Category Archives: meetings

Last week I attended the 5th International Symposium on Soil Organic Matter (SOM) in Göttingen, Germany. Leaving behind sunny Barcelona, I arrived at Hanover airport completely unprepared for the rain and 15 degree weather. Luckily, I brought two long-sleeve shirts (along with an optimistic pair of shorts and flip flops) so I was able to alternate them the rest of the chilly week. Buying my train ticket at the airport train stop was a bit tricky with everything in German, but I figured it out and asked someone on board in English to make sure I was going in the right direction. After switching trains at the Hanover Hauptbahnhof it was smooth sailing on the ICE (the fast train) to Göttingen. Once exiting the train station and with a little questioning, the bus soon dropped me off at the street of the apartment my friend and I had booked through AirBnb. Good thing I could get by speaking in English because German is hard to make out!!

I met my friend, Luisa, who I had met back in Cuiabá, already at the house and after a bit of rest and armed with a map, we headed out for the Symposium’s icebreaker. On the way we went along Göttingen’s main street, with its old houses now housing modern stores, and the old town hall with the Gänseliesel (girl with a goose) statue in front. Traditionally, after the doctoral defense, the new PhD must bring flowers to the statue and kiss the girl on the cheek. Continuing along the main street we soon arrived at the University of Göttingen. The old buildings and pleasant, comfortable walk through the campus (no cars to dodge or thick car fumes to breathe) already sold me on the university. At the icebreaker, we chatted with a German doing a post-doc in Denmark and a Czech researcher while having squash cream soup with, of course, German beer. Different types of local beers were offered the rest of the week in the afternoon poster sessions.

Monday morning began with the opening of the conference and plenary talks by three well-known SOM researchers: Abad Chabbi, Rattan Lal, and Johan Six. Having read several papers with these men’s names on them, it was exciting to see presentations by them. Over the four days, topics ranged from isotope tracing, carbon dynamics and sequestration, particulate organic matter, and priming effects to soil microbiology, biochar, past SOM, and SOM from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems. There were many very interesting talks, as well as posters, and I took pictures of everything that might be useful to my research. Wednesday I spent the whole morning in the biochar section chaired by Bruno Glaser, another biochar author I can now put a face to. It was great to see the number and diversity of studies being done with biochar: made from different materials, made with different processes (hydrochar and pyrochar), mixed with compost, fertilizers or other amendments, different soils, etc. As I plan my biochar incubation experiment with Joan in Barcelona, it was useful to see examples of other studies, both in the field and the lab, to have a sense of what variables I should be testing.

Wednesday afternoon was the poster session for the biochar section so I stayed by my poster to present my work. I had several people drop by, including Bruno Glaser, who gave me good suggestions for analyzing my data, and Johannes Lehmann who also had some comments as well as greetings for Mark, my supervisor at IRES and his former PhD student, and Eduardo, our Brazilian collaborating professor in Cuiabá.

There were several interesting plenaries, including Johannes Lehmann’s on pyrogenic organic matter dynamics on Thursday, the last day, but the one that most stood out for me and others I talked to was Bruce A. Hungate’s talk Wednesday afternoon. The topic wasn’t particularly easy for me to follow (Frontiers in microbial ecology), but his slides and presenting skills were amazing. The illustrations of microbial processes were professionally drawn and not once did he turn his back to the audience to look up at the projection screen. He interspersed his talk with thoughts on music and art; it honestly felt like a TED talk! The range of presentation styles over the week really emphasized for me the importance of good public-speaking skills, and that I should definitely work on mine!

All and all, after a packed three and a half days, I can say I was very satisfied with the meeting. I was able to take a lot more out of this meeting than the Brazilian Soil Science conference I went to in August in Brazil which was more general. This meeting focused more on experiments and methods of analysis (eg. trasmission electron microscopy (TEM), nanoscale secondary ion mass spectroscopy (NanoSIMS)) and of course, there was a whole section on biochar and black carbon. I really enjoyed my brief week in Göttingen, a pretty, little university town, and catching up on Cuiabá activities with Luisa who flew back to Brazil the day after the meeting. I would definitely recommend anyone working with SOM to attend another of the SOM symposiums if they can. The 2017 6th Symposium on SOM will be in Rothamsted, England. Although visiting Rothamsted would be fascinating, I have no idea what I’ll be doing in September 2017. Hopefully, relaxing after submitting my thesis 🙂