135E L E M E N T S APRIL 2008

MEETING REPORTS

The Applied Isotope Geochemistry WorkingGroup held its 7th International Symposium inStellenbosch, South Africa, from 10 to 14 Sep-tember 2007. The event was attended by over110 scientists from 26 different countries in allthe continents (except Antarctica!). Four daysof talks were held in the university’s musicconservatory, and a mid-conference field tripwas conducted around the Cape Peninsula,including a visit to Cape Point and the Cape ofGood Hope. The talks covered a diverse rangeof themes, including paleoenvironments,organic biogeochemistry, marine and coastalsystems, metamorphic and igneous systems,

natural and anthropogenic pollution, tracers ofecosystem processes, atmospheric connections,isotope hydrogeochemistry, and novel tech-niques, approaches and perspectives. Tenkeynote presentations complemented thesesessions.

After the conference, 38 delegates participatedin a six-day field trip to Namibia. This whirl-wind field trip focused on various geological,biogeochemical and environmental problemsacross west-central Namibia and as far north asthe world-famous Etosha National Park, andon how isotope research has contributed to ourunderstanding of these issues. Sites visited

included the desert landscape outside ofSwakopmund, the Brandberg igneous complex,the salt works on the west coast, the hydrolog-ical environments of the Swakop and Omarururivers, the glacial deposits of the Otavi Groupand the Tsumeb Pb-Cu-Zn mine. In addition tothe scientific program of the field trip, partici-pants spent a day viewing game at EtoshaNational Park, where the elephants, rhinocerosesand lions stole the show.

Dr. Jodie Miller(jmiller@sun.ac.za)

University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

7th INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON APPLIED ISOTOPE GEOCHEMISTRY

Anita Andrew, Ben Mapani, Jodie Miller (AIG7 organiser)and Torsten Vennemann

AIG7 field trip participants

In the last decade the geoscientific community has benefited from anumber of new technical developments regarding the preparation andanalysis of materials on the nanoscale, which were sometimes evendriven by geo- and cosmoscientific research projects. Consequently, the9th EMU School, which took place in Munich from August 12 to 17,2007, was dedicated to nanoscopic approaches in Earth and planetarysciences. The school was organized and held by Frank E. Brenker (U.Frankfurt, Germany) and Guntram Jordan (U. München, Germany).Additional invited lecturers were Richard Wirth (GFZ Potsdam, Germany),Ute Golla-Schindler (U. Münster, Germany), Ian Lyon (Manchester U.,UK), Baerbel Winterholler (MPI for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany), SmailMostefaoui (Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France), LaszloVincze (Ghent U., Belgium), Carlos M. Pina (U. Complutense, Madrid,Spain) and Udo Becker (U. Michigan, USA). The school focused on themethods resolving composition and structure on the nanoscale, such assecondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) including the new Nano-SIMS,transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the new focused ion beamthinning (FIB) technique, electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), energy-filtered TEM to measure and map valence states of iron and other ions,the most recent developments towards nanoscale resolution in synchrotronradiation, and methods dedicated to mineral surfaces like atomic forcemicroscopy (AFM) and scanning probe microscopy (SPM). Related to thelatter topic, theories of surface reaction kinetics and computationalmethods to simulate and understand properties of nanoscaled featuresand materials were also introduced. The lectures were in general of highquality and provided an excellent and up-to-date overview of nanoscaledanalytical methods and their potential applications.

The audience was comprised of about 50 young researchers from 14 dif-ferent, mostly European, countries. Poster presentations allowed the par-ticipants to show their own research fields and professional interests.The schedule provided ample time for discussions among the lecturersand participants. The scientific backgrounds of the lecturers and partic-ipants spanned the whole range of geosciences, e.g. mineral-surface science,

cosmochemistry, biogeoscience, volcanology, rock physics, metamorphicpetrology. These varied research interests resulted in inspiring interdis-ciplinary discussions, demonstrating the importance of the develop-ment of new techniques, in particular those that enable the investigationof materials with a high resolution. The contents of the lectures will besummarized in a new book in the EMU Notes series, which will be pub-lished probably during 2008. I look forward to receiving my copy of thisup-to-date reference book on nanoscaled analytical methods.

Ralf DohmenRuhr-Universität Bochum

EMU SCHOOL – NANOSCOPIC APPROACHES IN EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCES

136E L E M E N T S APRIL 2008

MEETING REPORTS

To promote and expand the world’s long-termsoil-research base, a workshop was convened inDecember 2007 at Duke University and theCenter for Environmental Farming Systems inNorth Carolina, USA. The workshop formallyestablished a global network of long-term soil-research studies, several of which have been incontinuous operation since the 19th century.Workshop participants study soil and ecosys-tem change in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe,and the Americas.

