Happy New Year all! It already feels strange to be writing about something that happened last year, albeit in the closing weeks of 2014.  So here it is, my match report of the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.

As usual, this took place in the Moscone Centre of San Francisco, one of the only conference complexes in the world that could host such a huge scientific meeting. 25,000 attendees make this the largest earth sciences meeting in the world and quite possibly the largest scientific meeting of any kind.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer size and scale of such a conference, but there are certainly benefits to be found – research powerhouses, including NASA, often save up their hard hitting data to release here, ready to be gobbled up by prowling BBC journalists. You’ll also certainly see plenty of talks with fresh results which will end up in Nature and Science over the coming months.

I gave a talk on the impact of ionising radiation on the microbial reduction of Fe(III) as part of an excellent session on terrestrial Fe cycling chaired by Wendy Yang and good friend of the group, Sophie Nixon. Highlights included Eric Roden’s talk on coupled microbial iron oxidation and reduction which may occur across redox zones as small as a millimeter. Scott Fendorf gave a great talk on the predicted use of carbon sources coupled to Fe and associated contaminant cycling. Good friend Jon Hawkings stepped in and gave an excellent presentation on Fe transformation and transportation in Arctic & Antarctic ice sheets – a massively underestimated flux of Fe into global cycles.

We spotted Will Bower giving his excellent poster on radiation damage in silicate minerals. Nice EXAFS Will!

Highlights from other sessions included a poster by Justine Sauvage on the determination of hydrogen from radiolysis of water in heterogeneous systems containing clays – a potential source of energy for subsurface microbes! Sharon Bone spoke on the biogeochemistry of Uranium at the contaminated Rifle site.  It appears to reside in non-crystalline phases including organic matter, extracellular polymeric substances (e.g. from bacteria) and humic acids and its transformation is likely associated with sulphate reduction.  Continuing with the radionuclide theme, Technetium behaviour at the Hanford site was described by John Zachara. It’s reduction is likely driven by FeS leading to it’s incorporation into complex aggregates – could this be driven by an active Tc-reducing microbial community?

Whilst NASA released evidence on the exciting discovery of significant methane levels on Mars (microbes?!), the results from the Philae lander of the Rosetta mission were slightly underwhelming – not surprising considering it didn’t quite touch down as planned!  Of the data from one probe that I saw, it was concluded that the surface of its comet home is, well, erm, ‘quite hard’. Still, a very impressive achievement!

And on a final note, the Clam Chowder on Fisherman’s Wharf may be the best you’ll ever have!

Ash.