GEOTRACES Scientific Steering Committee Meeting and Workshop held in Taipei

The 2018 GEOTRACES Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) meeting was held from 23rd to 25th July 2018 at Academia Sinica in Taipei hosted by Prof. Tung-Yuan Ho. The SSC meets once each year to review the progress in the programme implementation and define the future programme agenda. A major topic for discussion this year was how to streamline the process of building the next GEOTRACES Intermediate Data Product planned for 2021. For this, the SSC decided to commit GEOTRACES resources in building an on-line portal which should allow more automatic management of data along with a quick and easy access to the information for all people involved in the construction of the product. This portal should be launched in the coming year. 

The SSC meeting was followed by a 1-day GEOTRACES Training Workshop which was attended by about 60 participants including graduate and undergraduate students as well as young scientists. During the workshop, GEOTRACES senior scientists trained participants on trace metal sampling and analysis together with Ocean Data View (ODV) methods for exploration and analysis of GEOTRACES data. 

Figures: (Left) 2018 GEOTRACES Scientific Steering Committee members and officers, (Right) GEOTRACES-Taiwan Training Workshop participants.

Thank you to Prof. Tung-Yuan Ho, Wan-Chen Hsieh, Daniel Liao, Vivian Cheng, Sing-How Tuo, Oliver Hsieh, Jenny Tu, Irene Rodriguez, Damo Karri and Ian Wu for the wonderful hospitality and support provided in organising the SSC meeting. We also gratefully acknowledge funding from the following Taiwanese agencies: Ministry of Science and Technology, Ocean Affairs Council, and Research Center of Environmental Changes at Academia Sinica.