist compositional techniques are employed to overlap and superimpose multiple series of small and seemingly inconsequential rhythmic and melodic musical events, leading to composite results that are unpredictable, sometimes chaotic, and occasionally extreme.

A visceral artistic approach helps capture the ‘feeling’ of coastal waves and the impact of their interaction with boulder beaches, conveying sea states from serene calm to extreme chaos. Audio samples recorded at coastal locations in Ireland and the UK, both in air and beneath the ocean surface, are interwoven in the soundscape. We use wave sounds both in their natural audio state and in processed form. Creating new sounds by interacting field recordings of waves with electronic audio processers provides an artistic representation of the ubiquitous power and energy present in coastal environments. The temporal and erratic nature of coastal waves informs the musical structures on a macro level, exploring the contrast between the simple rhythm of tides and swell, and the irregular ephemerality of turbulent sea conditions. On a micro level, parallels between ocean and audio waves shapes are exploited to create novel musical events by shaping LFO (low frequency oscillator) and noise gates to mimic two-dimensional coastal wave models. Periodic emergence of unexpectedly large sound events mimics hazardous rogue wave generation.

We will build educational content around the music, to contextualise and explain it, and to draw attention specifically to boulder beaches, wave hazards, and the science of high-energy coasts. Simple worksheets showing wave spectra will be paired with percussion rhythms and melody that can be layered by students, either drumming and singing together, or mixing audio loops within a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) such as GarageBand. This will permit students to build complex spectra from simple underlying wave forms. PowerPoint slides and explanatory text, pitched at the appropriate level, will be distributed to teachers for combined music/science learning. Using music to convey the science of wave interactions and wave amplification opens new doors and prospects for engaging and educating the public.

How to cite: Byrne, C. and Cox, R.: Drumming the waves: conveying coastal geoscience with rhythm, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1405, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1405, 2021.

EGU21-2868 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Earth Scientist and Social Media: approaching our planet to young people and general public using comics and illustration.

Stefania Schamuells, Olaya Dorado, Joaquin Hopfenblatt, Meritxell Aulinas, and Adelina Geyer

Earth Sciences are booming in social media, an unexampled scenario a few years ago. In the last year, these numbers have increased because of the COVID-19, citizens are consuming even more digital information, at the same time they are looking for more simplified and easy-understanding scientific concepts. It is very important to remark the value of entertainment, humor, and visual contents, which have a light universal language to approach Earth Sciences to citizens and experts beyond the pure academic frontiers. In this work, we share some successful examples through the use of illustration, comic, and infographic content between two Instagram accounts (@ohmagmamia and @salirconunageologa) which addend more than 13,000 followers and have a potential reach up to 37.1k (based on their account insights). The audience for this content is international although it has gained great popularity among the Spanish-speaking public (the initial target audience), little by little creating an interesting and growing movement. Countries such as Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Spain have the greatest impact according to statistics. Age range is between 18-34 years for 87% of the audience, with a clearly female predominance (55% in @Ohmagmamia and 60% in @Salirconunageologa).

One of the principal goals of these accounts is to develop visual, artistic and easy-understanding content that fits the audience. On one hand @Ohmagmamia uses photographic material (e.g. landscapes, outcrops, hand specimen samples or micro-photographies), simple geological sketches and infographic content along with small descriptions in the post captions. This approach has been well received by both Earth Science students and non-professional enthusiasts, as well as biology-geology teachers and public examination trainers. On the other hand, @Salirconunageologa (Dating a geologist) uses cartoons, humour and comics to approach Earth Sciences to professionals and the general public. Its visual material focuses on storytelling to explain what it means to be a geologist using all its universe of friendly characters. In the first season of “Dating a Geologist Universe” (with 17 episodes), the main character, Nia Stone, is involved in different hilarious situations related to Earth Sciences, like volcanoes, trilobites, or Dr. Gems (the main Villain). This “geocomics” have been very well received, being the first chapter the one which records the best audience data, with 10k accounts reached on Instagram. 

Social media statistics data provide interesting information about the success of these scientific dissemination’s new methods. In the last 6 months of the 2020 both accounts reached an average of 11,000 Instagram accounts with an average more than 1,000 “likes” per post and with an engagement rate that varies from 9 to 12%. In addition, the use of other social media such as Twitter or YouTube able us to reach more people and/or accounts by using Twitter “threads” or sharing videos of invite talks or “webinars”, whose popularity grew during the quarantine period. All these results show the importance of a perfect relation between visuals, art and Earth Science and its capability to reach people from all around the globe.

How to cite: Schamuells, S., Dorado, O., Hopfenblatt, J., Aulinas, M., and Geyer, A.: Earth Scientist and Social Media: approaching our planet to young people and general public using comics and illustration., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2868, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2868, 2021.

The mission of the American Geophysical Union’s Sharing Science program is to provide scientists with the skills, tools, and opportunities they need to share their science with any audience. While we in the program possess the skills and expertise to do this, we also believe that it’s beneficial for artists to learn from, and be inspired by, their peers. To achieve this goal, we created a digital space for science artists to share their work and creative processes.

In 2020, we launched two specials series on our blog: AGU Rocks and Drawn to Geoscience. The purpose of these series was to highlight scientists who write songs and create illustrations about science. We not only wanted to showcase the amazing creative work of science artists but also have them explain their creative and technical processes in as effort to lower the barrier to entry for those who may be interested in pursuing similar creative efforts but don’t know where to start.

By the end of 2020, we received over 40 AGU and Drawn to Geoscience contributions with a queue of posts scheduled for 2021. Because of the huge outpouring of submissions and demonstrated enthusiasm for the content, we are planning to expand this into a hub for all forms of scicomm via art where science artists can learn from, and be inspired by, their peers, and scientists and non-scientists alike can learn about diverse aspects of science in engaging and accessible ways. 

How to cite: Hanlon, S.: Inspiring creativity in science-inspired art and music in the digital world., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2980, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2980, 2021.

EGU21-3208 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Catching a Wave: the Ripple Effect of Transdisciplinarity

Shona Paterson and Hester Whyte and the Catching A Wave collective

Generating social behavioural change in the face of increasing variability in our planet’s climate remains one of the biggest challenges of our time. In a world of constantly shifting biophysical and social realities, we face an ever-evolving need for new and innovative ideas around sustainable development.

The philosophy and nature of the Catching A Wave project has the liberty and potential to generate, and inspire, shifts in social perceptions in ways that science and data alone currently do not. Catching a Wave acts as a catalyst to shift individual and collective mind-sets towards climate action and consideration for the people who live, work and interact within at-risk coastal spaces. Using a transdisciplinary approach to overcome barriers in language, discipline specific jargon and siloed thinking, the project team are exploring ways of integrating voices of coastal and island peoples and communities who are often marginalized into a multi-media sea level rise installation.

Extensive 3D digital mapping of actual waves by CaW researchers has enabled the creation of glass wave sculptures at various scales as a mechanism to demonstrate the synergies between art and science. While the glass art acts as a visual interpretation of the oceans’ complexity, the inclusion of soundbites of coastal people as well as sounds of the ocean itself is another way to  communicate and connect with our audiences. In addition to interviews with coastal communities, we are working with a music composer  and singer to ‘re-map’ our digital wave data to the sonic parameters of pitch, volume, spatialisation and audio filtering (Riding the wave). Despite in person activities being curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are engaging in several on-going digital initiatives. We have launched the virtual Planetary Wave project to demonstrate the connection we all have in different ways with the ocean.

CaW aims to ensure that the visualisation and realisation of solutions and pathways to sustainability become more reachable for all, from local to global scales and is a partner in the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Catching a Wave represents a collective of transdisciplinary researchers from five universities based in the USA, UK and Ireland, combining expertise in environmental, social sciences and the arts.

How to cite: Paterson, S. and Whyte, H. and the Catching A Wave collective: Catching a Wave: the Ripple Effect of Transdisciplinarity, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3208, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3208, 2021.

EGU21-6364 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

The Isthmus Project: Bridging Art, Science and Policy to Navigate Inequalities in the English Land System

Charise Johnson, Alice Davies, Lois Donegal, Abbie Sumrie, and Naz Hye

EGU21-12773 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Expert Perspectives & Methodological Excerpts: Stitching a thesis quilt

Emer Emily Neenan

Much like many crafted items, research must be functional and fit for purpose, but there's no reason why it can't also be beautiful, creative, and expressive.

In working with teenagers and young people on geoscience education and climate literacy, it became increasingly important to me to find ways to express my research that would connect with people who didn't have a foundation (yet, or at all) in academic discourse. My PhD thesis is therefore written as a creative semi-fictional epistolary; a collection of documents that tell the story of the research from the first tentative proposal to my would-be supervisor, to the final submission. I made the choice to produce a creative thesis for my student co-researchers and other readers, but the person who benefitted most from it was me. The creative process in designing my thesis was fulfilling, fun, and facilitated a deeper and more meaningful engagement with my own research. 

In discussing my thesis with another researcher, trying to explain how and why I was writing geoscience education research through annotations and poems and chatlogs, I suggested the metaphor of a quilt. A quilt is inherently a functional object that must meet certain qualifying standards in order to be accepted and used. But also, a quilt can be an intricately crafted artwork, reflective not just of its use, but of the person who makes it; their choices, their joys, their cares. As a quilt is an artwork with a specific useful function of keeping someone warm at night, so too a thesis (or paper or project) can be artistic and creative while also still having useful functions of building knowledge, generating data, or developing theory. 

So, long story short, I also sewed a thesis quilt, to express both the process and outcome of my doctoral research as a piece of fabric art!

How to cite: Neenan, E. E.: Expert Perspectives & Methodological Excerpts: Stitching a thesis quilt, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12773, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12773, 2021.

EGU21-6417 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4 | Highlight

The story of a tree and what its tells us about our life

John Bruun

Our natural world presents many fascinating and often bizarre phenomena to us. The way primary producers convert sunlight with nutrients as part of the existence of life is simply amazing. This gives rise to phytoplankton communities in the oceans and the growth of trees across the world. The signals of our dynamic world, its chronology and patterns of how this life grows are indelibly written into these trees as well as in mineral and oceanic floor strata. In this session I’d like to symbolically ask a generic tree “what were the choices made 150 years ago that led to our current warming?” As interdisciplinary scientists – the thinking process we use whilst embedded in logic and reason – is also closely related to our personal creative and imagining aptitudes. Our social norms also reflect the scope of decisions that we choose to talk about and identify with. By enabling a platform that frames the co-existence of contemporary scientific reasoning together with the artistic expression we re-imagine and further create possibilities, through stories, drawing, metaphor, sound and dance. With this, a wider community of scientists can engage with topics that previously seem technically obscure. A deeper public understanding of geosciences also develops. In the first part of this session I’ll narrate a story of climate change choices see by the generic tree seen over the last 500 years linking this to tree ring records, personal geoscience learning and the EGU photo archive. In the second part – I invite the audience to share their creative points of view about these climatic era’s and to further explore what stories this generic tree may be telling us about our world. The aim of this work is to enable group participation and share creative ideas. My hope is that we may envisage new combinations of opportunities about climatic futures that can enable a more resilient future for us all.

How to cite: Bruun, J.: The story of a tree and what its tells us about our life, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6417, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6417, 2021.

EGU21-13396 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4 | Highlight

Disaster Passed: a singing, flashing and sobering glimpse into coping with volcanic eruptions

Jenni Barclay, Karen Pascal, OutPut Arts, Martin Mangler, James Christie, Teresa Armijos, Wendy Mcmahon, Richie Robertson, Stacey Edwards, and Kathleen Retourne

We all experience and understand volcanic eruptions differently; it is at the intersection of these experiences that the most valuable knowledge for effective future disaster risk reduction is generated. On one hand, scientific responses to eruptions have the potential to improve understanding of subsurface magma movement and anticipate volcanic impacts on communities and the environment. On the other, social and cultural responses have the potential to help communities learn, respond and adapt to eruptions. The aim of ‘Disaster Passed’ is to bring together and celebrate these different forms of knowledge. Here, we demonstrate key aspects of our interactive exhibits designed to convey the lived experience, scientific monitoring and cultural responses to past eruptions on St. Vincent and Montserrat.

The centrepieces are two volcano-shaped mobile exhibits (‘Soufrière Blow’ and ‘MountainAglow’) covered with panels that display images and information about past eruptions, together with poetry, calypso lyrics and prose inspired by the impacts of these eruptions. We further embellished MountainAglow with two add-on audio-visual features, ‘FLOW’ and ‘NEST’. FLOW, a ~3m column, encrusted with ~2000 LEDs, has seven audio-visual modes which portray a variety of volcanic phenomena, such as the movement of magma within the volcano and the gentle incandescence of the lava dome, accompanied by songs and recordings of Montserratians sharing their experiences of different phases of the Soufrière Hills eruption. NEST consists of a series of ash-strewn communication devices (a telephone, a walkie talkie and a radio) which play on-demand memories of the eruption as both spoken word and calypso. Soufrière Blow was deployed to St Vincent in 2018 has since been exhibited in multiple sites; MountainAglow was previewed at the Norwich Science Festival before being permanently moved to Montserrat in 2019, where it has been exhibited at the Montserrat Community College, National Trust, and deployed temporarily at primary schools.

Our research on volcanic disaster risk has demonstrated the power of lived experience as a mechanism for improved response in the future. Therefore, a second purpose of Disaster Passed was to entwine critical risk messages with lived experience, and in so doing further enrich everyone’s understanding. Our collaborative approach to exhibit design generated and uncovered material with value beyond the physical exhibits, and so a final aspect of Disaster Passed is the creation of a website that shares these histories, songs and scientific data that helped to respond to past eruptions (disasterspassed.com; mountainaglow.com).

Throughout Disaster Passed, the design process has been dynamic, underpinned by collaboration between scientific bodies, governmental organisations and, critically, the wider community. Indeed, at the time of writing, in collaboration with the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, the primary schools of Montserrat are designing new panels and audio-visuals for MountainAglow to reflect their own learning about the volcano. In this presentation we reflect on the challenges and successes of this dynamic design and collaborative approach. Finally, we will share how it influenced our own disciplinary ideas and the outcomes of our evaluation of the process.

