Organiser: IASPEI, IUGG, and Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO)
Co-sponsors: IAMAS, IAPSO
Lead Convenors: Ola Dahlman (Sweden), Zhongliang Wu (China)
Co-convenor: Andrew Forbes (United Kingdom), Lassina Zerbo (Burkina Faso), David Jepsen (Australia)

Scope: The global verification system of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) relies more on cutting-edge science and technology than any other international arms control treaty. All components of the CTBT’s unique verification system – the International Monitoring System (IMS) with a global network of 337 monitoring facilities, the International Data Centre (IDC) for the analysis of large amounts of data, and an On-Site Inspection Regime (OSI) that utilizes a series of high-resolution technologies – are dependent on ongoing development of science and technology and a close relation to, and interaction with, the scientific community. The symposium will be focused on, but not limited to, the scientific topics of the CTBTO verification system (seismological, infrasound, hydro-acoustic and radionuclide monitoring; atmospheric transport modelling; and high-resolution geophysical and radionuclide surveys) and will include an overview of the verification system, its current status, and the underpinning sciences. Because the global verification system uses multiple technologies to detect seismo-acoustic events, which may be nuclear in origin, studies exploiting the synergy between sciences cross-cut the topics of several IUGG Associations. Contributions on the use of CTBT monitoring data to enhance sustainability (such as preparedness for and warning of natural hazards and the management of nuclear incidents) are welcome. New developments in geophysical science and technology and their implications for CTBT monitoring and the use of CTBT monitoring data in basic geophysical studies on the physics and chemistry of the Earth's interior are also issues of interest to this symposium.

The theme of the 2011 IUGG General Assembly is “Science for a Sustainable Planet”. Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are essential elements in creating a Sustainable Planet. Science and technology have been important to develop the verification regime of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the most extensive international verification system ever created. The purpose of this regime is to detect and locate nuclear explosions in the atmospheric, underwater and underground. The main challenge is to monitor underground tests and discriminate such tests from other artificial and/or natural events, in particular earthquakes.

The verification system is built on a number of sciences such as seismology, infrasound, hydro-acoustics, and radionuclide observations. Modelling and monitoring of atmospheric transportation play an important role in the tracing of radionuclides, which is crucial in identifying a nuclear test. To provide high quality data, observation systems have to be operated and maintained in a professional way, and their performance have to be monitored and evaluated. The application of new concepts, such as data fusion and data mining, are essential to analyse and to exploit a rapidly increasing amount of data. The International Monitoring System (IMS) and similar large scale observation systems established for scientific purposes are, in a way similar to accelerators in high-energy physics and satellites in space science, “big science device” providing not only experiences and lessons on monitoring practice, but also unique datasets of great value in basic research and in the application of science and technology for sustainability. New frontiers in modern geophysics, such as high-precision seismology, high-performance computation for atmosphere transport modelling, automatic processing of signals, and satellite remote sensing technology, as well as the newly developed “Digital Earth” technique, have provided the monitoring of CTBT with new opportunities and new challenges. Remarked by a series of important events, especially the Conference “CTBT 1996-2006: Synergies with Science and Beyond”, and the 2009 Conference “International Scientific Studies” (ISS09), a new era of cooperation between CTBT monitoring communities and scientific communities has started, which will contribute both to the CTBT monitoring practice and to the development of geophysical science.

To reflect the up-to-date advancements in this inter-disciplinary field, this Union symposium is focused on, but not limited to, geophysical studies of CTBT monitoring. Contributions from seismic, hydro-acoustic, infrasound, and radionuclide monitoring, data processing, data fusion and data mining, and system performance evaluation are welcome to the session, highlighting the implementation and synergy of different technologies for CTBT monitoring. Contributions on the use of CTBT monitoring data to enhance sustainability (such as the preparedness of natural hazards and the management of nuclear incidents) are also welcome. New developments of geophysical science and technology and its implication for CTBT monitoring and the using of CTBT monitoring data in basic geophysical studies on the physics and chemistry of the Earth’s interior are also issues of interest to this Union symposium. All contributions to the symposium are in the form of posters. Oral presentations are by invitation only.

Keywords: seismology, infrasound monitoring, hydro-acoustic monitoring, radio nuclide monitoring, atmospheric transport modelling, data mining, data analysis, sustainability.

Review: All contributed abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors.

Options: All contributed abstracts will be presented as posters. Only invited papers will be scheduled for oral presentations.

