Call for abstracts for AGU GeoHealth Special Session: Learning from our Ancestors

Do you work at the interface between earth science and human health? Please consider taking advantage in December of a unique opportunity to present your work to a broad spectrum of colleagues with similar interests. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is celebrating its one-hundredth anniversary with a meeting in Washington, D.C., 10-14 December 2018. The meeting will mark the launch of the AGU’s new GeoHealth Section and will feature many special sessions on topics related to earth science and human health. To encourage broad participation in the GeoHealth sections, AGU has made it possible for non-AGU members to submit GeoHealth abstracts and register for the meeting at member rates. In addition, AGU members will not be subject to the usual one-abstract limit if their second abstract is submitted to a GeoHealth session.

We hope these factors encourage you to consider contributing to the GeoHealth special session that we are organizing, entitled:
Learning from our Ancestors. Using modern earth science methods to understand ancient practices. Ancient societies interacted with their natural environments in many ways. Taking the waters, imbuing certain stones with special powers, and even ingesting soils for improved health are practices that can be found around the world. Modern earth science allows us to study these practices in greater detail in order to understand their origins and evaluate their efficacy. Modern earth science methods also make it possible for us to understand how ancient societies interacted with the landscape in order to ensure a constant supply of food and water, to secure shelter and protection and to obtain raw materials needed to make tools and wage war. This session welcomes all contributions that allow us to use earth science to understand and learn from the practices of our ancestors.

So whether your primary discipline is medicine, archaeology, sociology, anthropology, public health, agronomy, plant or animal science, ecology, marine science or something we haven’t even listed here, please think about submitting an abstract to our session. The deadline for submission of abstracts at the AGU website (https://fallmeeting.agu.org/2018/welcome/) is Wednesday, 1 August 23:59 EDT, 2018.

Please feel free to share this announcement with your colleagues and students and to forward it to any relevant websites or listservs. Don´t hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions.

(If you are a non-AGU member, please contact Ken Verosub (klverosub@ucdavis.edu) before submitting your abstract.).

Thank you for your attention. We look forward to meeting you in D.C.

Ken Verosub (klverosub@ucdavis.edu) and Irina Delusina (idelusina@ucdavis.edu)
Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences
University of California, Davis