AOGS (Asia Oceania Geoscience Society) 2007, 4th Annual Meeting, Thailand, July 30 - August 4

The 4th annual meeting of the Asia Oceania Geophysical Society was held in Bangkok, Thailand between July 31 and August 4. About 1,200 participants made nearly the same number of presentations. AOGS annual meetings have been held in Singapore since the first annual meeting in 2004. Though the annual meeting this year was the first one to be held outside Singapore, it had the highest number of participants. A quarter of the participants were from Japan, 10% came from each of South Korea, China, and Thailand, followed by the USA, Taiwan, and India. Of the participants, 40% were involved in the field of solar terrestrial science and planetary science, followed by hydrological science, atmospheric science, solid earth science and ocean science. Though we have previously had a large number of no-shows who have submitted papers but not attended the meetings, we succeeded in decreasing them to 15% by strongly encouraging pre-registration.

Figure: Participants by country (left) and field of research (right)

We held an election for the next-term AOGS officers this year. Professor Lee Dong-Kyou of Seoul University, Korea (atmospheric science) was elected as the president for the next term, and professor Iver Cairns of Sydney University, Australia (solar terrestrial science) was elected as the secretary general for the next term.
The 5th annual meeting will be held in Busan, South Korea, between June 16 and 20, 2008. Many researchers will attend including young scientists and graduate school students from universities in South Korea such as Seoul University and from national research institutes such as KIGAM (Korea Institute of Geoscience & Mineral Resources). Session proposals are now being accepted on the AOGS Web site. The deadline for paper submissions is January 24, 2008.
The annual meeting in 2009 will be held in Singapore. AOGS has decided to hold its annual meetings in Singapore every three years, while the two annual meetings in between will be held in other Asia-Oceania countries. Detailed information can be found on the AOGS Web site http://www.asiaoceania.org

“AOGS annual meetings are great opportunities for planning future international joint geoscience projects among countries in the Asia-Oceania region as well as being Asia-Oceania's new place for scientific discussions. I was very happy to see there were quite a lot of participants in the annual meeting this year. I hope more and more geoscience researchers in the Asia-Oceania region will utilize this good opportunity in the future.”

AOGS Secretary General
Yoshifumi Saito