Press conferences

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Monday, 24 April 2023

• What do Cretaceous volcanoes, forensic criminology and the finance sector have in common? Water (PC1, 14:00 CEST)
• Emirates Mars Mission: First results from Deimos, Mars’ mysterious moon (PC2, 15:30 CEST)

Tuesday, 25 April 2023

• Humans, hominoids and extraterrestials (PC3, 10:00 CEST)
• Early warning for extreme events: earthquakes, droughts, floods and livestock disease (PC4, 11:30 CEST)

Wednesday, 26 April 2023

• Science at Night (PC5, 10:00 CEST)
• What can chocolate, cereal and water say about food security and sustainability? (PC6, 14:00 CEST)

Thursday, 27 April 2023

• From Vikings to Vienna to the Venice of the Pacific: Geoarchaeology elucidates history (PC7, 11:30 CEST)
• Wars impact oceans, sands, and people (PC8, 14:00 CEST)

Monday, 24 April 2023, 14:00 CEST

Now more than ever, water resources are in the spotlight because of geopolitics and climate change. During this press conference, we hear from researchers about a metalliferous Cretaceous formation that pollutes pristine Arctic waters, the ingenious use of isotopic fingerprinting in Italy to unmask environmental polluters, and how the finance sector has a crucial role to play in addressing the global water crisis.

Participants:

• Stephen Grasby
  Geological Survey of Canada, Calgary, Canada
• Alessandro Gargini
  Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Italy
• Rick Hogeboom
  University of Twente, Engineering Technology, Water Engineering and Management, Enschede, Netherlands

Monday, 24 April 2023, 15:30 CEST

In March, EMM, the first interplanetary mission by an Arab nation, flew within 110 km of Mars’ moon Deimos, a rocky object barely 12 km across that has had limited opportunities for scientific attention and whose origins are unknown. In this press conference, an international team of scientists will share the highest-resolution visible, infrared, and ultraviolet data of Deimos ever acquired. Moreover, they will discuss the initial findings from the mission’s rendezvous and explain how studying the geology and origin of Deimos can yield valuable insights into the formation and development of Mars and its moons.

Participants:

• Hessa Al Matroushi
  Emirates Mars Mission Science Deputy Project Manager, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
• Justin Deigan
  Research Scientist, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, United States
• Christopher Edwards
  Associate Professor, Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, Northern Arizona University, United States

Tuesday, 25 April 2023, 10:00 CEST

What are the three requirements to be met for planets to host active, communicative civilizations (ACCs) or “intelligent life”? When and where did migration corridors or barriers exist for Homo sapiens as early humans spread from Africa to Eurasia? And how did large climatic changes during the Miocene impact potential hominoid habitats? This press briefing combines fascinating theories and insights on evolution.

Participants:

• Taras Gerya
  ETH-Zurich, Institute of Geophysics, Department of Earth Sciences, Zurich
• Thomas Litt
  University of Bonn, Germany
• Gilles Ramstein
  CEA Saclay, LSCE, Gif sur Yvette, France

Tuesday, 25 April 2023, 11:30 CEST

In March 2022, the United Nations set a five year target for every place on Earth to be equipped with Early Warning Systems (EWS) for natural hazards. In this press briefing, geoscientists propose an operational earthquake forecasting model for Europe, a new framework for drought definition and preparedness, an innovative flood hazard mapping method that indicates oncoming floods, and a system to warn the livestock sector of disease outbreaks.

Participants:

• Marta Han
  Swiss Seismological Service, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Pedro Henrique Lima Alencar
  Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Ökologie, Ökohydrologie & Landschaftsbewertung, Germany
• Fredrik Huthoff
  HKV and University of Twente, Netherlands
• Paola Nassisi
  Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, Lecce, Italy

Wednesday, 26 April 2023, 10:00 CEST

Scientists are taking to the night to find new insights about Earth and its inhabitants. For instance, scientists can use NASA’s Black Marble night light data to assess flood exposure and vulnerability for the Indus River flood that struck Pakistan in 2022. Moonlight remote sensing lets scientists track changes in snow and ice cover in the Arctic. And in polar regions, like the seasonally ice-covered Arctic Lake Kilpisjärvi, scientists track temperature and oxygen during polar nights to illuminate biological processes operating in the absence of sunlight.

Participants:

• Ekta Aggarwal
  Imperial College London, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, London, UK
• Di Liu and Qingling Zhang
  Sun Yat-Sen University, Sun Yat-Sen University, School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Shenzhen, China
• Ezgi Asirok and Georgiy Kirillin
  Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany

Wednesday, 26 April 2023, 14:00 CEST

Ghana is the second largest exporter of cocoa, yet many cocoa producers live below the poverty line. Climate change is threatening water security, yet new research shows water limitation can further amplify climate change. And several factors pose a threat to the livestock and cereal sectors in the Mediterranean region, an area particularly vulnerable to climate change. Experts address these and other complexities at this press briefing.

Participants:

• Rene Orth
  Department of Biogeochemical Integration, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany
• Sophia Carodenuto
  University of Victoria, Social Sciences, Geography, Canada
• Valentina Mereu
  Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Changes (CMCC) and Department of Agriculture, University of Sassari, Italy

Thursday, 27 April 2023, 11:30 CEST

Archaeological studies piece together our relatively recent past. This press conference will explore how weather forecasting worked amidst complex sea navigation during the Middle Ages, when an early Micronesian society built the “Venice of the Pacific” at UNESCO World Heritage site Nan Madol, and what drove the divergent paths of two Roman settlements in Central Austria.

Participants:

• Haraldur Ólafsson
  University of Iceland, Iceland
• Chuan-Chou (River) Shen
  High-Precision Mass Spectrometry and Environment Change Laboratory (HISPEC), National Taiwan University, Taiwan
• Diana Hatzenbühler
  University of Vienna, Department of Geology, Vienna, Austria

Thursday, 27 April 2023, 14:00 CEST

In this press conference, scientists will explore the consequences on marine life of warfare material dumped at sea since World War I. Nuclear tests conducted by France in Algeria during the 1960s may have resulted in radioactive Saharan dusts deposited across Europe decades later, in 2022. Looking to the future, scientists find an unlikely but promising candidate in seaweed as a resilient food solution in nuclear winter.

Participants:

• Edmund Maser
  University Hospital Kiel, Institute of Toxicology, Germany
• Olivier Evrard
  CNRS-CEA, LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
• Florian Ulrich Jehn
  Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED), Delaware, USA and Justus-Liebig-University, Gießen, Germany