How to cite: Barclay, J., Pascal, K., Arts, O., Mangler, M., Christie, J., Armijos, T., Mcmahon, W., Robertson, R., Edwards, S., and Retourne, K.: Disaster Passed: a singing, flashing and sobering glimpse into coping with volcanic eruptions, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13396, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13396, 2021.

EGU21-6639 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

A Geologic Symphony: A Model for Scientific Engagement through the Arts

Jeffrey Nytch

As part of its 125th Anniversary in 2013, the Geological Society of America commissioned Symphony No. 1: Formations from composer Jeffrey Nytch and premiered the work, performed by the Boulder Philharmonic, and the GSA’s annual meeting in Denver. The project attracted national and international attention for its mix of music and geology: unlike most musical works inspired by landscapes, Formations was inspired by geological processes themselves—specifically, those that shaped the Rocky Mountains. Nytch, who holds undergraduate degrees in both geology and music, will discuss how the project educated laypersons in the basics of Rocky Mountain geology while simultaneously building an audience for the orchestra. The Formations project is a type example of how the arts can be used to increase understanding within communities of the science happening all around them, provide the scientific community with a new lens through which to see their work, and establish a new channel for arts organizations to engage their community and build their audience. This complementary dynamic results in increased knowledge, understanding, and community amongst and between groups of people who might not otherwise experience each other’s worlds, and suggests that the arts can play a significant role in increasing scientific literacy and understanding.

How to cite: Nytch, J.: A Geologic Symphony: A Model for Scientific Engagement through the Arts, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6639, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6639, 2021.

EGU21-10853 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

When the science meets art – a report from the creation of comics about Earthquakes and Geomagnetic field

Matej Machek, Karolína Kučerová, Petr Brož, Lucie Lukačovičová, and David Píša

As science communicators we are confronted with little attention paid to the understanding of the Earth inner processes in the educational system of the Czech Republic. For that reason, we thought about ways how to explain basic principles of the Earth dynamics in accessible way to the school students and high school youth. We saw comics as an attractive way that would overcome the gap between knowledge and the need to entertain the young readers. We also thought that in the comics we should not be tell all everything with lot of explanatory text, but rather to try to provoke the reader to look for information and answers and hence to start the passion for science. So, we are trying to explain by graphics.

The presented experience covers the collaboration among three researches, graphic designer and writer in the process of creation of two short comic books about earthquake origin and inner structure of the Earth and origin of the Earth magnetic field.

We believe that such collaboration – to be effective – needs to be founded on several principles. The base of the comics, the storyboard, needs to be the result of discussions and collective effort of all participants. The artists need to be given creative freedom and the researchers should explain how the processes work inside the Earth rather than to try to push forward their views of artistic expression of them. Also, mainly the researches need to accept the equality of roles during the creative process. Last but not least the friendly atmosphere helps a lot.

The first comics “When the Earth Quakes” was created during second half of year 2019 and first months of year 2020 so the work was mostly based on personal meetings. The second comics is in production during diverse lockdowns and thus most of the communication is realized online. Therefore, different types of communication will be reflected based on our experience.   

The comics “When the Earth Quakes” and related board game is published under the Creative Commons license: https://www.ig.cas.cz/en/outreach/comics-seismic-wave/

How to cite: Machek, M., Kučerová, K., Brož, P., Lukačovičová, L., and Píša, D.: When the science meets art – a report from the creation of comics about Earthquakes and Geomagnetic field, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10853, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10853, 2021.

EGU21-9280 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Airways

Vicki Kerr

Title: Airways

Author: Dr Vicki Kerr (Wintec, New Zealand)

Session: Exploring the Art-Science Interface

There is no other human activity that emits as much CO2 over such a short period of time as aviation, thereby significantly contributing to the acceleration of global warming, releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

As an artist and former air traffic controller, I am interested in the profound impact of the air travel system on the natural environment and other species - as bodies on the ground and bodies in the air. Bodily movements are key in unearthing encounters and entanglements of animals and infrastructure, as a terrain of mobility-in-action that is normally difficult to portray or represent.  Most recently, due to the global spread of a coronavirus, worldwide air travel disruption has resulted in significant changes to the usual rhythm of flight, with humans effectively becoming de-centered and reconfigured within a broader ecological/multispecies system. 

My paper will discuss a recent collaboration between myself, a musician (Micah Livesay) and mathematician (Chris Batterton) that resulted in the creation of an immersive video/sound installation (Airways 2020), which aims to show the environmental impact of aviation and more broadly ways in which the atmosphere is permeated at every layer by technologies of communication, transportation and scientific research.  By using the mathematics of quantum wave superposition based upon aircraft movement data in New Zealand, the installation draws attention to the mathematical and statistical models playing essential roles in evaluating the effects of human activities, while also questioning and stretching the sensorium through animated renders and a musical score.  Drawing upon creative synergies between artistic and scientific thinking, ‘Airways’ reworks dynamic acoustic exchanges (humans and birds) alongside processes of calculation /computation to better our understanding of habitat connectivity and entanglements of species/human/non-human systems and networks.

How to cite: Kerr, V.: Airways, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9280, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9280, 2021.

EGU21-6512 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4 | Highlight

Artful-Geoscience: Co-Creating Urban Subsurface Futures? A discussion and an invitation. 

Harriet Hawkins, Stephanie Bricker, Carol Cotteril, Eilidh Dunnet, Anna Hicks, and Hazel Napier

The urban subsurface is key to developing sustainable urban futures (SDG 11). Yet, as is well acknowledged, geoscientists face many challenges in engaging stakeholders and communities with the urban subsurface, as well as the challenges associated wtih fragmented data sources, knowledge gaps, citizen ‘oversight,’ and challenging subsurface cultural associations (Bricker et al. 2017, 2019). In this paper we present a case for the value of the intersections between geoscience and creative practices (from visual methods to participatory arts) in helping to address some of these challenges. To make our case we present preliminary findings from a collaboration between geoscientists and science communicators based at the British Geological Survey, and a cultural geographer experienced in researching and creating art-science collaborations. We explore three things:

We close our discussion with an invitation to join us in forming a network exploring the potential of art-geoscience collaborations for understanding, using and preserving the urban subsurface. 

How to cite: Hawkins, H., Bricker, S., Cotteril, C., Dunnet, E., Hicks, A., and Napier, H.: Artful-Geoscience: Co-Creating Urban Subsurface Futures? A discussion and an invitation. , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6512, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6512, 2021.

EGU21-2255 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Air of the Anthropocene

Francis Pope and Robin Price

Anthropogenic contamination of the atmosphere is causing both climate change and air pollution, which respectively represent the greatest long term and short term environmental risks to human and planetary health. The contamination is largely invisible and hence difficult to contextualise for non-expert audiences. This can lead to the problem being ignored; or where it is acknowledged, leading to feelings of helplessness and a lack of agency.

This project uses digital light painting to visualise and explore responses to particulate matter (PM) air pollution, in a variety of global locations, as a method for both public engagement and campaign work. This photographic technique combines long exposure with light sources digitally controlled by sensors, it builds upon the prior work of electronic pioneer Steve Mann (e.g. Mann et al. 2019) and more recent work visualising wifi strength (Arnall et al. 2013).

The five year art-science collaboration between Price and Pope has been highly successful. The Air of the Anthropocene project resulted in multiple gallery shows (including Los Angeles, Belfast and Birmingham). The media publicized it heavily, including Source Magazine, New Scientist and the Guardian. The physical art works were acquired by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s public collection.

In this presentation, we will highlight the scientific and aesthetic underpinnings of the use of low cost air pollution sensors for data visualisation through light painting. Locations for visualizations were guided by expert advice from environmental scientists in global locations, including those in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. In this sense the science informed the art. Also, since the code from the project ended being used by scientists, the art informed the science (e.g. Crilley et al. 2018).

We will highlight the efficacy of this image making approach as an engagement and advocacy tool, through case studies of its use in field campaigns in Ethiopia (2020) and Kampala (2018), investigating both indoor and outdoor air pollution.  Future possibilities of the approach to air pollution visualization will be discussed. This will include expanding the approach through open sourcing the project and its adaptation beyond lens based techniques into augmented reality camera phone use.

The projected next phase of the collaboration will work towards empowering interested citizens of the world to make their own creative, aesthetic representations of their environment and use these images as citizen activists to affect transformational change in their own localities. Through adopting open source methodologies it is hoped that sustainability beyond the timescale and budget of the initial project with lasting legacy will be achieved.

 

Arnall et al, 2013. Immaterials: light painting WiFi. Significance, 10(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2013.00683.x 

Crilley et al, 2018. Evaluation of a low-cost optical particle counter (Alphasense OPC-N2) for ambient air monitoring. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-709-2018 

Mann et al 2019, June. Making Sensors Tangible with Long-exposure Photography. In The 5th ACM Workshop on Wearable Systems and Applications. https://doi.org/10.1145/3325424.3329668

How to cite: Pope, F. and Price, R.: Air of the Anthropocene, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2255, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2255, 2021.

EGU21-6245 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4 | Highlight

 The carbon story: A textile-geoscience collaboration to represent changing atmospheric CO2 concentrations through time

Fiona Gill and Naomi Bailey-Cooper

Dr Naomi Bailey-Cooper, a fashion textiles designer, and Dr Fiona Gill, a geochemist and palaeontologist, are exploring ways of communicating changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration through geological time and in the future, and its relationship to life on Earth, visually and haptically through beadwork installations.

 

This collaboration, initially enabled through the Leeds Creative Labs programme at the University of Leeds, draws on the scientist’s research into chemical signatures preserved in fossils to contextualise the scale and effect of carbon cycling in the Earth system. The artist’s expertise in embellishment, combined with her focus on the environmental impact of fashion and textile production, has driven the physical structure of the proposed works, as well as the focus on future scenarios of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

 

Working with geological materials and yarn representative of CO2, variations of knitting and weaving techniques are explored in combination with embellishment. The aim is that the first artefact for installation will depict changing CO2 levels through the Phanerozoic eon, as well as reflecting key species at different time periods and their interactions with changing atmospheric conditions. The second artefact will explore in more depth the Quaternary period, including human history and the Anthropocene, as well as incorporating predictions for future atmospheric CO2 concentrations and linking those to comparable geological times. Together, these artefacts will invite the audience to consider humans’ impact on Earth, including their use and exploitation of natural resources, within a geological context.

 

How to cite: Gill, F. and Bailey-Cooper, N.:  The carbon story: A textile-geoscience collaboration to represent changing atmospheric CO2 concentrations through time, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6245, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6245, 2021.

EGU21-6367 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

The Virtual Water Gallery: a collaborative science and art project

Louise Arnal, Martyn Clark, Stacey Dumanski, and John Pomeroy

Water is life and so water-related challenges, such as droughts, floods and water quality degradation, affect everyone. Conceptualizing water-related environmental and social problems in novel ways, with engagement between the public and science researchers, may lead to new and more comprehensive solutions to complex problems. A society that makes decisions informed by science and science that approaches problems in a transdisciplinary manner are key elements in finding creative and holistic solutions to the water-related challenges we all face. We believe that art can help co-establish new social norms to help us grasp and tackle water-related challenges in a more holistic manner.

The Virtual Water Gallery* is a science and art pilot project funded by Global Water Futures (GWF). GWF is a University of Saskatchewan-led research program that is funded in part by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. Its overarching goal is to deliver risk management solutions, informed by leading-edge water science, to manage water futures in Canada and other cold regions where global warming is changing landscapes, ecosystems and the water environment. Launched in Summer 2020, the Virtual Water Gallery aims to provide a safe, inclusive and collaborative space for fully open discussions between scientists, artists, and a wider public, to explore past, present and future water challenges.

As part of this pilot project, 13 artists were paired with teams of GWF scientists to co-explore specific water challenges in various Canadian ecoregions and river basins, including the Arctic, the mountains, boreal forests, prairies, farmlands, lakes, rivers, and communities. These collaborations are leading to the co-creation of science and art pieces which will be exhibited online on a Virtual Water Gallery. By making this online exhibition accessible to a global audience, we hope that the co-created art pieces will open creative and informative discussions about urgent water challenges to a wider audience via the gallery space.

*More information about the Virtual Water Gallery on the GWF webpage: https://gwf.usask.ca/outreach/virtual-water-gallery.php

How to cite: Arnal, L., Clark, M., Dumanski, S., and Pomeroy, J.: The Virtual Water Gallery: a collaborative science and art project, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6367, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6367, 2021.

EGU21-240 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Educational methods in Geoparks: Techno-Scientific voice-over as a key tool for accessibility

Jesús Enrique Martínez Martín

EGU21-7652 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

The Importance of an Artistic Lens to Assess the Anthropocene

Victor Leshyk

As the Anthropocene progresses into more and more dire territory, research continues to refine quantifiable, predictive narratives about the changes that will unfold in the very near future — heat waves, droughts, rising seas, and other shifts in climate that threaten aspects of human life worldwide, from agriculture and industry to medicine and human quality of life as a whole.  This evolving, cross-referenced narrative should create a perfect warning to correct our course on carbon emissions, our ongoing ecosystem damage from modern agriculture, and other effects tied to current unsustainable practices such as overuse of fossil fuels and reliance on plastic materials.  

However, when these science narratives are placed directly in the spotlight of press and social media, they often merge into a large uncompelling whole, much as many unique and attractive bricks together might combine to create a uniform and ominous wall. The end result is audience disengagement in the face of daunting information. 

This effect is so substantiated that studies now recommend that science communicators should avoid “intimidating” and “demoralizing” global audiences with vivid Anthropocene scenarios, and instead focus on creating less-threatening “feel-good” engagement that can serve as a bridge to positive public action that supports renewable energy, organic agriculture, and other corrective changes to the societal footprint.  

