The 51st AGS Colloquium and Annual Meeting is planned for the Delta Hotel in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on February 7-8, 2025.

Registration and abstract submission are now OPEN via the Fourwaves system: https://event.fourwaves.com/ags2025

Organizing Committee

The 2025 colloquium is being organized by a group of AGS members: Carla Skinner, Maureen Matthew, Deanne van Rooyen, Rob Fensome, Jared Butler, Vania Correia, and Lynn Dafoe. If you are interested in helping with any aspect, please contact Carla or Maureen.

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Sponsors of the Colloquium

A special thanks to the sponsors of the 2025 AGS Colloquium!

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Registration

The registration system for the AGS Colloquium on 7-8^th February 2025 at the Delta Hotel in Dartmouth NS is available using the Fourwaves system: https://event.fourwaves.com/ags2025.

All details regarding registration costs and abstract submission can be found there.  Requests for registration refunds must be submitted by January 31^st, 2025. Registration fees for the Colloquium includes the annual AGS membership fee.

You can edit your registration form at any time if you want to add events to it. To do this:

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Abstract Submission

At this point we invite you to consider submitting an abstract for the Colloquium using the Fourwaves system (Abstract Submission tab at the top). The deadline for submission of abstracts is Friday January 10^th, 2025. Abstracts will be submitted via the Fourwaves system which will have sections for all the required inputs (authors, affiliations, text body, etc.). For ease of preparation, we recommend preparing your abstract in a word processing program, then copying information into Fourwaves. Please note that the abstract text body is limited to 300 words and there are formatting guidelines provided in the Fourwaves abstract submission. Please indicate in the required section whether it is for (a) poster or oral presentation, (b) which special session, (c) if you are an undergraduate or graduate student.

Presentations will be in-person only and 20 minutes total: 15 minutes to present and 5 minutes for questions.

Your abstract will only be officially accepted after you register for the Colloquium. Abstracts will be edited and later published in Atlantic Geoscience.

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Program

A short program for the 51^st AGS Colloquium and Annual Meeting will be available here by January 31^st, 2025. This version will be printed and included in the registration packages.

The full program for the Colloquium and Annual Meeting, including abstracts will be available soon after the short program.

The final version with the abstracts and committee reports will be available after the Colloquium and Annual Meeting.

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Posters

Please note that poster panels are 4ft x 8ft (120 cm x 240 cm) and are push-pin friendly. Each panel will be numbered for the corresponding participant and push pins will be provided.

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Workshops and Short Courses

Opportunities in Public Urban Geology
$10 25 Participant Limit
Dr. Tim Fedak, Curator of Geology, Nova Scotia Museum
Friday, February 7^th, 2025, 1:00 – 4:00 pm, Brownlow Room, Delta Hotel, Dartmouth NS

Workshop will be of interest to anyone who lives in a community and is interested in developing engaging public education related to geoscience topics. 

During the three-hour workshop participants will:
1.      Learn about the history, resources, and opportunities for public urban geology programs to improve community engagement and knowledge.
2.      Apply best practices and provided resources to identify a potential public urban geology walking tour in their own city.
3.      Contribute to the development of a new public urban geology tour and pilot a one-hour 2 km accessible walking tour surrounding the conference facility.

1:00 pm History and tools for Public Urban Geology
1:30 pm Small group activity, identifying new opportunities
2:30 pm Coffee / washroom
3:00 pm Demonstration: 1 hour (2 km) walk. Frenchman Lake: Goldenville, Glaciers, and Mix 33.

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Process and metallurgical mineralogy in ore systems
$35 20 Participant Limit
Dr. Jacob Hanley, Mineral Exploration and Ore Fluids Laboratory, Saint Mary’s University with contributions from Vale, Glencore, and St. Barbara.
Sunday, February 9^th, 2025, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm, Saint Mary’s University, Department of Geology, Halifax NS

This half-day workshop will introduce participants to some fundamentals of mineralogy within the mineral processing and metallurgical fields. Topics presented will include ore mineral behavior during comminution, froth flotation, leaching, smelting/refining, ore oxidation, and tailings behavior, with an emphasis on base metals, platinum-group elements, and gold in both oxide and sulfide ore styles. A practical session will examine concentrates and smelter/refined products from current and historical operations in Canada in hand sample and thin section, by scanning electron microscope and optical microscopy.

The three companies comprise those that have donated samples, technical content, and other materials for the purpose of developing this workshop.

