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Spring, 2007

The GP Executive Board (President: Vincent Courtillot; President-Elect: Cathy Constable, Secretary: Ken Kodama) plans to submit a brief newsletter to the GP membership periodically to keep everyone up-to-date on section news and events. This is the first newsletter in this series and reports on the GP business and executive board meetings at the 2007 Spring AGU meeting in Acapulco, Mexico.

First, congratulations to Avto Gogichaishvili who organized the GP program at Acapulco. The meeting was a success with many GP abstracts and participation by scientists from all over the world, but particularly from Latin America. GP member Jaime Urrutia Fucugauchi is the AGU International Secretary and was an important force in organizing the entire Spring meeting in Acapulco. Thanks and congratulations also go to him.

GP members John Tarduno and Andy Jackson were named AGU fellows in Acapulco. The slate of candidates for the next GP Executive board were approved by the AGU Council at Acapulco. They are: for President: Rick Blakely and Jim Channell, for Secretary: Gary Acton and Bill MacDonald.

Following other sections, the GP Executive Board hopes to have recently elected GP Fellows give half-hour talks about their work at the Spring, 2008 AGU meeting planned for Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Avto Gogichaishvili has graciously agreed to organize this meeting, too.

1. EOS evolution:  John Geissman is currently the GP editor of EOS. Stefan Maus will be on the EOS advisory board to succeed Steve Constable who is currently GP EOS corresponding editor. AGU has decided to establish an advisory board that will replace the corresponding editors. AGU currently is considering an evolution in EOS. Cathy Constable, who is on AGUÕs publications committee, will keep the GP community up-to-date on the discussion about possible changes in EOS. One possibility is that the Section News may be discontinued. Changes may be made to address the concern that there are too many editors for the publication to be effective if there is one editor for each section. AGU would like to see more interdisciplinary papers that would interest a broader audience. AGU would also like to see EOS contribute to discussion of scientific controversies. The GP Executive board suggests reviews and/or highlights from the best papers about to be published in AGU journals.
2. The GP Section website is currently having some technical difficulties, particularly for those using the OSX operating system and the Safari web browser. The GP Executive Board plans to transfer the website from its current home at UCSD to AGU. This should make the site more robust. Also, Nicola Richmond will be asked to continue being the siteÕs webmaster for another year. In the future, the President-elect will select the webmaster for the GP website. The webmaster will become a member of the GP Executive Board. Vincent Courtillot will be contacting GP members soon asking for suggestions of how to improve the GP website. Comments should be sent to nic@psi.edu
3. Chris Harrison reports that Fred Spilhaus has asked the Statutes and Bylaws Committee to consider changes in how AGU sections operate and how AGU sections are organized. Chris is on this committee and will report on any deliberations and/or possible proposals about section reorganizations at the Fall 2007 AGU meeting in San Francisco.

There are some upcoming publications of interest to GP section members:

June, 2007-Encyclopedia of Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism edited by David Gubbins and Emilio Herrero-Bervera (Springer, 1000 pages, $500 USD, already pre-sold to 900 libraries).

Later this year- A short history of geomagnetism and paleomagnetism (1269AD-1950AD) by Vincent Courtillot and Jean-Louis Le Moeul in Reviews of Geophysics. (pdfs are available as of now upon email request to VC).

Later this year- the 10 volume Treatise of Geophysics (Elsevier): the volume on Geomagnetism has been edited by Masaru Kono, and that on Geodynamics by David Bercovici. The volume on Mineral Physics also has GP contributions.

Upcoming important dates:

June 13, deadline to propose special sessions for Fall AGU in San Francisco.

http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm07/program/html

July 1, nominations for Gilbert Award candidates to AGU and Cathy Constable.

http://www.agu.org/inside/sectawardnom.html#GP_sect_award

July 15, nominations for AGU Fellows to AGU

http://www.agu.org/inside/fellguides/html

K.P. Kodama

GP Secretary

May 30, 2007