As a professional science communicator, I reject the advice to avoid painting an ever more clear portrait of the Anthropocene: I believe the problem that “demoralizes” the public is not Anthropocene content, but poor presentation, often driven by journalistic trends to sensationalize future apocalyptic scenarios that create titillating fear.  Through my work, I rely not so much on creating a fascination with doomsday scenarios but instead create a fascination with the detailed mechanisms by which the Anthropocene is forcing change: by thawing permafrost, threatening forests, destroying biodiversity, all the while showing how these processes fit within the context of deep time.  With a rich deep time perspective, viewers can see why the Anthropocene is such a distortion of natural ecosystem services, and how human technology and habits could instead be changed to work within the carrying capacity of earth systems.

In this presentation, I share my science illustration portfolio to explain my unique approach that fuses the charisma of “fine art” approaches using metaphor, hyper-realism, and didactic compositions with new research findings to reach beyond sensationalist Anthropocene imagery and create a new visual vocabulary for ecosystem research that unites experts and lay public with a common scientific worldview. I have given this personal philosophy of creative science illustration the name “Accurate Passion” and employ it for a range of topics and clients, including my in-house colleagues at a university research center focusing on ecosystem science, and graduate-level students of my university-level science illustration courses for the past three years.
 

How to cite: Leshyk, V.: The Importance of an Artistic Lens to Assess the Anthropocene, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7652, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7652, 2021.

EGU21-9478 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4 | Highlight

INtergenerational Stories of Erosion and Coastal community Understanding of REsilience ‘INSECURE’

Katie Parsons, Florence Halstead, and Lisa Jones

The Holderness has some of the most rapidly eroding coastline in the world, with sections of cliff retreating >10m per year. These rates are due, in large part, to the soft composition of the boulder clay cliffs, but rates are accelerating rapidly in response to climate drivers, particularly storminess and sea-level rise, which is increasing wave loading.

Withernsea High is a local community school situated close to the eroding cliffs and thus the school students see the day-to-day effects of their changing coastline.  Many of these pupils live within the communities that have ongoing threats of retreating cliffs, with many properties already lost into the sea.

The INSECURE project has used a matrix of participatory research methods to explore how young people engage, examine and understand coastal change within the context of their place within communities. Students were engaged in an education programme to skill them with knowledge and capability to capture their stories and the narratives of their communities. As such this study has been fully youth-led and participants have collected a suite of intergenerational stories from members of the community and the long-term impacts of coastal change. After analysing their data, the young people are using their voice to retell these stories using a variety of creative storytelling methods in order to re-engage their audiences. The outputs are a range of creative short stories, poems and photographs that enable these stories to be told through the eyes of youth.

The outcomes of this project will raise awareness and understanding of coastal change and how communities live with these natural processes that are being exacerbated by climate change and will also measure the impact of the project in addressing climate change knowledge and fostering engagement with the environment and broader social action within the communities.

How to cite: Parsons, K., Halstead, F., and Jones, L.: INtergenerational Stories of Erosion and Coastal community Understanding of REsilience ‘INSECURE’, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9478, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9478, 2021.

EGU21-7709 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Gaia the artist --  towards a unified higher-dimensional paradigm of life and beauty

Renate C.-Z.-Quehenberger

The Gaia hypothesis as an ecological hypothesis is proposing that the biosphere and the physical components of the Earth (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere) are closely integrated to form a complex interacting system that maintains the climatic and biogeochemical conditions on Earth in a preferred homeostasis. Although successful within the current scientific paradigm the explanation of „planetary sentience, or sensitivity“ becomes extremely difficult. As Hegel said, pure truth about nature is only perceivable by a poetic method.

Therefor we are proclaiming Gaia, the Earth as a female artist -- as advocated by 16th century scholar Giordano Bruno. This would imply to include such nonscientific categories as beauty, creativity and cosmic consciousness. Hence a unified Gaia theory would require a new scientific paradigm.

Based on a previously proposed higher dimensional spacial model  (Gaia 5.0) as „pattern that connects“ that explains the Earth’ intrinsic dynamics we aim to extend  our concept to the question of cognition and planetary sentience, or sensitivity. 

Hence we claim that  Gaia theory needs an extension of categories in order to understand the full scope of this spectacular place of livelihood and beauty.

Therefor we examine he prevalent relational biology that tries to overcome Newtonian point mechanics by relying on Aristotle’s „formal causes“ of the autopoietic organization and (M,R)-system as conceptualized by R. Rosen who refers to a mathematical structure, e.g. mapping of functions. Distinct to differential geometry we suggest as previously introduced higher dimensional geometrical framework (Gaia 5.0) a hyper-Euclidean geometry that allows to understand complex systems based on group theory providing all kinds of symmetries in nature based on a spacial continuum.

As a consequence we must not rely on thermodynamic premisses and life and tornados don’t belong to the same class of naturally complex systems. Instead we refer to Schrödinger’s description of a living cell as 4-dimensional entity. Based on complex number spaces we may seek  for further distinctions of processes and define ordered structures based on number theory.

Based on this we try to understand anticipatory systems by assigning Bayesian networks to (hyper-) complex number spaces. -- Hence Gaia is not playing dice but takes a random walk in Monte Carlo.

How to cite: C.-Z.-Quehenberger, R.: Gaia the artist --  towards a unified higher-dimensional paradigm of life and beauty, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7709, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7709, 2021.

Eric Sloane was a 20th century artist who created a unique style and provided interesting, idiosyncratic, and informative images of clouds. He was the author of many books, but also created massive cloud murals, including one on an entire wall at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC. Sloane became interested in clouds when he flew as a passenger with some of the pioneers of aviation, including Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post. He also became weatherwise through his early employment as a painter of advertisements on yje sides of  barns, allowing him to observe many aspects of weather. Sloane received many awards for his contributions to science, including a special award from the American Meteorological Society in 185 for  “for pioneering contributions to public awareness of clouds, their beauty, complexity, and scientific importnace; for an artistic legacy to all who feel a sense of wonder when they look at a cloud filled sky.”

How to cite: Passow, M.: "Look at the Sky and Tell the Weather"  The art and science of Eric Cloane, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9247, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9247, 2021.

What is your relationship with river? This was the central question posed by a series of creative practice workshops with scientists and local authorities who worked with complex flood risk management issues. Many of the flood mitigating solutions offered to managers are based on scientific methods to control and reduce river flooding. Scientific methods not only provide a sense of control towards river dynamics, but also develop a sense of security for people to feel safe from water. Because of climate change, flood events are increasing globally and some countries, like Scotland, are seeking to expand the possibilities of coping with extreme weather through broader, more holistic ways to mitigate flooding.

The aim of this study was to bridge rational knowledge often associated with scientific methods and the tacit knowledge that might emerge through participative art. The creative potential of art and participation in art practice was employed in collaboration with scientists and policy makers to inform future solutions towards flood mitigation.

The research used the theoretical premises described in what Irwin (2013) describes as a/r/tography: “drawing upon the professional practices of educators, artists, and researchers, it entangles and performs what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) refer to as a rhizome, an assemblage of objects, ideas, and structures that move in dynamic motion performing waves of intensities that create new understandings.” (p.199). Unlike the outcome and target driven aims of scientific methodology, these “waves of intensities” are crucial to understanding the form of intersubjective work which is crucial for art and creativity in art practice, because this is where affective transformation of meaning and understanding happens, through sensing, feeling and perceiving.

In the case of these creative practice workshops, the transformation that was explored was a shift from anthropocentric thinking about water to non-anthropocentric thought, achieved through sensing, feeling and perceiving. The creative practice workshops at the Scotland flood management conference 2020 were part of a larger process, where the intent was to initiate a transformative process that would work towards developing different ways of thinking in terms of Flood Risk Management. The process began with an artistic engagement with the river and the development of underwater film of rivers. This was followed by two participatory workshops. The next step consisted of an artistic response to the creative process undertaken by the participants. The last step was an engagement with water management policy makers. This will be further discussed in terms of a transformative process between artist and scientist.

How to cite: Archer, N.: We are all tributaries: combining art and science to transform human relationship with rivers., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13360, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13360, 2021.

EGU21-13523 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

Landscapes of the Mind

Anna Hicks, Carol Cotterill, and Nicole Manley

Landscapes of the Mind

Anna Hicks1

Carol Cotterill2, 1

Nicole Archer1, 3

 

1British Geological Survey, Edinburgh, UK

2Columbia University, New York, USA

3Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK

 

What comes to mind when you think of landscape? Do you imagine sweeping mountain vistas and picturesque scenery? Or perhaps a bustling urban scene simultaneously concealing and revealing its present and historical narratives? Of course, both are logical, as would be any number of visualisations in between. The landscapes we inhabit are constantly recording both man-made and natural changes occurring in it, and on it, and so on us.

Therefore, our beliefs and emotions framing our worldview are shaped by landscape in many ways, and so play a powerful role in making decisions and judgements about how a landscape should be used. Creative expression through art and narrative can influence decision-making by bringing those emotional responses to a landscape to the fore.

In this paper, we share our experiences to date from collaborations through the AHRC-funded network “Landscapes of the Mind”. The network aims to develop understanding and communication of landscape challenges in Scotland, with a view to informing decision making about landscape change. Network participants are from diverse backgrounds: musicians to metalworkers, archaeologists to anthropologists; our commonality is in how we bear witness to the evolution of Scotland's landscape from our different perspectives, particularly the balance between landscape conservation and adaptation to changing culture, communities and societal needs.

The network was established shortly before the onset of the COVID-19 crisis so network participants, many of whom are new to working together, are exploring how the virtual space can influence and bolster the process of interdisciplinarity in-action, and bring new insights to the fore. Our attempt to flourish under current conditions has seen us adapt the visual-matrix - a psycho-social method with arts-practice - to the virtual space. This adapted approach brings together participants to engage in creative expressions online; expressions created by participants in relation to a particular theme. The creations, from photos, to poetry, to music, build the frame for the matrix, and act as a stimulus for participants to bring their associations to the material. 

We will report on the findings from the first two matrices on Landscape and Water, and Landscape and Time, showing how the methodology allowed us to explore fluidity and place, time and space, as well as the benefits and challenges of communicating thoughts through digital means.

 

How to cite: Hicks, A., Cotterill, C., and Manley, N.: Landscapes of the Mind, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13523, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13523, 2021.

EGU21-14939 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4

The enhancement of the territory through art: application of a dissemination method to the Valmarecchia and Montefeltro area (North-Central Italy)

Laura Valentini, Veronica Guerra, Maurizio Lazzari, and Olivia Nesci

EGU21-16065 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.4 | Highlight

Uniting science and art to appreciate the Earth with NatureVolve magazine

Clarissa Wright and Robert James Wright

Effective and engaging science communication with the wider public is a growing need worldwide, particularly regarding pressing environmental issues. As over half of the population are visual learners, it can be argued that visual arts have an important role to play in science communication (scicomm), when supplemented with clear, understandable writing. Scientists seldom have the opportunity to share their backgrounds and personal perspectives in academic publications, or to share their particular study niches outside of academia. A similar communication gap is also experienced by independent artists seeking to share their ideas and creations with a wider audience.

NatureVolve is a digital magazine that was launched in 2018 to bridge the gaps between science, the arts and worldwide audiences. It was founded by Clarissa Wright after her BSc and MSc studies in geology, and her previous role as an Assistant Editor at Springer Nature. The publication is divided into the sections: Science, Conservation, Scicomm, Art and Written Word. Diverse subjects, ideas and creations, all adhering to the common theme of nature, are artistically presented across these sections. By merging these different subjects on the one platform, the project is encouraging the fusion of (usually segregated) disciplines across the arts and the sciences. By also presenting the researchers behind the studies, and the artists behind the artwork, readers access a more personalised perspective of the subjects being shared.

NatureVolve occupies a unique place within both scientific and arts publishing. Articles take on a journalistic press release format or interview article, which allows greater depth to be drawn from the subject being discussed and the ideas of the interviewees. Prominent subjects highlighted are on the pressing matters of the times: including wildlife conservation, plastic pollution, marine conservation, climate change and medical science. Geology and the earth sciences have often featured in the Science section and even the Scicomm section where palaeoart is a popular topic.

The emphasis on the people behind the discipline brings out a more personalised touch to the magazine, previously not often seen in other publications. Creativity is what links the scientists and artists, exploring their thought processes, inspirations, all fuelled by an interest in the natural world its connection to human society. With high impact visual content, it is aimed to increase the awareness of science studies and creative artwork, while celebrating nature. Magazine pages are presented with a concise and colourful aesthetic with the aim of showing the art of the sciences and the science of the arts.

As the Earth is the key theme for NatureVolve – encompassing the natural world, human society and the impact we have on the planet, it is hoped we can raise awareness of key global issues through science, art and the written word. The motivations and perspectives of the creative individuals and research groups involved in this quest are brought into the spotlight, to inspire others.

 

How to cite: Wright, C. and Wright, R. J.: Uniting science and art to appreciate the Earth with NatureVolve magazine, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16065, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16065, 2021.

EOS7.5 – Games for Geoscience

EGU21-1377 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.5 | Highlight

The Mediterranean and climate change: An online participatory simulation – Results from the front lines

David Crookall, Isabel Caballero-Leiva, Laksh Sharma, Pimnutcha Promduangsri, and Pariphat Promduangsri

Modern, educational simulation/games (s/g) have a rich legacy, stretching back to the 1960s.  They are used today for communicating science in educational, environmental or governmental organizations.  Other uses are to help groups and organizations conduct research, solve complex problems or make collective decisions.

Over the last two decades, a particularly powerful, but underused, form of s/g has developed, called participatory simulation (PS).  It contains (elements of) game, simulation, role-play, experience, human interaction, decision-making, negotiation, engagement, stakeholder, etc.  It is often large scale, open ended, goal and results oriented, free form and data driven.  Of course, debriefing is a crucial component.

Last summer (2020), the International Oceans-Climate School (IOCS), of the Ocean Open University (OOP), France, planned to organize an in-person summer school with a PS as its capstone event.  We then postponed and made it an autumn school.  It then became clear that this also was impossible, and so, after some hesitation, we scrambled to turn it into an online PS (OPS).

