With immediate effect Dr. Andy Kerr has been appointed as the Director of SAGES, for more information about Andy please go to his website

Yit Arn Teh of the University of St Andrews has been awarded a £116K grant by the UK Population Biology Network (UKPopNet). If you would like more details about the project 'Biophysical drivers of methan ebullitiom in northern peatlands' please contact Yit by clicking on this link.

The Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage, University of Edinburgh together with the UK Biochar Research Centre for Researchers,will be hosting a workshop and reception on 1st April 2009. To find out more and register online please click on the link Biochar: An Emerging Technology for Climate Change Mitigation

Prof. Tom Crowley has another letter published in The Guardian Newspaper on 6th January 2009, 'Science can't explain the big bang - there is still scope for a creator' Click on this link to read the full article

Prof. Tom Crowley is the lead author in an article 'Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability' published in Nature 456, 226-230, Thomas. J. Crowley and William. T. Hyde. To read the complete article please follow this link

Andy Kerr will give the e-Science Institute Public Lecture on the 14th November, 2008 at the Newhaven Lecture Theatre, 15 South College Street, Edinburgh, at 16.00. The title of lecture is 'Bridging the Communication Gap between Climate Change Science, Government Policy and the Needs of Society'

The inaugural lecture of Prof. Tom Crowley is to be held on the 23rd October, 2008 in the Swann Lecture Theatre, Michael Swann Building, The Kings Buildings, University of Edinburgh at 17.15. The title of the lecture is 'Global Warming: A Geological Perspective and Societal Prospective'

The SAGES Annual Meeting is being held in McDonald Forest Hills Hotel from Wednesday afternoon on the 17th September to midday on Friday 19th September. Details of the hotel can be found at their website. If you haven't already reserved a place please contact stephanie.west@ed.ac.uk

We are pleased to announce that Andy Kerr and David Reay have been successful in their bid to develop a new year long theme for the eScience Institute on climate change. This will involve a connected series of events, visitors and workshops exploring and seeking to bridge the "gap" between knowledge and information derived from climate change modelling/computing and it's usability by policy and business stakeholders.

As from September 2008, Andy Kerr has been seconded (part-time) into the Scottish Government's Climate Change Division to support their work on delivering the 80% emission reduction target laid out in the Scottish Climate Change Bill. If you would like further information about this or other policy related developments, please contact Andy

Information from the ad hoc meeting about geomorphology and climate modelling, which was held at the end of 2007 is now available on the CESD wiki

Living With Environmental Change LWEC was launched in June 2008. Prof. Paul Bishop represented SAGES at the launch and will be providing a short feedback report to SAGES. The programme aims to increase resilience to and reduce the costs of environmental change. It will address environmental change in the short-term and at regional level, as well as the longer term global changes and span blue skies through to applied research.

The Scottish Government has launched a major consultation around plans to build a new Climate Change Adaptation Framework for Scotland. It invites responses from across all sectors and parts of Scotland about the strategic framework for achieving a well adapting Scotland. Responses are due by the end of October. For further information go to the Scottish Government website.

The UK government has rcently launched its new climate adaptation website at DEFRA

The Scottish Government has publishes a report about how its main research institutes are contributing to climate change. Areas of interest to SAGES include work on soils and crops. The report can be found at Scottish Government

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Alexandre Gagnon and his team at the University of West of Scotland have successfully won project funding from the Scottish Funding Council under their new £2m SPIRIT scheme for 'Bridging the Gap between Environmental research and Local Decision-Makers'. This is a one year project with a budget of £69K.

The CESD now has its own wiki, to provide information on activities in and access to CESD. The wiki includes information on CESD members; on using the CESD facilities; and other useful information such as various links to various geosciences data. Recent talks about SAGES and CESD by Richard Essery and Mike Mineter can be found here: https://wwww.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/cesdwiki/Events

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Philippe Baveye, has been appointed to replace Prof. Iain Young as co-leader of Theme 2.

Congratulations to Prof. Philippe Baveye who has received the 'Editor's Choice Award' for a recent paper on Soils and Global warming: Baveye, Philippe C. 2007, Soils and runaway global warming:Terra incognita, Journal of Soil and Water conservation/62(5):139a-143. The 'Editor's Choice Award' is given annually to recognize the contribution of an author for his/her notable article appearing in the front section of the journal.

The SAGES Annual Meeting is being held in McDonald Forest Hills Hotel from Wednesday afternoon on the 17th September to midday on Friday 19th September. Details of the hotel can be found at their website. The agenda will be sent out shortly as we are still finalising some speaker slots. If you would like to speak about your latest project please advise your Theme leader or contact us directly. We also have space/time available for poster displays and discussions, with the expectation that all SAGES existing students/post docs will deliver poster displays

We are pleased to announce that 11 of the 12 SAGES studenships on offer this year have been awarded to a selection of excellent applicants. More details of their topics and supervisors can be found on the SAGES web page PhD Studentships

We would like to welcome Dr. Mark Inall, as the new co-leader for Theme 3. He and Prof. Sandy Tudhope will be taking forward this theme - most likely through an open meeting to be held later this summer to discuss strengths and links within and across the Theme as well as opportunities for future research.