Note: There is a 20-participant limit due to the available lab space.

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Special Sessions

Proposed sessions are listed below, but may be combined or modified depending on the number of abstract submissions.

Session 1: Appalachian Orogen: tectonic history, mineral potential, and more
Chair: Jared Butler, Shawna White
Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada – Atlantic Region; St. Mary’s University
From the breakup of Rodinia and formation of new ocean basins, to later subduction and accretion during amalgamation of Pangea, this session will explore the complex geological evolution of the Appalachian orogen. We invite contributions focused on all aspects of the Appalachian system, including the provenance and tectonic history of its constituent terranes, the nature of associated magmatism, the distribution and origin of its numerous ore deposits, and more.

Session 2: Celebrating the more than 50 year-long career of Graham Williams: stratigraphy, paleoenvironments, and outreach
Co-Chairs: Vânia Correia, Lynn Dafoe, Rob Fensome
Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada – Atlantic Region
This session celebrates the long career of Graham Williams and his contributions to geology, especially to Canada’s offshore Atlantic and Arctic regions, as well as to the Atlantic Geoscience Society (AGS) and to education and outreach. Through palynology, he has applied his work to biostratigraphic studies, paleoenvironmental interpretations, and to their integration more broadly with sedimentology and stratigraphy. As a founding member of AGS and past president from 1977–1978, Graham has been involved with the instigation and progress of many aspects of the Society. We invite contributions to the session that reflect Graham’s scientific and outreach interests.

Session 3: Critical Metals: Measurements, Models, and More
Chair: Michael Powell
Dalhousie University
Critical metals are mineable resources considered as vital to the transition to a decarbonized economy. Such a transition will require a massive expansion in domestic critical metal production. Recent federal, provincial, and state level research and exploration funding initiatives are aimed at advancing our understanding of the critical metal endowment of the igneous-hydrothermal systems in the Northeast, and the eventual exploitation of these resources as economic engines. This session invites all contributions that enhance our understanding of critical metal resources in Eastern Canada and the Northeast USA, from field mapping to geochemical surveys to theoretical contributions and beyond. Abstracts are welcome from all domains of economic geology and related fields. Researchers based in the Northeast who study critical metal resources but have applicable field locations elsewhere are also welcomed.

Session 4: Deep-marine Sedimentary Systems
Chair: Celeste Cunningham
St. Francis Xavier University
Deep oceans are highly complex depositional environments that host the world’s largest sediment accumulations and are unique in their enormous spatial scale and general inaccessibility. Enhancing our knowledge of deep-marine sedimentary systems is key to understanding the long-term evolution of continental margins, the distribution of marine resources, geohazard assessment, basin development, paleoenvironment and paleoclimate, and the evolution of life on earth. This session invites research from government, industry, and academia on all aspects of deep-marine sedimentary processes and products, including transport and deposition, geohazards, seismic mapping, geochemistry, and paleontology.

Session 5: Educational Outreach
Chair: Tracy Webb
Chair of Education Committee
Over the years this special education outreach session has evolved into a mix of presentations showcasing projects, new programs for outreach, and EdGEO ideas, to lively geological discussions among the participants. With the demands on the earth’s resources, it is increasingly important to encourage and support earth science education at all levels. Please feel free to join us, and if you have a presentation you’d like to share, we’d welcome the opportunity to learn about it!

Session 6: Geoscience in the Energy Transition
Chair: Carla Skinner
Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada – Atlantic Region
Decarbonization of energy systems requires significant expertise from subsurface geoscience (geology, geophysics, and geoengineering) to responsibly source, manage, and refine operations while minimizing impacts to environment and society. A low-carbon economy will be heavily reliant on materials from Earth’s subsurface to build infrastructure, technologies, and for storage. It will also require a diverse array of decarbonized energy options including geothermal and geological energy storage (e.g., hydrogen) to support grid-balancing, price stability, and energy security. Anthropogenic warming must be limited, requiring removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and injection into the subsurface for permanent storage. This session invites research on geoscience for the energy transition, especially quantitative assessments, proposed solutions and expected outcomes, and geoscience and policy in Atlantic Canada.