The theme was “The Mediterranean and climate change: Impacts, people, action”.  Our overarching goal was to help participants understand the oceans-climate nexus and to become better ocean-climate-literate stakeholders.  The IOCS was an official event of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

The school ran over three days, with the OPS over two days.  We searched for a platform that would accommodate the flexibility needed for the OPS; we chose Discord.  We had participants originating from Brazil, France, India, Italy, Iran, Spain, Tunisia and the UK; ages ranged from 19 to 60 years.  It was a great success.  A detailed, online feedback form two weeks after the event collected participants’ opinions, including:

  • “It was a wonderful experience.”, :I felt very good with all the participants.”, “When I describe the experience to friends I always say that it was something really useful for my personal and professional growth.”, “It was a very enriching experience for me to meet all these people with different training and knowledge, coming from different countries.”, “Enriching moments, so much more to discover.”, “What a great experience! I felt happy, engaged and surrounded by beautiful minds.”

We will run the event again in the Spring and the late summer or autumn, with different geoscience themes.  The success of the October 2020 event raises several research questions, including:

  • How do the online and the in-person versions compare?
  • What are the advantages and drawbacks of each?
  • Which is more effective for what objectives and what results?
  • How do the two versions stack up in regard to conducting research on such events?
  • What are the implications of OPS for geoliteracy?

Our presentation will describe the event in more detail, offer tentative answers to the above questions, and help you decide if you wish to participate in the next event.  Co-authors include both organizers and participants.

How to cite: Crookall, D., Caballero-Leiva, I., Sharma, L., Promduangsri, P., and Promduangsri, P.: The Mediterranean and climate change: An online participatory simulation – Results from the front lines, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1377, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1377, 2021.

EGU21-2956 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.5

Crabby’s Reef - Using games to bring people closer to the issue of ocean acidification

Christina C. Roggatz and Christopher J. Skinner

Ocean acidification is often referred to as climate change’s hidden evil twin. As the world’s oceans partly absorb the carbon dioxide that humans are pumping into the planet’s atmosphere, the oceans’ pH decreases, making the water more acidic. This comes with a range of negative consequences, one of them being the recently uncovered impairment of the sense of smell of marine animals like fishes and crabs.

Awareness of ocean acidification, including its impacts on marine life, however, is low amongst the public. It is something that is viewed as remote to peoples’ lives, happening a long distance away and not for a long time into the future. It is important we take action now as a society to curb climate change and reduce the potential impacts of ocean acidification. Raising awareness and helping to make an emotional connection to the issue is a first step on this journey.

In Crabby’s Reef we use the power of gaming to enable players to experience the impact of this invisible and abstract process of ocean acidification. Inspired by classic arcade games, it puts players into the metaphorical shoes of Crabby, the crab. They navigate daily life on the ocean floor, guiding Crabby through the maze-like reef, seeking food and avoiding predatory octopuses who would make Crabby dinner. With each new level, you are transported to a more acidic future, your senses dampened by blurring the screen, reflecting Crabby’s loss of ability to smell the food.

With life getting harder, we ask how long can you survive?

Play the game here - https://seriousgeo.games/activities/crabbysreef/

How to cite: Roggatz, C. C. and Skinner, C. J.: Crabby’s Reef - Using games to bring people closer to the issue of ocean acidification, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2956, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2956, 2021.

EGU21-4938 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.5

Breaking The Silos: an online and narrator-led role-playing game for multi-risk DRR management

Marleen de Ruiter, Anaïs Couasnon, and Philip Ward

The increased complexity of disaster risk due to climate change, expected population growth and the increasing interconnectedness of disaster impacts across communities and economic sectors, require Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) measures and practitioners that are better able to address these complexities. Nonetheless, in the traditional risk paradigm, there is a strong focus on single-hazards and the risk faced by individual communities and sectors.

Breaking the Silos is a narrator-led, role-playing game designed to support decision makers and stakeholders in understanding and managing the complexities of implementing DRR measures in a multi-(hazard) risk setting. The game starts in de aftermath of a (randomly selected) disaster. The different roles include key decision-makers and stakeholders of a country. The team is responsible for the post-disaster recovery process and can decide to implement DRR measures. However, while some of these DRR measures can decrease risk of one hazard, they can increase the risk of another hazard. In each subsequent round, the team faces another (randomly selected) disaster. Unlike many other risk serious games, Breaking the Silos includes many random factors to better simulate reality. The roles are designed such that expert knowledge and objectives are spread throughout the participants and they can even be conflicting at times.

The game was successfully launched during the World Bank’s 2020 Understanding Risk conference. Before and after playing the game, participants were asked to complete surveys asking them about their perception of the challenges of Disaster Risk Management and whether the game raised their awareness of these challenges. The preliminary findings indicate that Breaking the Silos is a useful tool in supporting decision makers and practitioners to become aware of (the risks of) hazard-silo thinking and possible (a)synergies of DRR measures.

How to cite: de Ruiter, M., Couasnon, A., and Ward, P.: Breaking The Silos: an online and narrator-led role-playing game for multi-risk DRR management, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-4938, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4938, 2021.

EGU21-5430 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.5

Designing the Virtual River Game to support the collaborative exploration of river interventions

Robert-Jan den Haan, Mascha van der Voort, Fedor Baart, Koen Berends, and Suzanne Hulscher

Environmental decision-making concerns application of (multiple) interventions to pursue various objectives and address pressing challenges. Such decision-making is challenging as it includes evaluating the interventions’ effects on different spatial and temporal scales, weighing their inevitable trade-offs, and considering the different stakes at the table. To explore available interventions and their effects, games offer players environments that are inviting, interactive and immersive, and provide a sense of safety to experiment. These qualities make games interesting tools to engage stakeholders and support collaborative decision-making. However, to effectively accomplish this, it is necessary to tailor a game to the various types of stakeholders, who have different backgrounds and levels of expertise.

We present the Virtual River Game, a serious game that challenges players to manage a schematized stretch of a Dutch river. In the game, players freely design and test typical Dutch river interventions. To experience the interventions’ effects, the players’ scores on flood safety, biodiversity, and costs are updated with each tested design. While developing the game, we focused on how to facilitate discussion and collaboration between domain experts – e.g. hydraulic engineers and flood safety specialists – and non-experts – e.g. local residents and farmers. To accommodate domain experts, including real-world engineering models in the game was key to offer credibility to the river interventions’ in-game effects. At the same time, to enable active participation of non-experts, including such models should not make the game too overwhelming. As a solution, we developed an augmented game board, combining the computational power of computer games with the low-threshold and attractiveness of board games. The board has a hexagonal grid of 143 tiles that are always filled with modular game pieces, which combined determine each tile’s elevation and land use. Players replace game pieces on the board to apply interventions, changing the elevation or land use or both of chosen tiles. An automatic conversion of the board’s layout updates the game’s digital elevation model and land use distribution that serve as input for a hydrodynamic, ecological, and cost model. Grounded in tangible interaction, players are provided with a perceptual coupling between their actions and the computed effects by visualizing spatially explicit model output on the board through projection. Additional model output is accessible to players on a separate monitor.

Both domain experts and non-experts played the game in multiple sessions, with experts playing an in-game role not corresponding to their day-to-day professional role. After playing the game, both experts and non-experts indicated that they enjoyed playing it and that they gained new insights about both river management and the other players at the table. In particular, non-experts mostly (strongly) agreed with statements on learning in the post-game questionnaire. Moreover, observations of the sessions and feedback from players indicated that experts complemented the game’s feedback with their domain-specific knowledge, explaining for example the principles (i.e. the physics) that are applied in river management to non-experts. We conclude that the Virtual River Game’s hybrid set-up has substantial value by enabling discussion and collaboration between experts and non-experts.

How to cite: den Haan, R.-J., van der Voort, M., Baart, F., Berends, K., and Hulscher, S.: Designing the Virtual River Game to support the collaborative exploration of river interventions, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5430, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5430, 2021.

EGU21-5860 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.5 | Highlight

oKat-SIM – An Interdisciplinary Research Project to Optimize Natural Disaster Management Using Augmented Reality

Julia Ehses, Gerold Zeilinger, Marcel Hefner, Stefanie Uhde, Francesco Belli, Florian König, and David Schornsheim

In the event of a natural disaster, local authorities often have to rely on limited experience and sporadic training to make important and lifesaving decisions. This increases the stress levels of the workforce involved in the response effort and can result in an inaccurate assessment of the situation with potentially catastrophic consequences. oKat-SIM aims to support local administrative offices in natural disaster situations by providing augmented reality (AR)-based training to public authorities in order to increase geohazard awareness and improve associated responses. Our initial focus is on possible flood and landslide scenarios in three different regions of Germany: the lowlands of Görlitz, urbanized Leverkusen, and the mountainous Garmisch-Partenkirchen region. These scenarios are based on state-of-the-art modelling of realistic, cascading natural disaster events and incorporate environmental parameters such as precipitation, high-resolution topography, and examples from past events. Together with local partners, we are developing training simulations adapted to the threats posed by natural disasters in each of the study areas. We use the Unity game engine to translate GIS-based data and modeling results into the AR simulation environment. AR training immerses the participants in realistic states of emergency while maintaining direct communications, which results in safer and more rapid decision making that will ultimately protect communities from natural disasters. The success of the training will be evaluated by cognitive science methods including measuring the learning effect under different stress levels. These measurements will be used to modify the training environment to achieve optimal learning results.

How to cite: Ehses, J., Zeilinger, G., Hefner, M., Uhde, S., Belli, F., König, F., and Schornsheim, D.: oKat-SIM – An Interdisciplinary Research Project to Optimize Natural Disaster Management Using Augmented Reality, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5860, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5860, 2021.

EGU21-6454 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.5

Introducing the complexity of climate change through a videogame: Change Game – Play with the Planet

Eleonora Cogo, Silvio Gualdi, Mauro Buonocore, and Selvaggia Santin

Although the topic of climate change has gained more prominence in recent years, many people still struggle to understand the complex and widespread implications that it is likely to have on almost every sector of our society and natural environment.

Climate change is a complex issue. The physical process that regulates the feedbacks and interactions of the Earth System’s components are complicated, the consequences for society and ecosystems are extensive, as too are the implications for the economy. Many effects are not yet fully understood and are difficult to envisage.

Improving climate literacy and the public’s understanding about the causes and consequences of climate change are important to increasing civic participation and engagement. They are necessary for the deep and systemic transformation needed to create resilient and zero carbon societies, in line with the Paris Agreement goals.

Videogames have been identified as an ideal means through which to represent complexity, simulating different scenarios and testing alternative paths. ‘Change Game’ was developed by the CMCC Foundation, with a view to representing the climate system and its interactions with society and with natural ecosystems. The game was designed to be scientifically grounded, but also engaging and entertaining. 

A simplified model was developed to establish the game’s values, which covered energy and water consumption, historical GHG emissions by sectors, scenarios to reach net zero emissions, technological solutions, climate impacts, etc.

The player is put in charge of the growth and development of a city on a planet inhabited by a pre-set number of players (5-30) who are also developing their own cities. They have to provide energy, water and food to satisfy their population’s needs, build manufacturing and services industries, manage their resources, trade them with other players, invest in research, education and entertainment, and care for the health, happiness and prosperity of their community.

However, the higher the emissions that all the players on the same planet generate, the greater the challenges they will face. These include heat waves, droughts, floods, rising sea levels or the spread of new diseases.   
The activities in the game are organised within 9 macro categories: houses, factories (steel, cement, sawmill, food factories), services (school, university, hospital, mall, museum, sports center, trading center, warehouse), mines (rock, mineral, rare elements), agriculture (crops, livestock and fish), forestry (forest, ancient forest, land and marine protected areas), energy (fossil fuel, hydroelectric, solar, wind, offshore wind, tidal, nuclear, biofuel, batteries), water (well, aqueduct, water reservoir, desalination plant), negative emissions technologies.

Through education players can learn to promote sustainable behaviors which affect resource consumption as well as the growth and happiness of their populations. Investment in research determines access to more advanced technological solutions and buildings aimed at reducing GHG emissions or increasing resilience to climate change effects.               

Finally, players can interact with neighboring cities on the same planet in the multiplayer environment through trade, climate strikes, corruption attacks and fake news.

Change Game is freely available as an app for Android and IOS mobiles.

How to cite: Cogo, E., Gualdi, S., Buonocore, M., and Santin, S.: Introducing the complexity of climate change through a videogame: Change Game – Play with the Planet, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6454, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6454, 2021.

EGU21-8131 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.5

Gamified geo-challenges for immersive learning

Tom Raimondo, Justin Payne, Alicia Pollett, Steve Hill, and Roger Edmonds

Project LIVE (Learning through Immersive Virtual Environments) is a cross-disciplinary initiative at the University of South Australia to embed immersive virtual and mixed reality experiences across the breadth of our STEM teaching program. In Earth and Environmental Science, the Project LIVE team has recently created a series of gamified geo-challenges and virtual tours of instructive field sites for use in undergraduate teaching, to both supplement and enhance traditional field experiences. This presentation will demonstrate our flagship geo-challenge developed for the Hallett Cove Geological Heritage Site in Adelaide, South Australia. Entitled Beyond the Ice, it incorporates several complementary elements including an immersive VR experience, web-based geotour, iOS and Android mobile learning game and 360 street view walking trail, all of which are freely available at https://www.projectlive.org.au/beyond-the-ice. The interactive VR quest challenges students to identify fossils with a virtual hand lens, measure glacial striations with a compass, and draw the outlines of rock folds and sedimentary layers that shape the landscape with digital ink. Students are also accompanied by the encyclopaedic ‘VT’ – a virtual robot guide with a geological memory spanning 600 million years – and can take part in quizzes, collect 3D pet rocks, and even uncover hidden ‘Easter eggs’ on their journey of scientific discovery. The uptake and impact of our geo-challenges across both undergraduate student cohorts and STEM outreach audiences will be discussed, along with further geoscience and community engagement opportunities currently being explored.

How to cite: Raimondo, T., Payne, J., Pollett, A., Hill, S., and Edmonds, R.: Gamified geo-challenges for immersive learning, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8131, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8131, 2021.

