2008 Annual Report This is
our first annual report that describes some of the history of our
formation and summarizes activities over the past 2+ years. As of September 2008
the Near Surface focus group has grown to a total membership of 2210, with 538
of those selecting NS as their primary affiliation.
The Purpose of the Near-Surface
Geophysics Focus Group
NS was created to
provide a home for those people who describe themselves as near-surface
geophysicists: studying and advancing the use of geophysics for near-surface
applications. The formation of NS thus addresses two needs: 1) fosters
communication within the NS geophysics community, the primary goal being to
advance the science of NS geophysics as an end it itself; 2) promotes the
awareness of NS in other fields and advances the use of NS where the primary
science goals/questions are in other areas of science. Near-surface applications
addressed by NS researchers include, but are not limited to, studies in
archaeology, biogeochemistry, coastal processes and climate change, ecology,
hydrology, tectonics, volcanology. A full description of the focus group is
given in the following article in EOS: Slater, L., Knight, R., Singha, K.,
Binley, A., and Atekwana, E., Near-Surface Geophysics: A New Focus Group, Eos
Trans. AGU, 87(25), 249, 2006.