Organiser: IUGG Union Commission on Geophysical Risk and Sustainability
Co-sponsors: American Geophysical Union (AGU), International Council for Science (ICSU), International Geographical Union (IGU), International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM), and UNESCO
Lead Convenor: Kuni Takeuchi (Japan)
Co-convenors: David Boteler (Canada), Shigeko Haruyama (Japan), Fumihiko Imamura (Japan), Vladimir Kossobokov (Russia), John LaBreque (United States of America), Uri Shamir (Israel), Ramesh Singh (India), Gerd Tetzlaff (Germany).

Scope: The International Program “Integrated Research on Disaster Risk” (IRDR) started in 2009 aiming at curving losses by knowledge-based decision-making. The science and society are the partners to cope with natural hazards by integrating natural and social sciences, engineering, economic and industrial activities, public administration, policy making etc. They can even convert risk to opportunity. This symposium will address major challenges in natural hazards research and risk analysis and present the ways for their solutions. The symposium will be followed by the Open Forum “Natural Hazards: From Risk to Opportunity by Partnership of Science and Society”. The Open Forum will be the first public forum on IRDR and will be organized together with ICSU GeoUnions. The actions undertaken by IRDR will be presented at first, which is followed by discussions addressing the following questions: (i) How natural and social sciences can integrate their knowledge for disaster reduction? (ii) How science and society can form partnership for disaster reduction? (iii) How science and society partnership can convert natural disaster risk to opportunity? (iv) What are the urgent issues of disaster risk in mega cities and regions under intensifying natural and social pressure? Scientists, public managers, policy makers and other stakeholders will be invited to present solutions to the problems, to indicate the potential barriers and break-troughs. The outcomes will be reflected in the next step actions of IRDR.

Keywords: natural hazards, disaster risk, sustainability, science and society, integrated research

Review: All contributed abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors

Options: All contributed abstracts will be presented as posters. Only invited papers will be scheduled for oral presentations.

Organiser: IUGG Union Commission on Study of the Earth and Deep Interior
Co-sponsors: IAGA, IASPEI, IAVCEI
Lead Convenors: Gauthier Hulot (France)
Co-convenors: Michael Bergman (United States of America), Greg Houseman (United Kingdom), Satoru Tanaka (Japan),

Scope: The broad goal of this symposium is to report on the latest progress in our understanding of the past, current and future state of the Earth’s deep interior.  The ‘deep interior’ is broadly interpreted to include the core and lower mantle, but interest inevitably extends to the upper mantle, for example, in the study of mantle plumes or dynamics of descending lithospheric slabs. The scientific questions and problems of interest to this session include 1) the composition, state and material properties of the Earth’s deep interior as revealed by experimental and theoretical means; 2) the thermal evolution of the Earth, in particular the various convective regimes the core and mantle may have experienced through the Earth’s history, as predicted by theoretical, numerical simulation and experimental studies; 3) the way this evolution may be reconciled with the current and past dynamical state of the Earth, as revealed by geophysical, geochemical and paleomagnetic data; 4) the age, growth, structure and dynamics of the inner core, especially in view of understanding its present inhomogeneous and anisotropic properties; 5) the dynamics of the outer core and of the field generated by its dynamo at all time scales. Particularly welcome are cross-disciplinary and cross-methodological (theoretical, numerical, experimental, and observational) contributions, especially in view of better understanding the way the inner-core, the outer core and the mantle may have been, and may still, be interacting with each other. Invited and contributed papers will be presented in this session.

Keywords: core, lower mantle, upper mantle, mantle plumes, descending lithosphere, thermal evolution, convection, mantle composition, geodynamo, growth and structure of the inner core.

Review: All contributed abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors

Options: All contributed abstracts will be presented as posters. Only invited papers will be scheduled for oral presentations.

Organisers: IAG
Co-sponsors: IAGA, IASPEI, IAVCEI, International Lithosphere Program (ILP), and International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS)
Lead Convenors: John Dawson (Australia)
Co-convenors: Sierd Cloetingh (The Netherlands), Ian Ferguson (Canada), Kevin Furlong (United States of America)

Scope: Understanding the structure and deformation of plate interiors and their margins has important implications for society, and more and more there will be a reliance on a knowledge base of its past, present and future state. For example, society's increasing demand for energy and groundwater security will require geoscientists to address issues associated with geothermal energy supply, geo-sequestration of waste products, the impact of groundwater use, and natural hazards. This will require integrated and new approaches to the observation, modelling and interpretation of processes within the crust and lithosphere. This symposium shall consist of invited talks that will address the science associated with the structure and deformation of the Australian Plate including recent developments and findings in Earth imaging, numerical modeling, inversion, data mining approaches, earthquake seismology, volcanology and geodetic measurement of crustal deformation.