EGU21-9950 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.5

VISUAL GEOGAME: if you can draw it, you can learn it

Valeria Misiti, Daniela Riposati, Francesca Di Laura, Patrizia Battelli, and Massimo Crescimbene

One of the primary activity of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) is the production of resources concerning educational and outreach projects in geophysics and natural hazard topics. This activity is aimed at transferring, periodically, results at the forefront of ongoing research to the public through an intense and comprehensive plan for scientific dissemination. Over the past few years, much attention has also been devoted to the production of scientific games or edu-games, which is an efficient combination of educational content and playful communicative aspects, designed with the aim of letting children and youngsters learn while having fun. It has been demonstrated, in fact, that learning through games and, in this case, through drawing stimulates further contacts in the brain and is therefore simpler for both people with disabilities but also for those without.

In the last two years we presented two games (Escape Volcano and GeoTrivial) and, in light of the achieved success, we decided to propose a new game: VISUAL GEOGAME. Is a revisited Visual game based on earth sciences considered in its entirety (i.e. geology, seismology, volcanology, space earth etc.etc.)

The main purpose was to create a game which might be specifically dedicated to students requiring learning support: hence the choice of the Visual Game. Scholastic inclusion is very important especially in this period during which the use of technology overrides human contact. The drawing is a quick learning method and, above all the team games are essential for inclusion of people with disabilities.

The game is very simple: participants are divided into teams of at least 2 people for a maximum of 4 teams. Tokens are placed face down on the billboard and each has a different score signed on.

Each team must choose a marker and place it into starting box. They draw a card from the deck and on the basis of the category repredented on the card they have to draw it. There are 3 categories: 1) glossary (move 1 position); 2) tools of the trade (move 2 position); 3) places (move 3 position). If the team guess the draw, the will move as much as is the category score and keep the token.

Morover, on the billboard there are bonus boxes. Is the team fall in one of it they have to draw an action. If the guess they can decide to back an opponent team of their choice.

IF YOU CAN DRAW IT, YOU CAN LEARN IT!!

How to cite: Misiti, V., Riposati, D., Di Laura, F., Battelli, P., and Crescimbene, M.: VISUAL GEOGAME: if you can draw it, you can learn it, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9950, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9950, 2021.

The disaster risk reduction (DRR) community tends to treat disasters and risk in a managerial and technocratic way, thereby disregarding the highly political nature of DRR. An alternative epistemology of disasters, as matters of concern, is proposed and tested. Mobilizing concepts from Chantal Mouffe and Bruno Latour, this paper illustrates how DRR can be transformed into a public issue. It is argued that education and policy making on DRR would benefit from a recognition of the hybrid nature of disasters. A serious game is used to test proposed epistemology. The board game simulates political decision making on the reduction of risks due to floods and landslides in West Uganda. It is hypothesized that the game can generate an ideal speech scenario that fosters discussions among players and possibly even creates a space of political confrontation. Discussions during ten gameplays in South-West Uganda have been recorded and transcribed. Participants effectively experience affects, power relations and confrontations during the game, but a call for consensus and technical solutions are sometimes used to prematurely close the discussions and move on with concrete solutions. Insights from this paper contribute to understanding why DRR is frequently treated as a technical issue in local and international disaster governance. Proposed epistemology and approaches are expected to stimulate innovative experiments towards a more political approach of DRR education and policy.

How to cite: Mertens, K. and Delima, G.: (Re)politicizing disaster governance: Simulating Conflicting Interests Over Matters of Concern By Means Of A Board Game, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10668, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10668, 2021.

EGU21-13652 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.5

Greenworks:  Science, Role-Playing, and Community Transformation

Lev Horodyskyj and Tara Lennon

Environmental crises will overwhelmingly impact Millennials and Generation Z.  Most are aware of this reality and enthusiastic about finding and promoting community and policy solutions.  However, many youths also lack the communication and collaboration skills necessary to implement change in their communities.  The Greenworks program is a collaboration between Science Voices (a nonprofit focused on improving science education) and a political science course at Arizona State University (ASU).  Teachers and students from the University of the Virgin Islands (US), Khairun University (Indonesia), and University of Campinas (Brazil) are currently involved in on-going pilot projects as well.  The program provides space for students to practice deliberation and policy-making in an online role-playing game and then implement their own proposal to address an environmental problem in their community.

In the Greenworks program, students complete a short curriculum on geoscience and governance, engage in a role-playing diplomacy game to resolve environmental issues in a fictitious world, and then implement a community project to effect change in the real world.  ASU students participate as part of an online political science course formally offered by ASU.  Students and faculty mentors at other universities are recruited by Science Voices and complete custom curricula and community projects.  As part of the role-playing game that all students participate in, students are assigned to fictitious nations and address analogous real-world environmental and political challenges through diplomacy between nations with various competing objectives.  Challenges vary from semester to semester and include trade relations, climate change, plastic pollution, pandemics, and deforestation.  Through communication channels like Slack and Discord, students share their personal experiences on these topics and collaborate on related policy options.  Students enrolled through Science Voices also develop proposals to address local problems of importance and are provided with crowdfunded grants and materials to implement their proposal.

We will describe the program in more detail, discuss the experiences of our students, and the results of the first community projects.  We will additionally discuss developing this program as a collaborative space for students from the Global North and South to partner and co-mentor each other in developing local solutions to global challenges.

How to cite: Horodyskyj, L. and Lennon, T.: Greenworks:  Science, Role-Playing, and Community Transformation, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13652, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13652, 2021.

EGU21-15339 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.5

Project rAn:  Games to promote awareness of natural disasters in young students

Jose Saraiva, Priscila Doran, and Rosa Doran

The Earth is an amazing planet. However, it is also an unpredictable and wild one – part of its many charms. Atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere are alive, and can unleash awesome forces on the whole planet, including the biosphere, of which we humans are part. It’s important to make young students aware of the fact that we all live in a planet that was not made specifically for humans, and that it is absolutely imperative that our species learns to respect it and its rhythms and cycles.

Human settlements are often located in pleasant areas, with little or no concern about their vulnerability to natural disasters. Authorities, local, regional and national, should make preparations to prevent and mitigate their occurrence, of course. But at least as important is the need to create awareness in the citizens, so they can face any disaster and react in a calm and orderly way. That task must begin at an early age. Other than learning to deal with natural disasters and avoiding panic, schoolkids can exert a powerful influence in the adult members of their families and alert them to the measures they should adopt to prepare for any future occurrence.

In project rAn, EU-funded, we aim to develop a serious game, adjusted to the age of the targets, that will teach them about four types of natural disaster (earthquakes, floods, fires and storms) and make them aware of how to prepare and react in case of one of them striking their city or village. The game will be easy to play, and given the small age of the players will not feature complex interactions. It will include contributions from teachers and groups of students from all Europe, that will be challenged to create small games on the subject, using the Scratch language.    

How to cite: Saraiva, J., Doran, P., and Doran, R.: Project rAn:  Games to promote awareness of natural disasters in young students, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15339, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15339, 2021.

EOS7.10 – Science to Action: Communication of Science and strategies to fight misinformation - Practice, Research and Reflection?

EGU21-15856 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

5 reasons why research projects should communicate their science

Marie Heidenreich

1. Science communication is relevant when it comes to getting a project approved. This applies not only to nationally funded research projects, but also to science within the Horizon Europe framework. A solid communication concept is not only a great advantage when it comes to project approval. Science communication can also increase the impact within the research community.

2. Science communication increases the impact of a project. The impact of a project is primarily assessed on the basis of publications in scientific journals. Scientists also read newspapers and watch television - and surf the Internet. Without the appealing presentation of research results, they would not necessarily become aware of studies outside their own specialist area. More and more researchers are on social networks such as Twitter and find out about new articles via their timeline. So thanks to social media, it's becoming easier to share publications online. 

3. Science communication improves collaboration within a project. A positive side effect: especially in large collaborative projects in which researchers are involved in very different disciplines, the project partners can communicate better if the different research approaches and goals are flanked by professional science communication. In their interview study “What do scientists gain from science communication?”, science communication scientists from the University of Münster asked 75 scientists from two interdisciplinary research networks and found that science communication stimulates the exchange between colleagues, imparts knowledge about research in other disciplines, provides an overview of research in the network and promotes the establishment of personal contacts among colleagues.

4. Thanks to science communication, research reaches people outside of the science community. The more clearly presented, the more interest is aroused. But we hardly need to explain that to you as the guests of this session. The communication of scientific results on the effects of plastic in the ocean caused the largely invisible phenomenon of plastic littering has now received enormous public attention and is currently perceived as one of the greatest threats to the marine environment. Many research projects that want to initiate societal change can only achieve their goals with public relations.

5. Often the decisive factor: there is funding for science communication. In everyday science, this is a crucial prerequisite for science communication to take place. Research projects can acquire additional resources and hire professional science communicators to support outreach. Therefore, the scientists can concentrate on their research. The talk will include a brief overview of the funding opportunities that are available for science communication in the EU.

How to cite: Heidenreich, M.: 5 reasons why research projects should communicate their science, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15856, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15856, 2021.

EGU21-958 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10 | Highlight

The History of Life film project

John Murray, Tiernan Henry, Tracy Frank, Labhaoise Ní Dhonnchadha, Blaneth McSharry, Gráinne McGrath, Sharon Flynn, Jeremiah Spillane, and Iain Mac Labhrainn

The History of Life film project is deeply rooted in the area of science communication, education and public engagement. Every year since 2011, NUI Galway final-year undergraduate science students taking the module History of Life have been tasked with researching a significant theme related to the evolution of life on Earth, and then producing a short documentary-style film on their chosen topic. The students work in small teams and have no prior training in film-making. Their finished films are uploaded to a specially created channel on YouTube, where they have amassed large viewing figures. The value of this multimodal teaching approach is that it engages all of the major learning domains. Cognitive skills are enhanced through acquisition, analysis and communication of knowledge, and practical skills are honed through deployment and use of technology. The students also develop their team-working skills and they find the overall learning experience both novel and rewarding: positively impacting on the affective domain. The strong temporal narrative which underpins palaeontology makes it well suited for film and in the ten years that the History of Life film project has been running, many inspiring moments have been captured by the various student teams. This presentation draws upon student feedback, along with instructor and media developer insights, to highlight key takeaways from the project and makes recommendations for optimising best practice in media-based science communication/educational initiatives.

For more information please see the following highlights compilation: https://youtu.be/0Y0RmQFb628

How to cite: Murray, J., Henry, T., Frank, T., Ní Dhonnchadha, L., McSharry, B., McGrath, G., Flynn, S., Spillane, J., and Mac Labhrainn, I.: The History of Life film project, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-958, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-958, 2021.

EGU21-15507 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

The Europlanet Evaluation Toolkit

Anita Heward and Jen DeWitt

In this presentation, we will give an overview of the Europlanet Evaluation Toolkit, a resource that aims to empower outreach providers and educators in measuring and appraising the impact of their activities. The toolkit is intended to provide advice and resources that can be simply and easily integrated into normal outreach and education activities. It is available as an interactive online resource (http://www.europlanet-eu.org/europlanet-evaluation-toolkit/), as a downloadable PDF and as a hard copy (including a book and set of activity cards).

The toolkit has been developed over a number of years with content provided by professional outreach evaluators Karen Bultitude and Jennifer DeWitt (UCL, UK). Initially, a series of focus groups and scoping discussions were held with active outreach providers from the planetary science community in order to determine what they wanted from such a toolkit, and what sort of tools would be of most interest. A shortlist of tools was developed based on these discussions, with volunteers testing out the tool instructions once they were drafted.

The toolkit begins with a brief introduction to evaluation and steps to choosing the right tools. This advice takes the form of a series of questions to help design an evaluation approach and make the most efficient and effective use possible of limited time and resources.

The toolkit offers a choice of 14 data collection tools that can be selected according to the audience (e.g. primary, secondary, interested adult, general public), the type of environment and activity (e.g. drop-in, interactive workshop, ongoing series, lecture/presentation or online) or according to when they might best be used (during, beginning/end, or after an event). The online version of the toolkit includes a set of interactive tables to help with the selection of which tool is most appropriate for any given situation.

The toolkit includes descriptions and worked examples of how to use two techniques (word-clouds and thematic coding) to analyse the data, as well as some top tips for evaluation and recommended resources.

For some of the tools, case study examples include information about how the tools have been used in the context of an event, how data was actually collected and analysed and what conclusions were reached, based on the data gathered.

The Europlanet Evaluation Toolkit has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149 (Europlanet 2024 RI) and 654208 (Europlanet 2020 RI).

How to cite: Heward, A. and DeWitt, J.: The Europlanet Evaluation Toolkit, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15507, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15507, 2021.

The Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Programme of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is driven by the need to understand the variability and trends in atmospheric composition and the related physical parameters, and to assess the consequences thereof. GAW provides reliable scientific information for a broad spectrum of users, including policymakers, on topics related to atmospheric chemical composition. The programme supports international environmental and climate agreements and improves our understanding of climate change and long-range transboundary air pollution through its work on greenhouse gases, aerosols, reactive gases, atmospheric deposition, stratospheric ozone, and ultraviolet radiation. GAW provides information based on combinations of observations, data analysis and modelling activities, and supports a number of applications at the global, regional and urban scale. This implies a variety of target groups and communication vectors. Due to the complexity and interrelations of the different constituents in atmospheric chemistry and the diversity of the target audience, communication of the related issues represents a substantial challenge. Some examples are questions like “If greenhouse gas emissions are falling, why do concentrations not decrease?”, “if satellite data show pollution reductions, why can’t we say that it is due to emission reductions?” etc.  

To sustain the credibility and increase the visibility of GAW within the WMO community and other national/international bodies, the broader scientific and policy communities, as well as the general public, increasing efforts towards “communicating GAW” are taken. The global pandemic related to COVID-19 was the dominating topic around the globe in 2020. This required adjustments to communication efforts. Due to in-person meetings being impossible, all communication efforts required delivery and engagement through virtual formats.

