AGU - Earth | Oceans | Atmosphere | Space | Planets

– Updated 9 Dec. 2008

Focus Groups provide a home for scientists engaged in research that cuts across two or more AGU Sections. All Focus Groups are charged with:

• building interdisciplinary interaction;
• educating AGU members about the nature and importance of problems and issues;
• developing special sessions at AGU meetings;
• considering opportunities for other interdisciplinary and specialized meetings;
• encouraging the development and enhancement of publication services that serve the needs of its constituents;
• building and maintaining productive working relationships with other appropriate scientific organizations, both national and international; and
• encouraging nomination of one Fellow which is forwarded to the Fellows Committee through a Section.

Atmospheric & Space Electricity

Chair: Thomas Marshall, University of Mississippi, University, Miss.
Vice Chair: Steve Cummer, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
Secretary: Xuan-Min Shao, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M.

Atmospheric and Space Electricity focuses on exploring electrical phenomena in the atmosphere and exosphere from the perspectives of plasma physics, space science, middle-atmosphere science and traditional atmospheric electricity.

Web Site

Cryosphere Sciences (formerly Snow, Ice, and Permafrost)

Chair: Jason Box, Ohio State University, Columbus
Vice Chair: Anne W. Nolin, Oregon State University, Corvallis
Secretary: Timothy E. Link, University of Idaho, Boise

The Cryosphere Focus Group encompasses the scientific study of the portion of the Earth's surface where water is in a solid form; this includes ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice, freshwater ice, snow, and frozen ground (or permafrost).

Web Site

Earth and Planetary Surface Processes

Chair: Michael Ellis, British Geological Survey, Nottingham, United Kingdom
Vice Chair: Alan D. Howard, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.
Secretary: Elizabeth B. Safran, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Ore.

Earth and Planetary Surface Processes (established in spring 2008) embraces the full range of processes, including arthropogenic, that generate, erode, and measure landscapes, that generate stratigraphy, and that couple the internal dynamics of the surface to both climatic and tectonic forcings.

Earth and Space Science Informatics

Chair: Peter A. Fox, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y.
Vice Chair: Karen Moe, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Secretary: Ben Domenico, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo.

The Earth and Space Sciences Informatics (ESSI) Focus Group is concerned with issues of data management and analysis, large-scale computational experimentation and modeling, and hardware and software infrastructure needs, which ultimately provide the capability to change data systems into knowledge systems that support the range of Earth and space science interests.

Web Site

Global Environmental Change

Chair: Donald J. Wuebbles, University of Illinois, Urbana
Vice Chair: Raymond S. Bradley, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Secretary: Molly Brown, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Global Environmental Change addresses large-scale chemical, biological, geological, and physical perturbations of the Earth's atmosphere, ocean, land surface, and hydrologic cycle with special attention to time scales of decades to centuries and to human-caused perturbations.

Mineral & Rock Physics

Chair: Carl Agee, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.
Vice Chair: Chris Marone, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Secretary: Reid F. Cooper, Brown University, Providence, R.I.

Mineral and Rock Physics fosters a focus on the properties of the Earth's materials and their current physical state and chemical makeup as well as the processes that have governed their evolution.

Web Site

Natural Hazards

Chair: Alik Ismail-Zadeh, Karlsruhe University, Karlsruhe, Germany
Vice Chair: Susan Cutter, University of South Carolina, Columbia
Secretary: Ilya Zaliapin, University of Nevada, Reno

The Focus Group on Natural Hazards fosters a focus within AGU on studies of geophysical hazards, including droughts, earthquakes, fires, flooding, heat waves, landslides, space weather, storms, tsunamis, volcanoes, impact by near-Earth objects, and related events. The Group promotes fundamental research into the links between extreme natural hazards and dynamic processes on Earth and in space; real-time and long-term monitoring of active Earth processes; quantitative natural-hazard modeling; forecasting of extreme events and reducing predictive uncertainties; and implementation of effective strategies and designs for hazard mitigation and disaster management worldwide.

Web Site

Near-surface Geophysics

Chair: Lee Slater, Rutgers University, Newark, N.J.
Vice Chair: Louise Pellerin, Green Engineering, Inc., Berkeley, Calif.
Secretary: George P. Tsoflias, University of Kansas, Lawrence

Near-Surface Geophysics focuses on the development and application of any and all geophysical methods to study the near-surface region (top ~100 m) of Earth to advance the fundamental science of geophysical imaging (data acquisition, inversion, interpretation) and to address key questions about subsurface properties and processes.

Web Site

Nonlinear Geophysics

Chair: Shaun Lovejoy, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Vice Chair: A. Brad Murray, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
Secretary: James A. Wanliss, Presbyterian College, Clinton, S.C.

Nonlinear Geophysics fosters a focus within AGU on the general area of nonlinear geophysical systems, including mathematical and theoretical geophysics, complex systems, and nonlinear processes such as chaos, nonlinear waves, solitons, turbulence, cascades and vortex dynamics, and time series analysis.

Web Site

Paleoceanography & Paleoclimatology

Chair: Philip A. Meyers, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Vice Chair: Julie Brigham-Grette, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Secretary: Peter K. Swart, University of Miami, Fla.

Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology focuses on understanding the past conditions and dynamics of Earth’s oceans and atmosphere and their interactions.

Web Site

Study of the Earth’s Deep Interior (SEDI)

Chair: Vernon F. Cormier, University of Connecticut, Storrs
Vice Chair: Adrian Lenardic, Rice University, Houston, Texas
Secretary: Abby Kavner, University of California, Los Angeles

SEDI focuses on understanding Earth’s structure at depths inaccessible to direct sampling in order to address fundamental questions about the origin, evolution, composition and dynamics of our planet.

Web Site

Societal Impacts and Policy Sciences

This Focus Group was established in the spring of 2008. Its scope statement is still in development.