Keywords: Continental lithosphere, Australian plate, deformation

Review: All contributed abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors

Options: All contributed abstracts will be presented as posters. Only invited papers will be scheduled for oral presentations. Tentative list of invited speakers

Organiser: IUGG Union Commission for Data and Information
Co-sponsors: ICSU, IAGA, IAPSO
Lead Convenors: Peter Fox (United States of America), Charles Barton (Australia)
Co-Convenors: Alik Ismail-Zadeh (Germany), Weijia Kuang, Ruth Neilan, Mark Parsons (all United States of America), Roger Proctor (Australia), Bernd Richter (Germany), Adelina Geyer Traver (Spain), Richard Swinbank (United Kingdom).

Scope: Science has fully entered a new mode of operation. Data science (including e-science) defined as a combination of science, informatics, computer science, cyber infrastructure and information technology is changing the way all of these disciplines do both their individual and collaborative work. IUGG scientists are facing global problems of a magnitude, complexity and interdisciplinary nature that progress is limited by available knowledge and skills that are required to solve these problems. At the heart of this new way of doing science, especially experimental and observational science but also increasingly computational science, is the generation of data. As a result, new opportunities exist for the assimilation of data into a variety of geophysical models that span several geoscience disciplines. The goal of this session is to assess the current state of data science and informatics effort in support of IUGG science and indicate successful progress made to date and the challenges that presently exist. The session will also highlight the progress and perspectives in data assimilation studies in various fields of geophysics.

Keywords: informatics, computer science, cyber infrastructure, information technology, data generation.

Review: All contributed abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors

Options: All contributed abstracts will be presented as posters. Only invited papers will be scheduled for oral presentations.

Organiser: IAMAS
Co-sponsors: IAHS, IAPSO, IASPEI
Lead Convenors: Michael MacCracken (United States of America), Alan Robock (United States of America)
Co-convenors: Larry Brown (United States of America), Ken Denman (Canada), Dave Jackson (United States of America), Dongxiao Zhang (China)

Scope: With the pace of climate change increasing and the array and magnitude of climate impacts intensifying, increasing attention is being paid to the potential for limiting the effects of anthropogenic climate change through large-scale geotechnical means, often called geoengineering. The most discussed approaches include deliberately altering the Earth's radiation balance and intervening in the carbon cycle or other biogeochemical cycles, for example via scrubbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Although specific approaches have been proposed, relatively little is known about their potential effectiveness and possible unintended consequences. Issues of technological feasibility are also largely unexplored. The set of invited presentations will describe and address the potential effectiveness and scientific and technical problems associated with deliberate climate modification, including the potential for enhancement of terrestrial and oceanic carbon sinks. Presentations will cover modeling studies of the climatic impacts of proposed schemes for altering the absorption of solar radiation; studies of unintended environmental consequences; and evaluations of technological feasibility. Recognizing that geoengineering raises a range of environmental, societal, and governance issues, perspectives on how these complexities interface with proceeding with scientific research and potential deployment will also be offered.
This symposium is continued in greater depth in the Joint Symposium J-M01/J-V06 “Geoengineering: Can it limit climate change and its impacts?”

Keywords: geoengineering, climate intervention, global warming, carbon sequestration, solar
radiation management

Options: All papers in this symposium will be invited. Please contribute abstracts to the related Joint Symposium J-M01/J-V06 “Geoengineering: Can it limit climate change and its impacts?” which will have both oral and poster presentations.

