Report on the 2nd Workshop of the IUGG-CCEC

                                              Report on the 2nd Workshop of the IUGG-CCEC    

                                                              October 21 - 22, 2016                                                  

Université du Luxembourg, LuxembourgThe second workshop of the IUGG Commission on Climatic and Environmental Change (CCEC) took place at the Université du Luxembourg in Belval, Luxembourg from October 21-22, 2016. The workshop was conducted as a meeting of chapter authors of a forthcoming edited monograph “Global Change and Future Earth: The Geodetic and Geophysical Perspective” to be produced by the Cambridge University Press in October 2017. The monograph, which will be the third in the IUGG Series, seeks to deal with both aspects of the meaning of the term ‘future earth’. In title case, Future Earth refers to the recent international scientific research programme  launched by ICSU, ISSC, the Belmont Forum and a number of UN agencies.  In lower case, it refers to the future of our planet, Earth.  The monograph thus seeks to expound how the geoscience community can assist Future Earth so as to improve the future of the Earth.  It will comprise international and interdisciplinary contributions around the subject of climate change and its impacts on natural disasters and food security around the globe. The roles of the established scientific unions (e.g., IUGG) as well as new collaboration initiatives (e.g., Future Earth) in the advancement of multidisciplinary research will be highlighted throughout the monograph. Sixteen authors from Austria, Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, England, Germany, India, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Turkey, and USA presented, discussed, and finalized the content and structure of their chapters and the monograph’s eight key sections: 1) Future Earth and Planetary Issues, 2) Future Earth and Geodetic Issues, 3) Future Earth and the Earth’s Fluid Environment, 4) Future Earth and Regions, 5) Future Earth and Urban Environments, 6) Future Earth and Food Security, 7) Future Earth, Risk, Safety and Security, 8) Future Earth, Climate Change and Global Change.Fumiko Kasuga, the Director of the Japanese Global Hub attended the meeting and gave an overview of Future Earth as an international global change research activity.  Other contributions on the first day of the workshop included an overview of Climatic and Environmental Change by Tom Beer, CCEC Chair, as well as contributions from Alik Ismail-Zadeh, IUGG Secretary-General, and CCEC Commissioners Eigil Friis-Christensen, Serhat Sensoy, Tonie Van Dam, Jianping Li and Harry Bryden (who presented jointly with Lawrence Mysak).  Contributions discussed during the second day of the workshop concentrated on the work of cognate scientific unions and included contributions from Prof. R.B. Singh, Vice-President of IGU;  Albert McGill (IUFoST), Ibrahim Elmadfa (IUNS), Jane Rovins (a former Executive Director of IRDR), as well as those from Yekaterina Kontar (University of Alaska) and Anke Schneider (GEOMAR, Germany).The meeting invited a social scientist, Dr. Catherine Wong of the University of Luxembourg, to provide “Reflections from a Gen-XY Social Scientist”  so as to provide a social science perspective on the proposed monograph, the work programme, the meeting, and the organization.Dr. Tom Beer chaired the two-day discussion. The workshop was organized by CCEC and facilitated by the local host Dr. Tonie van Dam, Vice-Rector of the University of Luxembourg, whose hard work and organizational capacities were greatly appreciated by all participants.Y. Kontar, L. Mysak, J.P. Li and T. Beer