The Standing Scientific Group (SSG) is a group of expert from all countries involved in scientific research in Antarctic within the frame of SCAR. The SSGs serve as an advisor for SCAR to identify the ongoing research from different countries or the lack of it in certain areas, also aims to share this information among the diverse national programs. The SSG-Geosciences (SSG-GS) focuses in the research related especially to geology and geophysics, but is also interacting with the others SSG through the Cross SSG-Linkage. The SSG-GS is headed by Dr. Alessandro Capra (Italy), they physically meet every two year but several other partial meeting of the group) are held (workshops, working groups meetings, and others, as well a permanent contact by e-mail of the members exists. Cross SSG Linkage workshop have been also organized, with the objective of sharing information and advances of interdisciplinary works.
During the last meeting of the SSG-GS in Buenos Aires, several interesting subject were discussed between the expert group. From special relevance was discussion of the code of conduct for the exploration and research of subglacial aquatic environments, the future and perspectives of what seems a big step forward in polar research of the next years. Another updates from the working groups were the presentations of the Geospatial Information- Geodesy working group (GIANT), the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO), the Antarctic Digital Magnetic Anomaly Project (ADMAP), Sub-Ice Geological Exploration (SIeGE) among other subjects. The organization of the next ISAES meeting in Edinburg (2011) was also a subject of this meeting; there are interesting possibilities to get involved within the organization of featured event of the geosciences.
The SSG-GS is most interested on to hear from the young scientists, in this direction APECS was invited to contribute to the next issue of the GeoReach newsletter for 2011. This constitutes an excellent opportunity for early careers to express our scientific interest and ideas to the people, who is actually making the decision of the science in Antarctica. The participation of APECS in this meeting has been a big step forward for young scientists and hopefully will be continued in the future.
More information of the SSG is available at http://www.scar.org/researchgroups/