Organisers: IAGA and IUGG Commission on Mathematical Geophysics
Co-sponsors: IAG, IAPSO
Lead Convenor: Matthias Holschneider (Germany)
Co-convenors: Shin-Chan Han (United States of America), Nico Sneeuw (Germany), Gordon Swaters (Canada)

Scope: Advances in mathematics have always been in close relation with progress in the natural sciences and vice versa new mathematical tools have pushed forward the frontiers of knowledge. This symposium mission is to exploit breakthroughs in the mathematical approaches to various fields of geophysics. In particular new developments in functional and numerical analysis and in statistics shall be presented with their implication for geophysical data analysis and system modelling. We invite contributions from new approaches using innovative field parameterisations of potential fields like space and time localizing functions to the analysis and processing of irregular data geometries like satellite observations of magnetic or gravity fields. Kalman filtering techniques and data assimilation have opened new perspectives in time dependent geopotential field modelling. New developments in numerical techniques make it possible to simulate the dynamical behaviour of geophysical systems on geologic timescales (mantle processes) and very short timescale (core processes) many different space and time scales. The recently exploding field of Bayesian analysis and machine learning allows innovative ways of exploring data with high uncertainty as in the field of seismic risk estimation. An important topic to be addressed in this symposium is also the connection of models and data. In particular new approaches to model validation and model selection are welcome.

Keywords: geopotential fields, processing irregular data geometry, magnetic field, gravity field, seismic risk, Kalman filtering, data assimilation, analytical and numerical techniques, Bayesian analysis, model validation

Review: All contributed abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors.

Options: All contributed abstracts will be presented as posters. Only invited papers will be scheduled for oral presentations.

Organiser: IAPSO
Co-sponsors: IACS, IAG
Lead Convenors: John Church (Australia), Simon Holgate (United Kingdom)
Co-convenors: Georg Kaser (Austria), C. K. Shum (United States of America), Philip Woodworth (United Kingdom)

Scope: Global and regional sea-level change has become a high profile scientific issue with great societal importance. Warming oceans, melting glaciers and potentially much larger contributions from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are all likely to lead to a substantial rise in sea level during the 21st century and beyond. Sea level changes across a broad range of time- and space-scales. Understanding both the temporal and spatial variability of sea-level change urgently needs input from a wide range of disciplines, including studies of the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere (glaciers, ice caps, frozen grounds, and ice sheets), terrestrial water storage and discharge, and the elastic and visco-elastic response of the solid earth to changes in surface loading and Pleistocene deglaciation.

This Symposium aims to bring together the diverse disciplines involved in sea-level research in a way that will provide opportunities for cross-fertilisation of ideas and dissemination of the most up to date results in this rapidly changing field. This Symposium will consider all contributions to improving understanding of the past and future projections of sea-level change. This includes satellite observations such as altimetry, GPS, gravity and synthetic aperture radar, in situ instrumental and palaeo observations, theoretical understanding and numerical modelling. The Symposium will focus on: (i)· Remotely sensed, in situ and palaeo observations of global and regional sealevel change; (ii) ·Evidence and understanding of cryospheric change, particularly fast, dynamic ice processes; (iii) Observations and modelling of changes in ocean mass and ocean thermal expansion; (iv) Changes in terrestrial water storage and discharge, including human-made dams/reservoirs; (v) Understanding global averaged sea-level change and the regional distribution of sea-level change; and (vi)·Dynamical modelling of sea level variability at global and regional scales, including the prediction of extreme sea levels. This symposium will continue as the IAPSO-lead Joint Symposium JP3.

Keywords: sea-level change, warming ocean, melting glacier, Greenland, Antarctic, ice sheet, atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, observations, modelling, prediction of extreme sea level.

Review: All contributed abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors.

Options: Only invited papers will be scheduled for oral presentations within the union symposia. All other accepted abstracts will either be presented as posters or, if the author prefer, moved as oral to the IAPSO-lead Joint Symposium JP3.

Organiser: IAHS
Co-sponsors: IACS, IAG, IAMAS, IAPSO
Lead Convenor: Pierre Hubert (France)
Co-convenors: Andrea Flossman (France), Manfred Lange (Cyprus), John Pomeroy (Canada), Paul Tregoning (Australia), Susan Wijffels (Australia)

Scope: Based on the observation of the continuous movement of water, the idea of a hydrological cycle appeared in the most remote antiquity, but the corresponding scientific concept was coined only three centuries below by Pierre Perrault and Edmund Halley, based on their measurements and water balance computations. Today the hydrological cycle is well known and taught as soon as in primary schools. But do we really understand this extraordinarily complex system, which operates over huge time and space scales, involves the flow of liquid, solid and vapour phases of water and whose processes shape the face of the Earth by impacting biology, geochemistry, geophysics, climatology and redistributing matter and energy? We still have a lot to learn about the hydrological cycle. To take only a few examples: what is the uncertainty regarding the Earth’s water inventory, water phase and fluxes?  Do we really know what a cloud is and how it behaves?  Can we predict streamflow from physical first principles? Do we really know the paths of water on the continents, between precipitation and the continental reservoirs of surface, ground, snow and glacier water and the oceans? This symposium will be devoted to these gaps which jeopardize many scientific and practical activities such as water resources prediction and assessment and to the ways to overcome them. All contributions from geoscientists developed in an interdisciplinary spirit will be welcome.