The workshop featured the proposition thatsoil studies spanning decades are key toanswering some of the most significant questionsfaced by humanity today:

• Can soils more than double food productionin the next few decades?

• How is soil interacting with the globalcarbon cycle and climate?

• How can land management minimize itsadverse effects on the environment andimprove soil’s processing of carbon, nutrients,wastes, toxic elements, and water?

Comprehensive research from long-termexperiments provides direct observations ofsoil processes and change that are evident onlyafter years and decades. The data from thesedecadal experiments are invaluable for improv-ing the quality of human life and that of theenvironment.

An advanced-format website supports the newlyestablished network of long-term soils researchand connects more than 150 long-term studieswith researchers, teachers, and students fromaround the world. The advanced website origi-nated in a graduate class at Duke University, andit encourages scientists to work together moreclosely and in ways unknown even in the recentpast (http://ltse.env.duke.edu). Workshop partici-pants are enthusiastic about the future of cross-siteresearch that this new networking promises.

At the workshop, new results were presentedfrom long-term studies of soil fertility, chemicalcontamination, crop production increases anddeclines, greenhouse gas emissions, and waterquality, all demonstrating and quantifying soils’susceptibility to change.

Dr. David Powlson of Rothamsted Research,England, and a pioneer in research that usesdata from multiple long-term soil experiments,challenged participants with the notion thatthere is great short-term potential for cross-sitestudies to advance the science of sustainability.Dr. Henry Janzen of the long-running Leth-bridge field studies in southern Alberta,Canada, vigorously argued that new long-termstudies are needed to meet the growing economicand environmental demands being placed onsoils now and in the next few decades.

Participants were particularly concerned aboutcrop declines observed in several long-termexperiments. Research on intensively managed

rice (an agro-ecosystem that currently feedsmore than two billion persons) indicates yielddeclines in several locations, declines attributedto a variety of causes, some of which involveunexpected changes in the soil. More-recentstudies suggest that adverse climatic changes,such as an increase in night temperature, couldbe responsible for declining rice and wheat yields.

Participants also had grave concerns about thepoor funding support for long-term soil studies.Not a few long-term studies operate withoutstable institutional support and remain pro-ductive only by the persistence of individualscientists. Several highly productive long-termexperiments have even been abandoned in recentyears, including important studies in Africa andSouth America.

Coincident with the Duke workshop on long-term soil studies, Nature magazine of 6 Decemberfeatured papers that emphasize the importanceof long-running measurements of the Earth’senvironment. In a quote repeated several timesduring the soils workshop, the Nature editorialproclaimed, “Data sets encapsulating the behaviorof the Earth system are one of the greatest tech-nological achievements of our age – and one ofthe most deserving of future investment.”

According to workshop organizer Dr. DanielRichter, a professor of soils and ecology atDuke, “Long-term records are key to predictingthe weather, air pollution, river floods, andwildlife populations. Similarly, long-term soilobservatories need explicit and much greatersupport not only to improve our rapidly inten-sifying management of land and water, butalso to better manage environmental change.”

The workshop concluded that in the short-term, researchers and students should makethe most of results from ongoing long-termexperiments. In the words of Dr. IshakuAmapu, a professor of soil fertility from north-ern Nigeria who studies a continuous croppingexperiment that began in 1950, “We need tomake our long-term experiments work harder.”

Such long-term research requires long-rangeplanning, and workshop organizers inviteinterested scientists, students, and the public tojoin this international effort. Organizers havefunding support from the USA’s National ScienceFoundation’s Research Coordination NetworkProgram and Critical Zone Exploration Network,the United States Department of Agriculture,and Duke University for five yearly meetings.

Daniel deB. Richteron behalf of 2007 Global Soil

Change Workshop Participants

WORLD’S LONG-TERM SOILS RESEARCH BASE SUPPORTED BY WORKSHOP

Some of the longest-running soil experiments in theworld are at Rothamsted Research in southern England.For example the Park Grass experiment tests soil andplant changes since the 1850s in response to hay har-vest-treatments and a variety of organic and inorganicchemical amendments. Drs. Nico Van Breemen and JoSmith are shown examining upper layers of soil in a highN-addition plot. PHOTO: DANIEL RICHTER

Graduate students and scientists from Duke University,University of Georgia, and the U.S. Forest Service samplelong-cultivated plots to explore effects of managementon the biota that drive soil decomposer systems, frommacroinvertebrates such as earthworms, to microinver-tebrates such as mites, and microorganisms such asfungi and bacteria.