Page path:
- Home
- ...
- Graduate School GLOMAR
- Travel Reports
- Conference Reports
- Archive
- Conference Reports 2012
- Sebastian Hoetzel
Bremen International Graduate School for Marine Sciences
Sebastian Hoetzel
Report of GLOMAR PhD student Sebastian Hötzel about his participation in the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, USA, 3 – 7 December 2012
The AGU Fall Meeting is with over 20.000 participants the biggest geoscientific conference and brings together a wide variety of international scientists. Over 21,500 oral and poster presentations were given covering research fields like atmospheric sciences, biogeoscience, ocean sciences or palaeoclimatic sciences.
I presented a poster entitled “The Miocene to Pliocene Expansion and Establishment of the South West African C4 Grass Savanna (Namibia)”. My results reveal the role of fire in the expansion of savanna grasslands in South Africa based on a combination of pollen and carbon isotope data. Although it was set in a rather broad session called “New Perspectives on Biosphere Sensitivity to Abrupt Climate Change Over the Last 200 Million Years” many people stopped by. The backgrounds of the visitors were of course very mixed; from biogesoscience, palaeoantrophology and biogeoscience even to high school students. Especially the later one forced me to rethink how to explain things in a very easy way so that it was understandable for them and interesting.
I followed mainly the palaeoclimatic and biogeoscientific sessions which were every day. Especially interesting for me was the session “Insights to the Modern and Palaeo Carbon Cycle: Isotopic and Biomarker Perspectives”. This session focused on proxies such as n- alkanes estimating C4 plant contribution in vegetation. They discussed the reliability and quality of proxies which I am using to compare my results with.
Beside the scientific talks there were also career talks given by recently started governmental or industrial employee. They explained how they got employed and how it is to work for the government/industry. These talks were more like interviews rather than actual talks, so that everybody could ask questions concerning their applications, daily work life or other work related topics. As a further career boost you could arrange (in advance) a check of your CV by professionals and even get interviews right at the AGU Meeting in one of the private interview booths. That might be interesting to PhD students in their very final stage.
As a conclusion the AGU can be interesting for everybody at any stage during their career, from a young student to an already established scientist. You can establish or foster existing networks by contacting other scientist of your specialized or any related fields. And you can promote your institute and yourself by presenting your newest scientific results to a very big audience. However, since it is such a huge conference you have to make your presentations very conspicuous to attract a big audience.
For financial support and enabling me to participate at the AGU Fall Meeting I thank GLOMAR. Therefore I was able to gather some very interesting impressions which might be useful for my personal career.
I presented a poster entitled “The Miocene to Pliocene Expansion and Establishment of the South West African C4 Grass Savanna (Namibia)”. My results reveal the role of fire in the expansion of savanna grasslands in South Africa based on a combination of pollen and carbon isotope data. Although it was set in a rather broad session called “New Perspectives on Biosphere Sensitivity to Abrupt Climate Change Over the Last 200 Million Years” many people stopped by. The backgrounds of the visitors were of course very mixed; from biogesoscience, palaeoantrophology and biogeoscience even to high school students. Especially the later one forced me to rethink how to explain things in a very easy way so that it was understandable for them and interesting.
I followed mainly the palaeoclimatic and biogeoscientific sessions which were every day. Especially interesting for me was the session “Insights to the Modern and Palaeo Carbon Cycle: Isotopic and Biomarker Perspectives”. This session focused on proxies such as n- alkanes estimating C4 plant contribution in vegetation. They discussed the reliability and quality of proxies which I am using to compare my results with.
Beside the scientific talks there were also career talks given by recently started governmental or industrial employee. They explained how they got employed and how it is to work for the government/industry. These talks were more like interviews rather than actual talks, so that everybody could ask questions concerning their applications, daily work life or other work related topics. As a further career boost you could arrange (in advance) a check of your CV by professionals and even get interviews right at the AGU Meeting in one of the private interview booths. That might be interesting to PhD students in their very final stage.
As a conclusion the AGU can be interesting for everybody at any stage during their career, from a young student to an already established scientist. You can establish or foster existing networks by contacting other scientist of your specialized or any related fields. And you can promote your institute and yourself by presenting your newest scientific results to a very big audience. However, since it is such a huge conference you have to make your presentations very conspicuous to attract a big audience.
For financial support and enabling me to participate at the AGU Fall Meeting I thank GLOMAR. Therefore I was able to gather some very interesting impressions which might be useful for my personal career.