While emissions of carbon dioxide (among others) have decreased temporarily in 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions, concentrations have continued to increase. This has led to confusion among many non-scientists who were surprised that the restrictions they were experiencing did not even have the effect of decreasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Thereby, the crisis has provided an opportunity to explain the difference between emissions and concentrations, emphasizing that carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) are long-lived and remain in the atmosphere for a long time, and highlighting the importance to reach net-zero emissions. Similar confusion was related to the interpretation of the pollution levels and also required additional communication efforts.

Reflections on communication of atmospheric composition in the framework of WMO/GAW, including challenges and opportunities during the public health crisis will be presented.

How to cite: Volosciuk, C.: Complexities of communicating atmospheric composition and its impacts during the COVID-19 public health crisis in 2020, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2195, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2195, 2021.

EGU21-1198 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

ICOS Science Conference 2020

Janne-Markus Rintala, Maiju Tiiri, Alexander Zilliacus, Karlina Ozolina, and Elena Saltikoff

A virtual conference can be much more than another lengthy video meeting. The Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) research infrastructure was aiming for 400 participants with a traditional physical conference. Yet the organisers were pleasantly surprised when their virtual Science conference attracted more than 1000 participants. What were the key elements of this success?

The abstract submission and review process of a virtual event doesn’t have to be different from a face-to-face conference, but the double-anonymous review process used herein was considered one of the main elements of the success, because it allowed several junior scientists, and even PhD students as speakers in plenary sessions. Another benefit of using virtual platform is that it allowed participation even without any own presentation, because there are no travel nor lodging costs. Our conference was also free of charge and without any registration fees, which is in accordance with EU Open Science Policy. This encouraged student - and worldwide participation.

With regards to the technicalities, selecting well-experienced, professional virtual event organizer as a partner is essential. Keeping track of the work flow between partners and within the organisation team members is easier when the work division is agreed on at the start and a “master file” is created to keep everyone on track. This also allows for any questions and requests to be shared easily, allowing for systematic updates and traceable flow of information. Uploading of presentations two weeks in allocated voluntary practice sessions to be organized for all speakers before the conference. This practice together with professional studio video-streaming team secured running three parallel sessions smoothly throughout conference. In future, those pre-rehearsals could be made mandatory but even with this 50% of speakers practising, no major difficulties in presentations were encountered. Compared to physical conference the timing of parallel sessions succeeded with highest precision that enabled audience to switch between the sessions without missing any of the presentation beginnings nor causing any disturbance to the speaker or delays in the programme.

A dedicated public text chat in every session was found useful and essential in a virtual conference. This could easily be implemented in any physical conference as well. The chat helped the chair to select questions based on content, and even those questions which did not get floor time were answered afterwards in the chat – either by presenter or other community members. Everybody was getting an equal opportunity to ask their question or making their comment and thus getting their voices to be heard.

Recording all sessions and having them available online for limited time allowed participants a chance to listen to talks from parallel sessions afterwards, and encouraged participation across time zones.

The overall participant feedback was positive and encouraging to include some of the virtual elements in the future ICOS conferences even when pandemic situation allows traveling.

How to cite: Rintala, J.-M., Tiiri, M., Zilliacus, A., Ozolina, K., and Saltikoff, E.: ICOS Science Conference 2020, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1198, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1198, 2021.

EGU21-1940 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10 | Highlight

The Future of Conferences: Lessons Learnt from EGU20: Sharing Geoscience Online

Sam Illingworth, Hazel Gibson, and Susanne Buiter

In the spring of 2020, as the coronavirus swept across the globe, millions of people were required to make drastic changes to their lives to help contain the impact of the virus. Among those changes, scientific conferences of every type and size were forced to cancel or postpone in order to protect public health. Included in these was the European Geosciences Union (EGU) 2020 General Assembly. After a six-week pivot to an online alternative, attendees of the newly designed EGU20: Sharing Geoscience Online took part in the first geoscience conference of its size to go fully online.
 
This work explores the feedback provided by participants following this experimental conference and identifies four key themes that emerged from analysis of the questions: what did people miss from a regular meeting; and to what extent did going online impact the event itself, both in terms of challenges and opportunities?
 
The themes identified are: connection, engagement, environment, and accessibility; and include discussions of the value of informal connections and spontaneous scientific discovery during conferences, the necessity of considering the environmental cost of in-person meetings, and the opportunities for widening participation in science by investing in accessibility.
 
The responses in these themes cover both positive and negative experiences of participants and raise important questions about what conference providers of the future will need to do to meet the needs of the scientific community in the years following the coronavirus outbreak.

How to cite: Illingworth, S., Gibson, H., and Buiter, S.: The Future of Conferences: Lessons Learnt from EGU20: Sharing Geoscience Online, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1940, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1940, 2021.

EGU21-14556 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

How not to miss a great opportunity? A closer look at teaching geosciences in formal education systems

Joanna Zawiejska and Agnieszka Świętek

Pre-university education is the most comprehensive channel of communicating verified and uniform science information to young people. Despite this foundational role, how that science is taught in schools seems often overlooked, with more attention devoted to the efficacy of alternative education pathways. We argue that effective formal science education is crucial as it nurtures future willingness to embrace new scientific information, shapes perceptions, and promotes “intellectually sustainable” attitudes towards the abiotic environment and its dynamic nature. In particular, inquiry-based teaching is necessary for students to be open to life-long learning and critical thinking as adults when they inevitably confront the effects of climate change, increasing risks from natural hazards, environmental change and simultaneous expansion of social media as a basic, if not primary, source of information about the world. Based on the analysis of Polish education system and curricula, and on interviews with geosciences teachers participating in targeted workshops, we identify systemic aspects of formal education that influence effectiveness of science communication likely to affect student attitudes, with particular regard to geohazards, related risks and to environmental protection. Factors that influence effectiveness of that education include (i) adequate knowledge transfer between fast-developing geosciences and the education system, (ii) progress in geosciences education and didactics research, (iii) long-term teacher training, (iv) progress in development and availability of innovative education tools, (v) development, construction and topicality of geosciences curricula content, (vi) degree of freedom by the teachers in interpretation and following the curriculum content, and (vii) consistency in curriculum content throughout the education cycle and across subjects that include geosciences topics. Coordination of these aspects is challenging, especially since each is designed, driven, supervised and often financed by different actors. Particular attention should be given to the timely incorporation of current scientific knowledge into school curricula to avoid significant time lags in the content of communicated information and resultant collation of contradictory messages that students receive. Finally, we emphasize the urgent need for development of post-diploma education programmes and similar initiatives that will support geosciences teachers

How to cite: Zawiejska, J. and Świętek, A.: How not to miss a great opportunity? A closer look at teaching geosciences in formal education systems, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14556, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14556, 2021.

EGU21-7943 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

Going beyond the one-off: How can STEM engagement programmes with young people have real lasting impact?

Martin Archer, Jennifer DeWitt, Carol Davenport, Olivia Keenan, Lorraine Coghill, Anna Christodoulou, Samantha Durbin, Heather Campbell, and Lewis Hou

A major focus in the STEM public engagement sector concerns engaging with young people, typically through schools. The aims of these interventions are often to positively affect students’ aspirations towards continuing STEM education and ultimately into STEM-related careers. Most schools engagement activities take the form of short one-off interventions that, while able to achieve positive outcomes, are limited in the extent to which they can have lasting impacts on aspirations. We review various different emerging programmes of repeated interventions with young people, assessing what impacts can realistically be expected. Short series of interventions appear also to suffer some limitations in the types of impacts achievable. However, deeper programmes that interact with both young people and those that influence them over significant periods of time (months to years) seem to be more effective in influencing aspirations. We discuss how developing a Theory of Change and considering young people’s wider learning ecologies are required in enabling lasting impacts in a range of areas.

How to cite: Archer, M., DeWitt, J., Davenport, C., Keenan, O., Coghill, L., Christodoulou, A., Durbin, S., Campbell, H., and Hou, L.: Going beyond the one-off: How can STEM engagement programmes with young people have real lasting impact?, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7943, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7943, 2021.

EGU21-7885 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10 | Highlight

Science into schools: reviewing and designing useful online teaching resources on glaciers, Antarctica and climate change.

Bethan Davies, Laura Boyall, Jen Thornton, Huw Griffiths, Peter Neff, Klaus Dodds, Simon Ross, Addy Pope, Katie Hall, and Jason Sawle

www.AntarcticGlaciers.org was set up in 2012 to promote public understanding of glaciers and climate change. The website aims to connect researchers to the next generation, to focus on make science accessible and interesting, and to provide an easy-to-find resource for teachers, with relevant, engaging, original content, interesting visuals and teaching resources. This approach helps scientists connect with a large community; there are 250,000 GCSE Geography school students in the UK alone.

 

AntarcticGlaciers.org is used as a teaching resource by numerous universities and schools worldwide, and is recommended explicitly to teachers by the UK Geographical Association, SCAR, the Quaternary Research Association, the Royal Geographical Society and the Geologists’ Association, among others. Resources from the website have been used in numerous school textbooks and MOOCs. Evaluation of user statistics shows that, to date, AntarcticGlaciers.org has received >3.2 million page views from >1.7 million visitors located across the globe. It has been well cited by diverse news outlets and scientific institutions including NASA, NSIDC, AGU, EGU and RealClimate.org. Google Analytics data shows that a substantial portion of the audience are engaged in the education sector. The website is the top or second hit in Google for a number of related search terms, and the majority of the traffic originates from organic searches.

 

AntarcticGlaciers.org is supported by an unpaid Advisory Board comprising Higher Education professionals and practicing school teachers. The Advisory Board, in conjunction with focus groups and interviews held with teachers and teaching professional bodies, helps to guide website development. These interviews have revealed few appropriate teaching resources covering Antarctica for younger age groups (11-14 years). Resources that focused on quantitative data, introducing GIS and mapping, and that were clearly linked into the curriculum, were particularly sought after. Teachers indicated that existing content is often too hard and needs to be rewritten. Case studies, exciting multimedia visuals, interactive GIS and interesting student exercises are intensely desired. In current times, accessibility for learners at home is key priority. The limited attention spans of children means that large blocks of text do not work well and are best broken up with multimedia resources. Interactivity engages the learner and increases knowledge retention. Supporting teachers in teaching these topics, by developing engaging and exciting introductory content, is therefore a critical outreach goal.

 

In this project, funded by the Antarctic Science Bursary, academic experts have worked with pedagogical consultants and ESRI educational consultants to develop a series of four ESRI StoryMap collections that cover: Introduction to Antarctica, Antarctic Wildlife, Antarctica and Climate Change, and People in Antarctica. These fully interactive StoryMaps include student mapping exercises, videos and interviews with experts, high quality photography and engaging imagery. They are tightly keyed into the national curriculum, and by working with educational experts, we have attempted to ensure that they are useful for teachers. Reviews by independent stakeholders at the final stage of the project will ensure that the StoryMaps will be effective in the classroom, especially in an online learning environment.

How to cite: Davies, B., Boyall, L., Thornton, J., Griffiths, H., Neff, P., Dodds, K., Ross, S., Pope, A., Hall, K., and Sawle, J.: Science into schools: reviewing and designing useful online teaching resources on glaciers, Antarctica and climate change., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7885, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7885, 2021.

EGU21-7383 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

Engaging Audiences - new tools and innovative methods for polar education, engagement and communication

Inga Beck, Sophie Weeks, Pia Cassarini, Julia Dooley, Betsy Wilkening, David Marinez, and Neelu Singh

PEI is the leading international professional network for polar educators and scientists, formed in 2012 as an outcome of the Education and Outreach activities of the IPY, connecting polar education, research and the global community.  The organisation encourages collaboration, networking and dialogue between teachers and researchers developing science communication and engagement tools and methodologies, integrating and evaluating learning and engagement at all stages of the research process. Three opportunities to be involved in this work are highlighted.   

  

International Collaboration

PEI, collaborating with IASC, SCAR and APECS is working with researchers and polar educators to review and update Polar Science and Global Change - An International Resource for Education and Outreach (IPY2010), a comprehensive book of teaching and communication resources including scientific information, research material, methods and hands-on activities to bring polar research into classrooms and the community. The updated online version will provide existing and new resources, in multiple languages, downloadable as chapters and activities including: 

Current science and future research questions

Emerging topics - 3rd pole, remote sensing and microplastics

Activities/Labs for teaching polar science

Communication techniques for different audiences

Public outreach initiatives

Capacity building and careers

Indigenous knowledge

Opportunities are available to join the collaborative group of educators and scientists to evaluate the existing resource and contribute to developing a new online resource.

 

Professional Networking in Bits and Bytes

PEI members have been connecting, collaborating, and creating in an online environment since 2012. PEI members also get together at the PEI biennial international workshop to share and evaluate current polar education, outreach and science communication initiatives with international peers and experts. In preparation for the 2022 PEI Iceland workshop, members will present a programme of online professional development experiences for polar educators, science communicators and community members beginning in Spring 2021, highlighting strengths and challenges of engaging audiences . These will be shared freely and evaluated through discussion. 

 

Global Dialogue

PEI welcomes participation in a global cafe, connecting interdisciplinary and diverse communities, encouraging ongoing dialogue about effective polar education and action.

There are many networks and partnerships who engage in polar education, science communication, community learning and research but there are few opportunities to collect together this experience and expertise on a global scale. The first global conversation - Connecting Education, Indigenous Knowledge & Arctic Research, will contribute material for a report to the Arctic Science Ministerial. It Aims to connect dialogues about polar education and outreach, particularly concerning the Arctic, which is changing faster than any other environment on the planet.This is a unique opportunity for science, education and community partners with an interest in the Arctic to weave networks, lead dialogue and participate in a global conversation.

How to cite: Beck, I., Weeks, S., Cassarini, P., Dooley, J., Wilkening, B., Marinez, D., and Singh, N.: Engaging Audiences - new tools and innovative methods for polar education, engagement and communication, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7383, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7383, 2021.

