After two years, major scientific conferences and workshops have resumed in-person attendance in 2022. ICWRGC researchers participated in various capacities in these scientific events across Europe. Recently, our researchers attended the European Geoscience Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria; the ESA Living Planet Symposium (LPS) in Bonn, Germany and the 6th Satellite Soil Moisture and Application Workshop in Perugia, Italy.

EGU General Assembly, Vienna, May 23-27, 2022

ICWRGC-affiliated researchers Renee van Dongen, Fay Lena Boehmer and Tunde Olarinoye were present at EGU from May 23-27, 2022. Fay and Tunde work within the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) being transferred from the Technical University Vienna (TU Wien) to ICWRGC/BfG in Koblenz. Tunde gave a talk on “The International Soil Moisture Network: supporting and advancing EO research through open source in-situ soil moisture observations“ which was co-authored by all the ISMN team members. He talked about the ongoing transfer of the ISMN and efforts to position soil moisture among critical earth observation variables. Both Tunde and Fay participated in various discussions where they engaged the research community on the critical importance of soil moisture, solicited new data providers and encouraged continuous community support for ISMN. Tunde also co-convened the session “Large-sample hydrology: characterizing and understanding hydrological diversity and catchment organization”. It featured presentations on methods, data and advances in the understanding and modelling of hydrological diversity.

Renee showcased her work that is part of the URSACHEN project, a collaborative project between BfG and ICWRGC. Renee presented preliminary insights on the global relationships between suspended sediment concentration data and river discharge data, obtained from GEMStat and the Global Runoff Data Centre, respectively. This study will help to understand how sediment dynamics behave differently in various catchments around the world. Furthermore, Renee convened the session “Crowd-solving Problems in Earth Sciences” which is a session that, unlike the other EGU sessions, focuses on discussing problems and issues that many (early-career) geoscientists face in their scientific careers.

Besides the ICWRGC researchers who were on-site in Vienna for EGU 2022, Luna Bharati also joined the conference online. Luna co-authored in a study presented by her PhD student, Dipesh Chapagain from Bonn University, Germany. The presentation discussed research findings on the impact of climate change on disaster mortality in Nepal.

ESA Living Planet Symposium, Bonn, May 23- 27, 2022

It was indeed a week filled with science as our researchers Stephan Dietrich and Matthias Zink attended the ESA Living Planet Symposium in the same week as the EGU General Assembly was held. Stephan gave a talk on “Consistent monitoring of global water cycle and resources variability across scales: Where do we stand?”. Stephan and Matthias were actively involved in engaging with the soil moisture community as well as with international in-situ observation communities like the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). They have used the opportunity to promote the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) and reached out to potentially new data providers. The ISMN team of ICWRGC-BfG, together with colleagues from TU Wien, also co-authored a presentation “The International Soil Moisture Network: an open source in-situ soil moisture database serving the EO climate community for over a decade” which was presented in the poster session and followed by intriguing discussions.

6th Satellite Soil Moisture and Application Workshop, Perugia, Italy, June 7-9, 2022

Another ISMN team member, Wolfgang Korres from the M5 department of BfG which jointly host the ISMN with ICWRGC, participated in the 6th Satellite Soil Moisture and Application Workshop in Perugia. The workshop was kicked off by a “QA4SM User Workshop” (Quality assurance for soil moisture). There, Matthias Zink virtually joined Wolfgang and many others to learn more about an online soil moisture data validation tool hosted by TU Wien. Wolfgang gave a talk on the migration of ISMN to ICWRGC/BfG, as well as updates to ISMN (user/provider statistics, flagging) systems. Numerous contacts were made with the user community, potential new data providers and representatives of WMO. The permanent funding of ISMN by ICWRGC/BfG was highly praised at the final panel discussion as a positive example for sustainable cooperation and data management.