Half time: STEMM-CCS researchers gather for second annual meeting
Half time: STEMM-CCS researchers gather for second annual meeting
On 14-16 March 2018, some 50+ researchers from across the STEMM-CCS partnership gathered in Castelldefels on the NE Spanish coast to share results and discuss progress on the project to date. Now at the half-way point in the project, the teams are beginning to accumulate significant datasets, and are gearing up for another busy cruise season to collect all the baseline data they need ahead of the main controlled released experiment in May 2019.
The STEMM-CCS participants on a less than sunny Castelldefels promenade!
The meeting comprised a series of presentations by work package leaders and individual scientists, which reflected on achievements to date but also offered the opportunity to look ahead to activities in the coming months. A significant amount of time was devoted to planning the strategies and logistics for seagoing expeditions coming up later in the year, which will collect further baseline data from the Goldeneye site. As well as scientists from across the Consortium, meeting participants also included representatives from the project's Stakeholder Advisory Board - Tim Dixon (IEAGHG), Katherine Romanak (University of Texas at Austin) and Mark Chapman (University of Edinburgh) - who gave very positive feedback on their impressions of STEMM-CCS' progress to date.
Postdoctoral researcher Anita Flohr presents her team's findings from the practical exercise to facilitators Katherine Romanak and Tim Dixon and the rest of the STEMM-CCS training event participants.
This year's annual meeting was preceded by a 2-day training event targeted at the young scientist contingent within the STEMM-CCS community. The course, which was attended by some 21 early career researchers, comprised a day of lectures from external speakers covering the full CCS cycle in order to enable our researchers to see and appreciate how their work fits within the wider CCS context. This was followed by a half-day practical exercise in which participants worked in teams to examine data relating to a theoretical CO2 anomaly detected close to onshore CCS project. The teams were given some background data and then given opportunities to purchase various survey datasets, with the objective of determining the source of the CO2 and whether it could be attributed to the CCS project. The winning team was determined not only through a correct diagnosis, but also by how much money they spent on acquiring the necessary data. The training event was rounded off by a lively poster session on the first evening of the main meeting, where young researchers presented their work to the rest of the project community. The Stakeholder Advisory Board members carried out some undercover assessment of the posters, and awarded the prestigious bragging rights for best poster to University of Southampton's Ben Callow, with a commendation to Allison Schaap from the National Oceanography Centre