EGU21-4690 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

Communicating Climate Change to broad public through Educations - Project KlimaAlps

Cornelia Baumann and Inga Beck

Education is key in order to create a generation that thinks and acts sustainable and that considers nature as one of the most important good.Within the three years Interreg Project ‘KlimaAlps’ (www.klimaalps.eu) – making climate change visible - one major task is the establishment of a training for educators, to become a certified ‘Climate-Pedagogue’ for the alpine region. The ‘Climate-Pedagogue’-training contains background information of climate change in the Alps and a variety of innovative educational tools and methods. It covers aspects of the high mountain areas, rivers and lakes, human beings, agriculture as well as moors.  The project is managed by the ‘Energiewende Oberland’; five additional partners from Austria and Bavaria are responsible for e. g. a high quality of the taught scientific information (Environmental Research Station Schneefernerhaus), the didactical input (University of Innsbruck, Department of Geography), the outreach activities and the implementation (Naturpark Karwendel, Klimabündnis Oberösterreich, Landratsamt Garmisch-Partenkirchen). During the last one and half years, the concept for the ‘Climate-Pedagogue’- training was worked out in cooperation with other environmental facilities and in March 2021 the first lectures of a pilot run with over 30 selected participants were held. In total there will be two runs in 2021 in order to evaluate the recent version of the training as good as possible. The next and long-term steps will be the firm establishment of a chargeable ‘Climate-Pedagogue’ – Training for every interested person for at least the coming ten years, as well as the strengthening and growing of the network. The presentation will give a short overview about the entire project as well as details about the ‘Climate-Pedagogue’ – Training and some first impressions of the already hold lectures in 2021.

How to cite: Baumann, C. and Beck, I.: Communicating Climate Change to broad public through Educations - Project KlimaAlps, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-4690, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4690, 2021.

EGU21-12105 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

Landscapes to Lifescapes - Sociotechnical interventions in public engagement 

Christopher Skinner, Alison Lloyd Wiliams, Maggie Mort, and Joanne Coles

Flooding is recognised as a powerful agent of geomorphology. During a few hours of a flood event, more change can occur to a river and its valley than accumulated changes over several decades. Floods are also a powerful force of change in our human experience. Floods (re)shape lives, communities and societies, causing devastation and upheaval but also creating experience and enhanced understanding among flood-affected people of the need to adapt and live with water. So, to appreciate the full of impacts of flooding it is important to consider and communicate the ways it changes both 'landscapes and lifescapes'.

In the Landscapes to Lifescapes online exhibition, hosted on The Flood Hub (https://thefloodhub.co.uk/), social scientists and geomorphologists collaborate to explore the material and social meaning of flooding. ‘Landscapes’ shows the complex and varied forms of flooding and how these alter rivers and valleys, visualised by digital activities from the SeriousGeoGames Lab. ‘Lifescapes’ illuminates some of the effects of flooding on families and communities, using flood testimonies gathered from a series of qualitative participative studies. The exhibition culminates in a 360 virtual reality experience, telling the true story of a young boy caught up in flooding. Help Callum was created combining software designed for videogames and a real flood narrative, allowing visitors to experience Callum’s journey from flood victim to flood activist, through his eyes and using his words.

The aim of the exhibition is to promote flood resilience knowledge and actions to the users through: raising awareness of flood risk and recovery, including particular impacts on children and young people; encouraging the users’ agency by highlighting actions that can be taken at household and community level; and modelling positive behaviours by providing examples and case studies. Evaluation is conducted throughout using feedback boards and polls. 

How to cite: Skinner, C., Lloyd Wiliams, A., Mort, M., and Coles, J.: Landscapes to Lifescapes - Sociotechnical interventions in public engagement , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12105, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12105, 2021.

EGU21-4565 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

Educational course "Creation of virtual geological outcrops of the outskirts of Lviv"

Ihor Bubniak, Serhiy Tsikhon, Anatoliy Tserklevych, Yevheniy Shylo, and Mariia Oliinyk

We present a new educational course "Creation of virtual geological outcrops of the outskirts of Lviv" for students of geological specialties. Discipline "Creation of virtual geological outcrops of the outskirts of Lviv" is a selective discipline for students of 2-3 courses of various specialties, which is lectured in the amount of 3 credits (according to ECTS). The course is 32 hours of classroom classes, 16 hours of these of lectures, the rest 16 hours of practical classes and 58 hours of self-study.

The course is in three parts. First is preparatory ones. Students get acquainted with the geological structure of Lviv, prepare equipment for field work.

The field stage (the second part of the course) includes the survey of 3-4 geological objects around Lviv. These can be natural outcrops, quarries. A particularly valuable object for learning is the Honey Cave, located within the city limits. Depending on the object, we choose the type of survey— digital photogrammetry or terrestrial laser scanning. Each group of 4 students explores 2 objects.

The third cameral period includes field data processing. Students create 3D geological models and perform various measurements on them. Students compare different types of models to choose the best one. At this stage, students use a variety of software available in institutions. The final stage of the course is the preparation of a report and passing the exam.

The project war partly financed by EGU HE Teaching Award.

How to cite: Bubniak, I., Tsikhon, S., Tserklevych, A., Shylo, Y., and Oliinyk, M.: Educational course "Creation of virtual geological outcrops of the outskirts of Lviv", EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-4565, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4565, 2021.

EGU21-16353 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

Virtual Advocacy Days for Science in Times of Crisis: Communications and Engagement Influencing Decision-Making

Michael Villafranca, Brittany Webster, and Elizabeth Landau

Communicating the value of science to policymakers has never been more importance, but how do you make a difference while adhering to new norms for physical distancing? Regardless of one’s level of technological aptitude, and no matter if time constraints exist, scientists can still effectively communicate the value of their science to policymakers through virtual means. The Public Affairs team from the American Geophysical Union will share lessons learned from several virtual advocacy events held in 2020 and will cover a few communications strategies for influencing policymakers through virtual science policy engagements—from virtual meetings with policymakers to social media to traditional media.

How to cite: Villafranca, M., Webster, B., and Landau, E.: Virtual Advocacy Days for Science in Times of Crisis: Communications and Engagement Influencing Decision-Making, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16353, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16353, 2021.

EGU21-10189 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10 | Highlight

The 360 Lab

Josh Wolstenholme and Christopher Skinner

Flooding is a major risk to lives and properties globally and this risk is increasing because of several factors, not least the increase of sea level and changes to patterns of precipitation due to climate change. Whilst flood management interventions can reduce the risk and the impact of flooding, it is not possible, and never will be possible, to stop flooding completely and this necessitates a public that is informed and equipped to take actions to increase their personal resilience.

Successful learning in Geosciences requires 3D thinking yet many of the tools used by educators are 2D visualisations, relying on the student’s individual ability and imagination. There has been an increasing use of interactive 3D visualisations, particularly of geological outcrops, yet the methods used to produce these either rely on expensive equipment or processing using high-specification machines. The 360 Lab uses new functionality offered by state-of-the-art tablets to rapidly capture high-resolution 3D scenes of flood management interventions, for example, woody dams.

The 3D scenes were used to create interactive models of the flood management features, allowing people to get, virtually, ‘hands-on’ and explore them. The 3D models are fully compatible with virtual reality headsets. Guided tours of schemes have been developed to be used by schools, showing how features are installed and providing a focus to discuss how they work and how effective they might be.  This overcomes challenges to accessing such locations, including location, budget, accessibility, and Covid-19 related restrictions. Future developments include using the rapid scans to create 3D printed models of features for face-to-face learning and scaled experiments.

How to cite: Wolstenholme, J. and Skinner, C.: The 360 Lab, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10189, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10189, 2021.

EGU21-14571 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

Ocean science in action: communicating cutting edge advances in marine research and technology via Massive Online Open Courses

Zoe Jacobs, Ekaterina Popova, Lucy Cox, and Daniel Gill

MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses are picking up momentum in popularity. Unlike regular courses, MOOCs can attract many thousands of enrollees around the world and engage broader audiences outside of academia, such as governent officials and NGOs. With scientific communication and policy engagement practices shifting online due to the current pandemic, MOOCs can be seen as a digital tool that acts as a confluence for education, public engagement and capacity development. In this presentation we will introduce you to a MOOC “Ocean Sceince in Action: Addressing marine ecosystems and food security”, which attracted ~1800 participants from over 100 countries for its first run in October 2020 with these numbers continuing to increase for subsequent runs (the next started on 18th January). The MOOC aims to introduce the participants to innovative marine technologies and their applications used to tackle the challenges of the sustainable management of marine ecosystems with specific lectures focussed on food security, impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems and fisheries, the sustainable development goals and the Ocean Decade 2030.

Marine autonomous systems are becoming ever more reliable and easy to use for environmental observations – at a fraction of the cost of a research ship. Earth observation satellites monitor the oceans daily, collecting a wide range of marine data, most of which are freely available from global archives. Ocean models of increasingly high resolution make it possible to explore regional ecosystem dynamics and gain insights into reasons for variability and change. Engaging participants globally into the cutting edge research and the use of marine data requires novel approaches to engagement, communication and teaching. Using elements of MOOC created by SOLSTICE (Sustainable Oceans, Livelihoods and food Security Through Increased Capacity in Ecosystem research in the Western Indian Ocean) program, this presentation will explore how research projects can create inspiring and informative digital content to communicate their findings to achieve a long lasting legacy of their results and better inform managers and politicians responsible for decision making.   

How to cite: Jacobs, Z., Popova, E., Cox, L., and Gill, D.: Ocean science in action: communicating cutting edge advances in marine research and technology via Massive Online Open Courses, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14571, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14571, 2021.

In order to have an impact in practice, research approaches should reflect real conditions as much as possible and generate user-oriented findings. To this end, we need an interdisciplinary exchange among experts and authorities considering institutional structures. Moreover, a combination of innovative methods is required to assess the diverse public’s needs and to generate useful findings for the design of products and services to communicate multi-hazard information. Furthermore, the findings should be communicated to the scientific community as well as to the authorities and the public. Our contribution demonstrates a successful approach for involving different stakeholders in the design process of products and services in a multi-hazard context.

For our research, we are using a participatory and user-centred systemic approach with a major emphasis on user requirements driving future developments. It can be understood as a multi-perspective bottom-up approach, involving not only scientists from different disciplines but also authorities (e.g. decision makers) and the public. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods thereby allows to understand the wider social and structural context and thus to implement sustainable and suitable services and products.

A combination of various methods is used in this approach to assess the needs of the scientists, the public and the authorities. With surveys, we assess general patterns and needs and identify challenges and potentials. To compensate for the artificial setting questionnaires establish, we include experiments (e.g. conjoint choice experiments) into the surveys to test different options. With interviews or focus group discussions, we further deepen aspects that we quantitatively assessed in order to better understand people’s beliefs behind their choices. Moreover, we apply interactive methods from the design thinking toolbox, such as user-driven prototyping. This methods allow an understanding of users’ thinking and reveals needs and features that developers may not have thought of. Furthermore, we used the actor constellation – a role-play for jointly sorting out the relevance of various involved actors – to map the connections between the actors and to identify potential conflicts. To gain further insights and to contentiously enhance our products and services, we maintain a constant dialogue with different stakeholders.

An important aspect of this dialogue is the transparent and active communication of the findings to the scientific community as well as to the authorities and the public. For this purpose, we use the following mechanisms: co-creation of knowledge with key stakeholders, open-access papers for scientific journals, personal contact with actors involved, presentation at conferences, non-scientific reports for authorities (in the national languages), blog posts, social media posts, and exchange of knowledge and experience via project platforms. In order to be successful, the information communicated should meet the target audiences’ expectations.

 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 821115.

How to cite: Dallo, I. and Marti, M.: How to best involve different stakeholders in the design process of products and services to communicate multi-hazard information?, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-815, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-815, 2021.

EGU21-8308 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

When color theory meets seismology: Principled visualization design for seismic hazard maps 

Max Schneider and Fabrice Cotton

Probabilistic seismic hazard estimates are a key ingredient of earthquake risk mitigation strategies and are usually communicated through seismic hazard maps. Though evidence exists that visual design properties are key for effective communication using such maps, few authors describe their approach in visualizing seismic hazard. Current maps use colors, legends and data classification schemes which are suboptimal, from the visualization perspective. As such, they have the danger of miscommunicating seismic hazard. We present a set of principles regarding color choice, legend design, and classification of the continuous hazard estimate for categorical mapping. These principles are based on (1) communication goals for the seismic hazard phenomenon, (2) empirically-validated recommendations from the visualization literature and (3) other best practices in map design. We discuss the process of redesigning the German seismic hazard map using these principles. A set of prototype maps adhering to these principles are presented. We also describe ongoing efforts to test the redesigned maps, as well as how to use them to further communicate the uncertainty around probabilistic hazard estimates.

How to cite: Schneider, M. and Cotton, F.: When color theory meets seismology: Principled visualization design for seismic hazard maps , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8308, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8308, 2021.

EGU21-13565 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

Failure to alert? Exploring perceptions of ShakeAlert during the 2019 Ridgecrest Earthquake SequenceShow affiliations

Sara Mcbride, Robert de Groot, Tao Ruan, Qin Lv, and Qingkai Kong

On July 4, 2019, a M6.4 earthquake struck Ridgecrest, California. The next evening, on July 5, an even larger M7.1 rattled the region. The ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System for the West Coast of the United States detected and issued ShakeAlert Messages for both earthquakes to pilot users of the system. Several ShakeAlert technical partners, including the Caltech UserDisplay demonstration console, also delivered alerts to their users. However, the Los Angeles City application (app), powered by ShakeAlert, developed and being tested by the City of Los Angeles did not deliver ShakeAlerts to approximately 700,000 test users in Los Angeles County. This is because the alerting threshold of the estimated shaking (above Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) IV, potentially damaging shaking) was not met for either event in Los Angeles County. While the minimum magnitude threshold of M5.0 for both earthquakes was met, the shaking estimated by the ShakeAlert system indicated that no part of Los Angeles County would experience levels of shaking that would be damaging. Although the ShakeAlert System performed as designed—in both the Ridgecrest area as well as in Los Angeles—various media outlets and initial feedback from LA City app users suggest that the public perceived that the system did not work.

