Structural geology and tectonics are two of the most visual subjects in geosciences, and lectures on the subjects form the core of curricula at geology departments at universities around the world. New teaching styles and technologies have found their way into class room and field courses focusing on Structural geology and tectonic, such as Blackboard LEARN, flipped class rooms, classroom response systems, digital mapping on tablets, the use of drones, and virtual outcrops. We invite researchers and lecturers to present their original and innovative ideas, strategies and tools regarding teaching Structural Geology and Tectonics. Co-organized with TS.

Citizen science (the involvement of the public in scientific processes) is gaining momentum across multiple disciplines, increasing multi-scale data production on biodiversity, earthquakes, weather, climate, health issues and food production, amongst others, that is extending the frontiers of knowledge. Successful participatory science enterprises and citizen observatories can potentially be scaled-up in order to contribute to larger policy strategies and actions (e.g. the European Earth Observation monitoring systems), for example to be integrated in GEOSS and Copernicus. Making credible contributions to science can empower citizens to actively participate as citizen stewards in decision making, helping to bridge scientific disciplines and promote vibrant, liveable and sustainable environments for inhabitants across rural and urban localities.
Often, citizen science is seen in the context of Open Science, which is a broad movement embracing Open Data, Open Technology, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Source, Open Methodology, and Open Peer Review to transparently publish and share scientific research - thus leveraging Citizen Science and Reproducible Research. Both open science and citizen science pose great challenges for researchers to facilitate effective participatory science. To support the goals of the various Open Science initiatives, this session looks at what is possible and what is applied in geosciences. The session will showcase how various stakeholders can benefit from co-developed participatory research using citizen science and open science, acknowledging the drawbacks and highlighting the opportunities available, particularly through applications within mapping, technology, policy, economy, practice and society at large. Learning from bottom-up initiatives, other disciplines, and understanding what to adopt and what to change can help synergize scientific disciplines and empower participants in their own undertakings and new initiatives.

We want to ask and find answers to the following questions:
Which approaches can be used in Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences?
What are the biggest challenges in bridging between scientific disciplines and how to overcome them?
What kind of participatory citizen scientist involvement and open science strategies exist?
How to ensure transparency in project results and analyses?
What kind of critical perspectives on the limitations, challenges, and ethical considerations exist?

The session aims to bring together experiences on soil education and evidence syntheses in agro-environmental science. Soil is the key element in the Earth System for controlling hydrological, biological, erosional and geochemical cycles. Moreover, the soils are the source of food and fiber services and resources for human societies. Soils provide food but also many other ecosystem services for society, including water regulation, carbon storage, habitat of biodiversity, climate regulation among others. This key role that soils play makes soil conservation necessary to achieve a sustainable world. Soil degradation and sustainable soil use are key threats because agriculture, deforestation, grazing, fire, global change, road construction and mining accelerate soil degradation rates. All these issues are currently addressed in many different institutions and universities all around the world. When teaching, the fundamental purposes of scientists are to impart knowledge, insight, and inspiration.
Through this session we would like to discuss the application of quantitative methodological approaches for retrieving general outcomes from previous studies, including use of grey literature and reports from national and international Governmental institutions, and non-governmental organizations (e.g., United Nation’s FAO, NGOs) discussions of problems and new innovations in evidence synthesis, and experiences of the application of these methods in geosciences. Furthermore, we would like to bring together experiences, methodologies, ideas, approaches from different parts of the world on the teaching of soil science. Session outputs will be very helpful in order to establish future guidelines for soil science transference to society.