Sadly, we say farwell to Prof. Iain Young , who will be leaving the University of Abertay Dundee and heading off to Australia. Our warmest wishes go with him and we wish him every success in his new post.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. William Austin, has been appointed Graduate School Convenor.

Prof. Tom Crowley's letter 'In the short term, there'll be no major action against climate change' was published in The Guardian, on 11th December, 2007 Click to read the complete article.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with climate change campaigner Al Gore "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change". SAGES member Gabi Hegerl co-authored a chapter of the report on "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change". Read More: [BBC]; [IPCC official site]; [Hegerl's contribution]

Recent SAGES appointment Simon Tett, Chair in Earth System Dynamics, presents a talk at the Royal Meteorological Society on 17th October. The Society will be holding a meeting on ‘Observing and Detecting Climate Change’, at the meeting rooms of the Zoological Society of London. This will include the Society’s 2007 Margary Lecture entitled ‘Why monitor climate?’. Professor Simon Tett (University of Edinburgh) is recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities on the quantitative analysis of models and observations of the earth’s climate. [Read the Press Release]

John Jansen has been awarded a three-year NERC Fellowship to examine knickpoint retreat in bedrock channels in Sweden. This work addresses a key research question in SAGES Theme 1, Landscape Dynamics. [Read More]

Martin Lee, in collaboration with Earth Scientists at the Open University, has been awarded a £383k NERC Grant to research the diffusion of argon within alkali feldspars and its implications for use of alkali feldspars as a thermochronological tool. This is of key importance to SAGES Theme 1, Landscape Dynamics. [Read More]

Maggie Cusack has been awarded a BBSRC/EPSRC grant, with Dr Andy Freer of Glasgow Chemistry, to study the control of the polymorph switch from calcite to aragonite in the shells of the common blue mussel, Mytilus edulis. The research will have important implications for the use of palaeoclimate proxies in SAGES Theme 3 Atmosphere, Oceans and Climate. [Read More]

[Full list of recently awarded Grants]

SAGES member Paul Bishop has been appointed for a three-year term to the Science and Innovation Strategy Board (SISB) of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). SISB is the key source of advice to NERC on science and innovation matters and for developing NERC's integrated science strategy. SAGES aims to address many of the themes, questions and issues at the heart of the new NERC strategy which will shortly be launched.

Kate Heal has been elected as Secretary of the International Commission on Water Quality during the recent IUGG Assembly in Perugia, Italy. The International Commission on Water Quality (ICWQ) is responsible for promoting the advancement of the water quality of hydrological systems, including assessment and management.

Raja Ganeshram & Laetitia Pichevin have been awarded £334k from NERC to study 'Silicic acid uptake by marine diatoms and the biological pump of carbon during glacial periods: a case study in the eastern tropical North Pacific'. This will fund the research conducted by Laetitia, who is currently a SAGES-appointed Reasearch Associate.

[Full list of recently awarded Grants]

Patience Cowie & Tibor Dunai have been awarded £560k from NERC or a collaborative project with Gerald Roberts (UCL-Birkbeck) and Ken McCaffrey (Durham). The project involves dating palaeoearthquakes on fault scarps in central Italy using Cl-36, using a field laser scanner (LIDAR) to characterise the fault scarp morphology, numerical modelling of earthquake fault slip, and structural field mapping. [Read More]

[Full list of recently awarded Grants]

We are pleased to welcome SAGES' first PhD students, who will begin in September 07. Nancy Burns, Cheryl Wood, Helen Murray and Audrey Wayolle will work within Theme 2 at the Universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, Glasgow and Stirling respectively. Oliver Sus will work within the Centre for Earth System Dynamics integrative programme at the University of Edinburgh. A further 16 studentships will be appointed across all SAGES Themes in 2008.

[Full list of SAGES PhDs & project outlines]

David Sugden and Chris Fogwill have been awarded £465k from a NERC standard grant to study ice elevation changes in the Shackleton Range, Antarctica. [Read More]

[Full list of recently awarded Grants]

The Royal Society of Edinburgh lecture theatre was at capacity, as over 100 SAGES members and 40 guests descended on Edinburgh for the Launch of SAGES. SAGES members attended from all the partner institutions, and guests represented various esteemed institutions
[Read More]

We are delighted to announce that Professor Tom Crowley will take up the post of Director of SAGES this summer (2007). Tom Crowley comes from the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University, North Carolina, where he is Nicholas Professor of Earth Systems Science. [Read More]