This presentation offers an analysis of media and social media data related to the perceived performance of the ShakeAlert System during the Ridgecrest earthquake sequence. Specially, we focus on a comparison between media depictions and social media activity in the two geographic regions that did and did not receive a ShakeAlert message, Kern County and Los Angeles, respectively. This represents in many ways a natural experiment, and it is important to learn from these early perceptions of this emergent system.

How to cite: Mcbride, S., de Groot, R., Ruan, T., Lv, Q., and Kong, Q.: Failure to alert? Exploring perceptions of ShakeAlert during the 2019 Ridgecrest Earthquake SequenceShow affiliations, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13565, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13565, 2021.

EGU21-147 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

Communicating in the aftermath of an earthquake: when Twitter proves to be a trustworthy and empathetic information channel.

Marina Corradini, Laure Fallou, Rémy Bossu, and Frédéric Roussel

Twitter has proved to be a powerful tool for the dissemination of scientific information in the aftermath of a seismic event. During an earthquake crisis, the affected population is in need of rapid, reliable information on what has just happened and what to do next to stay safe. However, it is not rare that reliable earthquake information takes a few minutes to be accessible and shared with the population. This shortcoming can have harmful impact: every time there is a lack of information, rumors fill the void and misinformation spreads. To make matters worse, scientific communication is often jargon-laden and hence perceived as overly technical, inappropriate, and unfeeling. Effective earthquake communication must therefore be:

  • rapid and clear, to prevent fake news from spreading;
  • transparent, by acknowledging uncertainty if reliable information is not available yet;
  • empathetic and compassionate, to decrease anxiety and promote a sense of calming.

In this light, we discuss the communication strategy of @LastQuake, the official Twitter channel (160k followers) of the Euro-Med Seismological Centre. When an earthquake strikes and is felt by the population, real-time information on the seismic event begins to be automatically published via a twitter-robot. These automatic tweets range from easily-accessible scientific information about the earthquake location and magnitude, to the shaking felt by the earthquake eyewitnesses, to the safety guidelines and –where applicable– to tsunami warnings. Our automatic tweets have little or no technical jargon. The Information is primarily accessed by users who are in the midst of responding and possibly traumatized. Hence our words, tone, and images have been carefully chosen to provide competent and appropriate communication. Meanwhile, when necessary, further tweets may be manually published to counter the onset of specific false claims and theories, or to address cultural and situational specific needs.  

Our discussion will outline the current @lastquake twitter-bot environment and discuss evidence-based best practices for using Twitter for earthquake crisis communication to avoid misinformation and promote self and community efficacy.

How to cite: Corradini, M., Fallou, L., Bossu, R., and Roussel, F.: Communicating in the aftermath of an earthquake: when Twitter proves to be a trustworthy and empathetic information channel. , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-147, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-147, 2021.

Misinformation about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a pressing societal challenge. Across two studies, one preregistered (n = 1,771 and n = 1,777), we assess the efficacy of two “prebunking” interventions aimed at improving people’s ability to spot manipulation techniques commonly used in COVID-19 misinformation, across three different cultural contexts (English, French, and German). We find that Go Viral!, a novel 5-minute “prebunking” browser game, (a) increases the perceived manipulativeness of misinformation about COVID-19, (b) improves people’s confidence in their ability to spot misinformation, and (c) reduces self-reported willingness to share misinformation with others. The first two effects remain significant for at least one week after gameplay. We also find that reading real-world infographics from UNESCO improve people’s ability and confidence in spotting COVID-19 misinformation (albeit with a smaller effect size than the game). 

How to cite: Roozenbeek, J. and Dryhurst, S.: Towards psychological herd immunity: Cross-cultural evidence for two prebunking interventions against COVID-19 misinformation, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12138, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12138, 2021.

EGU21-337 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10 | Highlight

Giving Facts a fighting chance against misinformation

Bärbel Winkler and John Cook

Skeptical Science is a volunteer-run website publishing refutations of climate misinformation. Some members of the Skeptical Science team actively research best-practices refutation techniques while other team members use the provided materials to share debunking techniques effectively either in writing or through presentations. In this submission, we highlight several of our publications and projects, designed to help to give facts a fighting chance against misinformation. While some of the resources are nominally related to climate change, the underlying techniques apply across different topics. Resources include the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) “Denial101x - Making sense of Climate Science Denial” co-produced with the University of Queensland in 2015, the “FLICC-framework” explaining the taxonomy of science denial with its five main techniques (fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, cherry picking, and conspiracy theories), the Debunking Handbook 2020 which summarizes research findings and expert advice about debunking misinformation, and the Conspiracy Theory Handbook distilling research findings and expert advice on dealing with conspiracy theories. We will also introduce the Cranky Uncle smartphone game, using critical thinking, gamification, and cartoons to interactively explain science denial techniques and build resilience against misinformation.

How to cite: Winkler, B. and Cook, J.: Giving Facts a fighting chance against misinformation, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-337, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-337, 2021.

EGU21-15219 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10 | Highlight

How prediction statistics can help us cope when we are shaken, scared and irrational

Yavor Kamer, Shyam Nandan, Stefan Hiemer, Guy Ouillon, and Didier Sornette

Nature is scary. You can be sitting at your home and next thing you know you are trapped under the ruble of your own house or sucked into a sinkhole. For millions of years we have been the figurines of this precarious scene and we have found our own ways of dealing with the anxiety. It is natural that we create and consume prophecies, conspiracies and false predictions. Information technologies amplify not only our rational but also irrational deeds. Social media algorithms, tuned to maximize attention, make sure that misinformation spreads much faster than its counterpart.

What can we do to minimize the adverse effects of misinformation, especially in the case of earthquakes? One option could be to designate one authoritative institute, set up a big surveillance network and cancel or ban every source of misinformation before it spreads. This might have worked a few centuries ago but not in this day and age. Instead we propose a more inclusive option: embrace all voices and channel them into an actual, prospective earthquake prediction platform (Kamer et al. 2020). The platform is powered by a global state-of-the-art statistical earthquake forecasting model that provides near real-time earthquake occurrence probabilities anywhere on the globe (Nandan et al. 2020). Using this model as a benchmark in statistical metrics specifically tailored to the prediction problem, we are able to distill all these voices and quantify the essence of predictive skill. This approach has several advantages. Rather than trying to silence or denounce, we listen and evaluate each claim and report the predictive skill of the source. We engage the public and allow them to take part in a scientific experiment that will increase their risk awareness. We effectively demonstrate that anybody with an internet connected device can make an earthquake prediction, but that it is not so trivial to achieve skillful predictive performance.

Here we shall present initial results from our global earthquake prediction experiment that we have been conducting on www.richterx.com for the past two years, yielding more than 10,000 predictions. These results will hopefully demystify the act of predicting an earthquake in the eyes of the public, and next time someone forwards a prediction message it would arouse more scrutiny than panic or distaste.

Nandan, S., Kamer, Y., Ouillon, G., Hiemer, S., Sornette, D. (2020). Global models for short-term earthquake forecasting and predictive skill assessment. European Physical Journal ST. doi: 10.1140/epjst/e2020-000259-3
Kamer, Y., Nandan, S., Ouillon, G., Hiemer, S., Sornette, D. (2020). Democratizing earthquake predictability research: introducing the RichterX platform. European Physical Journal ST. doi: 10.1140/epjst/e2020-000260-2 

How to cite: Kamer, Y., Nandan, S., Hiemer, S., Ouillon, G., and Sornette, D.: How prediction statistics can help us cope when we are shaken, scared and irrational, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15219, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15219, 2021.

EGU21-10614 | vPICO presentations | EOS7.10

Translating the geological record into isiXhosa

Rosalie Tostevin, Sinelethu Hashibi, and Batande Getyengana

Outreach and education work are commonly conducted in English1, but people engage more and understand better when the conversation is in their native tongue2–4. In South Africa, English is a first language for under 10% of the population, yet it dominates scientific discourse, alienating huge sections of the population5. To improve public engagement outcomes in South Africa, we are creating a linguistic framework for talking about geological sciences in indigenous African languages, starting with isiXhosa. IsiXhosa is the mother tongue of over 8 million people, and is mutually intelligible with Zulu, Northern Ndebele and Southern Ndebele, meaning it is potentially accessible to 23 million people.

This project is challenging because many geological terms such as meteorite or magma have no direct equivalent in isiXhosa. Therefore, part of this project involves building an open access geological dictionary. This presents an exciting opportunity to generate new, more intuitive and accessible vocabulary. The geological dictionary could provide a tool to transform geology departments, museums and public outreach events. It could also support international geologists to better engage with communities in their field areas.

Using this new vocabulary, we have written short stories summarising the most compelling, relevant parts of South Africa’s geological history. We have eschewed stuffy science writing in favour of compelling stories about our shared geological history that can spark conversation in social settings. The written form will be hosted on a website, and the stories will be recorded, with plans to broadcast them as a regular segment on a Xhosa radio station.

1Hamid, MO, Nguyen, HTM and Baldauf, R (2013) Introduction. Current Issues in Language Planning, 14(1).

2Benson, (2004) The importance of mother tongue-based schooling for educational quality. Paper commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2005, The Quality Imperative, UNESCO, Paris.

3King, K and Mackey, A (2007) The bilingual edge: Why, when, and how to teach your child a second language. New York: Collins.

4Salili, F and Tsui, A (2005) ‘The effects of medium of instruction on students’ motivation and learning’, in Hoosain, R and Salili, F (eds) Language in multicultural education (Series: Research in Multicultural Education and International Perspectives) 135-156. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

5Nomlomo, Vuyokazi Sylvia. Science teaching and learning through the medium of English and IsiXhosa: A comparative study in two primary schools in the Western Cape. Diss. University of the Western Cape, 2007.

How to cite: Tostevin, R., Hashibi, S., and Getyengana, B.: Translating the geological record into isiXhosa, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10614, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10614, 2021.

EOS9.1 – How to make the most out of vEGU21: Gather Online

EGU21-16601 | vPICO presentations | EOS9.1

How to vEGU: display uploads and commenting

Hazel Gibson and Terri Cook

In 2020 as an emergency response to the COVID-19 outbreak, we at EGU pivoted to an online-only conference in a very short period of time. Although this meant that lots of things that we normally enjoy about our General Assembly were lost, some things were also gained, as we were able to experiment with digital solutions to the challenges of digitally presenting science. One of these solutions, the online pre-uploads of display materials and longer-term commenting on them, was very popular, so we are bringing it back again for vEGU21…. with a few adjustments. So how do you upload your displays and comment on materials this year? It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!

1: Add display materials!

From 31 March to 31 May, all accepted abstracts will have a space provided to upload display materials. These materials can be whatever you want – a quick slide show, a poster-style image, or a long-form version of your presentation slides – much like you can have in a regular PICO session. You can also, in addition to your data materials, upload a video that can even be a full-length recording of your talk! Your only limit is in the file size: you have 50 MB per abstract for *.pdf, *.ppt/pptx, *.pps/ppsx, *.png, and *.jpg files, and 200 MB for *.mp4 video files.

2: Create a vPICO summary slide!

During the first part of each vPICO session, each author has a scheduled time slot to give a 2-minute summary of their research. This 2 minute summary will help your audience to decide what ideas they want to follow up with speakers when discussing the work in more detail during the subsequent chat session. To facilitate your live 2-minute presentation, you need to upload a single summary slide as a *.png or *.jpg with a resolution of 150 dpi and 16:9 dimensions (in addition to your longer display materials).

3: Commenting is cool!

Like last year, commenting will be open on all uploaded display materials between 31 March and 31 May. The main difference for 2021 is that during this time, only registered conference attendees will be able to comment, unless the abstract authors have opted out of the commenting feature (in which case comments will be turned off). Authors will be notified of any new comments by email.

We are very excited to see all your wonderful and diverse display materials uploaded before 19 April 2021, though you’ll be able to make adjustments at any time during the two-month commenting period. The 2-minute summary slide has to be uploaded at least 24 hours ahead of your scheduled presentation time, so we are ready to help you present your work for 2021.

How to cite: Gibson, H. and Cook, T.: How to vEGU: display uploads and commenting, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16601, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16601, 2021.

EGU21-16602 | vPICO presentations | EOS9.1

How to vEGU: networking

Simon Clark, Hazel Gibson, Terri Cook, and Chloe Hill

This year vEGU21 has flexible networking tools available to conveners and attendees, allowing people to engage and socialise with, and learn from one another in almost any way they wish. Networking is facilitated by three key tools: the Networker community-building platform, the conference Handshake tool, and the Pop-Up Scheduler.

This year the Networker will help attendees find, meet, and talk with one another and forge lasting connections. Build your profile by adding in your expertise, social media, contact information and other details; you can even add stickers to quickly showcase your Division, whether you are an Early Career Scientist, and your pronouns amongst other choices! During the Assembly you can find other members with similar interests on the Networker, share your profiles with people you meet at the conference, or start group text chats with other members in your network. The Networker isn’t just for the Assembly either: after building your network at the Assembly members will be able to keep connected and meet others all year-round!

One of the quickest ways to build your network during the Assembly is by using the conference networking tool: Handshake. Handshake lets you quickly initiate contact with other attendees in your virtual conference room and share your networker profile or start a text chat.

If you want to run your own event then the Assembly’s Pop-Up Scheduler allows you to set up networking opportunities of any kind, from small events focusing on a particular scientific topic to spaces for you to build a community. Perhaps you’ve been inspired by member-led events like the Games Night or Rhyme Your Research and want to explore more ways to get involved in geoscience communication! The Pop-Up Scheduler allows you to do all this and more: simply choose a date, time, and provide a link to a platform of your choice. Once submitted it will be added to the conference programme. You can link to any platform you like: the scheduler is designed to be flexible and meet the needs of the membership, so members should feel free to organise events using platforms from Animal Crossing to Zoom! Unsure which one to choose? Check out our uploaded display materials for inspiration and suggestions.

How to cite: Clark, S., Gibson, H., Cook, T., and Hill, C.: How to vEGU: networking, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16602, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16602, 2021.

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