The Australian Geologist - Geological Society of Australia

From the President
In my last column, I mentioned the growing momentum
towards the forthcoming International Year of Planet Earth
(IYPE) in 2008. The IYPE will actually be spread over three
years from 2007 to 2009 and aims to raise public awareness of
the role that the Earth Sciences can play towards building
healthier, safer and wealthier societies.
The subtitle for the year, Earth Sciences for Society, reflects
our conviction about the importance of our science, but also
recognises an underlying concern that this knowledge is frequently
under-utilised in decision-making. There are clearly
great opportunities for the GSA to take an active role in the
various programs of the IYPE and I recommend that you look at
their website and the excellent range of brochures
(www.yearofplanetearth.org).
The principal activities of the IYPE will be focused in two
broad programs – promotion of the Earth sciences and enhancing
research. These in turn will be organised under ten themes
including such areas as groundwater and hazards, as well as
resources, the deep Earth and climate, together covering the
full spectrum of applications of the Earth sciences. Excellent
colour brochures on each of the ten themes are available for
download from the website.
In October we had a visit from Eduardo de Mulder, Chair of
the Board for the IYPE and the driving force behind the campaign
by the International Union of Geological Sciences to
establish the IYPE. The culmination of this effort was to have
the IYPE proclaimed for 2008 by the UN General Assembly at
the end of last year. Attention is now turning around the world
to implementing a range of activities to mark the triennium
‘year’. In Australia we are fortunate to have two senior advisors
to the Board–Ian Lambert of Geoscience Australia and Tom
Beer of CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, as well as an
increasing awareness of the IYPE amongst Earth scientists generally.
In part the IYPE had its origin in a highly successful national
program in Germany, ‘Planet Earth 2002: year of Earth sciences’,
which centred on a series of outreach programs to promote
the importance of the Earth sciences and engage the
general public and high school students. This year-long program
produced a strong increase in the level of interest in the
Earth sciences and, most notably, a sharp rise in enrolments of
students into university geoscience courses the next year. This
is something that we could certainly use here in Australia and
something that our Education and Outreach Program within
the Society is working hard to address. But the real potential of
such programs will only be achieved if there is a widespread
involvement by the membership across all of our divisions and
specialist groups.
So what kinds of activities are being considered for the IYPE
around the world On the research side there are plans to produce
a new 1:1 million digital geological map of the world and
to launch a new journal of Earth sciences within the Nature
family in 2008, amongst many others. As for outreach, the possibilities
are endless. Ideas include a number of high-level conferences
in several continents – our own AESC 2008 presents a
clear opportunity, mobile geoscience exhibitions, geological
tours and excursions aimed at the general public and students,
geoscientists talking about their work in the media, TV documentaries,
special events for secondary teachers based around
the IYPE themes, release of new commemorative stamps, and
photographic exhibitions. In many of these, the IYPE should be
effective in opening doors that might otherwise be closed
to us.
Another innovative idea is the earth caching program
(www.earthcache.org) as mentioned in the Education and
Outreach Column in this edition of TAG. earth caching, a variant
of the increasingly popular geocaching GPS-based navigational
game, is aimed at educating people about sites of
geoscientific significance.
The International Year of Planet Earth presents us as
geoscientists with an unparalleled opportunity to promote our
science and create an increased awareness of its importance to
Australia’s prosperity and wellbeing. I commend this opportunity
to all of you and encourage all parts of the Society to think
about how we can best answer this challenge.
At a quite fundamental level, the prospect of any merger
requires a re-examination of our basic structures and the way
we do things. In the end a new constitution will need to be
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2 | TAG December 2006