The world congress on geology, the 37th International Geological Congress (IGC), was organized in Busan, Republic of Korea on 25-31 August 2024. It was the first IGC congress in eight years which guaranteed large interest in attending the event. The session proposal by EMODnet Geology for the congress “EMODNET-Geology’s new standards revealing Earth's seabed geology” was accepted and most of the thematic lot’s work packages were represented during the oral and/or poster sessions. The keynote speech was held by the former EMODnet Geology coordinator Henry Vallius, who stressed out the importance of global standard in data presentation, which gained interest in the audience. For instance, Brazil with very large marine areas is collecting a vast amount of marine data and was interested in adjusting their processing of the geology data to comply with EMODnet Geology standards.
The 37th International Geological Congress 2024 was held in Busan, Republic of Korea. ©Dr Susanna Kihlman/ EMODnet Geology & GTK
The work packages of EMODnet Geology were presented in the oral session highlighting for instance the EMODnet Geology harmonisation process and various data products. A global perspective was added by presentations on marine geological mapping projects in Brazil and Japan.
Posters included themes such as general introduction to EMODnet Geology, seabed substrate harmonisation, pockmark susceptibility mapping and Caribbean Sea marine resources.
“Marine data used to be difficult to access, with incompatible standards, gaps, and of unknown quality, which added costs to public and private operators for instance in impact assessments and spatial planning and was limiting development of value-added sector. Simply spoken a lot of money was spent on ocean observation in EU, but little of that was reusable efficiently and rapidly. Hence, the European Commission set up the prototype for European Marine Observation and Data network (ur-EMODnet) in 2008, rest is history” Former EMODnet Geology coordinator Henry Vallius
Haeundae Beach, Busan, Republic of Korea. ©Henry Vallius/ EMODnet Geology & GTK