Keywords: Hydrological cycle, water cycle, hydrosphere, atmosphere, cryosphere.

Review: All contributed abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors.

Options: All contributed abstracts will be presented as posters. Only invited papers will be scheduled for oral presentations.

Organiser: IAGA
Co-sponsors: IACS, IAG, IAMAS, IAPSO, IASPEI
Lead Convenors: Eigil Friis-Christensen (Denmark)
Co-Convenors: Ian Allison (Australia), Hugo Beltrami (Canada), Steven Nerem (United States of America), Gerassimos Papadopoulos (Greece), Denise Smythe-Wright (United Kingdom)

Scope: Climate change is a topic, which is on the top of the agenda, not only within the science community but also in the society at large. IUGG is a scientific organization, which covers many of the aspects of climate change including the causes, anthropogenic and natural, as well as the consequences. The purpose of this symposium is to demonstrate by invited speakers from various disciplines the complexity of the issue and the need for interdisciplinary initiatives in order to understand the science and the way it has an impacts on our society. IUGG is the primary scientific organizations to offer both the scientific expertise of the Associations and the overall perspective.

Keywords: climate dynamics, natural causes of climate change, anthropogenic causes of climate change.

Review: All contributed abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors.

Options: All contributed abstracts will be presented as posters. Only invited papers will be scheduled for oral presentations.

Organiser: IAGA – as part of IUGG Geoscience in Africa initiative and the eGY-Africa program.
Co-sponsors. IAG, IAHS, IAMAS, IAPSO, IASPEI, IAVCEI, African Geospace Society (AGS), Association of African Universities (AAU), Africa Earth Observing Network (AEON), AfricaArray; ICSU Regional Office for Africa, CODATA, International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), UN Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (UN-GAID), U.S. InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP); European Enabling Grid for e-Science (EGEE); Geoscience Information in Africa (GIRAF); and the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste (ICTP).
Lead Convenor: Charles Barton (Australia)
Co-convenors: Abdelkrim Aoudia (Algeria), Hussein A. Abd-Elmotaal (Egypt), Rabiu Babatunde (Nigeria), Harouna Karambiri (Burkina Faso), Christine Amory-Mazaudier (France), Laban Ogallo (Kenya), Bamol Sow (Senegal), Maarten de Wit (South Africa).

Scope: The session will cover a combination of both the leading Earth and space science being undertaken and planned in Africa in the areas covered by all eight Associations, and also infrastructure issues (such as efforts to create a better professional environment for African scientists, open access to publications, internet connectivity, support for African science, education, and training). The symposium will provide (i) a forum for presenting and discussing the latest African geoscientific research, (ii) a cross-disciplinary view of geoscientific activity in Africa (Africa being the focus of the symposium), (iii) a stimulus for stronger interest and participation in African science by African and non-African scientists, and (iv) an opportunity to explore progress in creating a better professional working environment for people engaged in scientific research, education, and training in Africa.

Keywords: geoscience in Africa, integrated African research, unique African geoscience, research and education infrastructure, Internet connectivity, research and education networks, open access to publications, professional geoscientific bodies.

Review: All contributed abstracts will be reviewed by the convenors.

Options: All contributed abstracts may be presented as posters. The convenors will invite selected papers for oral presentations.

Organiser: IUGG
Co-sponsors: IACS, IAG, IAGA, IAHS, IAMAS, IAPSO, IASPEI, and IAVCEI
Lead Convenors: Harsh Gupta (India) and László Szarka (Hungary)

Scope: With the passage of time, the importance of "Geophysics" as a discipline is increasing. A large number of young persons are joining the Geophysics stream. IUGG is conscious of the aspirations of young geophysicists. This Union Symposium would have speakers, preferably 35 years old or younger, from the 8 Associations of IUGG and a few other invited young persons to share their experience, expectations, successes and concerns in development of Geophysics.

This symposium is under active development.