Session 7: Hydrogeology and Environmental Geology in a changing world
Co-Chairs: Barret Kurylyk, Lauren Somers
Dalhousie University
Groundwater processes strongly influence surface and subsurface hydrological and biogeochemical conditions, and thus hydrogeologists increasingly interact with many other scientific disciplines. We welcome abstracts detailing desktop data analysis, field studies, or modeling investigations of groundwater flow and storage, groundwater as a drinking water resource, subsurface contamination, surface or subsurface chemical or thermal transport, coastal groundwater issues, groundwater-dependent ecosystems, or climate change impacts on hydrologic systems.

Session 8: Ongoing developments in coastal and marine geoscience in Atlantic Canada
Co-Chairs: Cameron Greaves, Mitch Maracle
Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada – Atlantic Region; Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and Renewables
The Nova Scotia and federal governments are actively investing in research and policy development in preparation for an offshore wind energy industry in the coming years. With this, there is a growing group of stakeholders seeking geological and geotechnical data to characterize the nearshore to offshore areas of Atlantic Canada’s continental shelf – these are areas that have traditionally been under-surveyed due to the challenging shallow water environment. Additionally, research on Atlantic Canada’s coastlines is needed to characterize the increasing pressures from rising sea levels, coastal erosion, severe weather events, and anthropogenic stressors. Detailed studies of seabed morphology, sediment composition, and shoreline stability provide crucial insights into how these regions are evolving over time. Both offshore and onshore have benefited from recent advancements in surveying technology such as bathymetric LiDAR, UAVs, USVs, and AUVs which have drastically improved the quantity and quality of data in these areas. By integrating geomorphological data, sediment dynamics, and coastal processes, a holistic approach connecting the offshore and onshore is needed to monitor and manage coastal change, offering essential guidance for sustainable coastal infrastructure development. This session seeks research on Atlantic Canada’s continental shelves and coastlines that have broad applicability to the above issues. This knowledge contributes directly to safer, more effective management and engineering of offshore energy infrastructure, while also informing environmental conservation strategies to protect Atlantic Canada’s unique coastal ecosystem.

Session 9: Quaternary Geoscience: Advances in geomorphology, geochronology, glacial geology, and geohazards
Co-Chairs: Lauren MacLellan, Maureen Matthew
Dalhousie University
From wide-spread ice sheets transforming landscapes to rapid changes in climate and sea level to megafauna extinction and human evolution, the last 2.6 million years of Earth’s history has experienced a wealth of change and excites a broad range of research. This session aims to unite geoscientists that share a common interest in the Quaternary Period, including present-day processes, and welcomes topics on natural hazards, geomorphology, geochronology, glacial geology, paleoclimatology, surficial geology, and more.

Session 10: Social and Personal challenges in Earth Sciences
Co-Chairs: Jade Atkins, Mo Snyder, Lexie Arnott
Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Acadia University, Dalhousie University
Twenty-minute roundtable discussions centred on issues facing Earth Scientists today. Each discussion will be led by individuals with experience in social or personal challenges related to aspects of mental health, inclusion and safety in the field, and navigating career development. We will share experiences and brainstorm ideas to navigate and overcome these issues. The goal of the session is to build community around shared challenges. We invite discussion leaders with personal knowledge in Inclusion, Safety, and Social Justice who are willing to share their lived experiences.

Session 11: Social media geocommunication and digital resources to promote Geosciences
Chair: Lilian Navarro
Cape Breton University
Over the past few years, numerous digital tools and resources (including social media sites and platforms, webinars, podcasts, vlogs, apps, blogs, and websites) have been utilized to reach large audiences, distribute valuable content, bring awareness, and increase literacy on diverse topics of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Thus, social media geocommunication is increasingly thriving across various platforms and has a pivotal role to engage the public and to foster peer networking and collaboration. This session aims to delve into how social media is actively being used for geoscience communication and education, and also ascertain what opportunities and challenges geoscientists are facing on showcasing the critical importance of Geosciences to society. Academics, students, researchers, industry professionals, and others are welcome in this session to share their experiences, measurements, projects, and/or strategies related to content creation and publishing, and community building, while embracing social media platforms and digital resources to further expand and promote their knowledge and understanding of the Earth system.

Session 12: The Cobequid-Chedabucto Fault Zone: a multiphase structure with critical mineral potential
Co-Chairs: Dana Šilerová, Ryan Pippy
St. Mary’s University
The Cobequid-Chedabucto Fault Zone is a major crustal structure separating Avalonia and Meguma terranes in the Canadian Appalachians. The long-lived structural corridor preserves a complex history of overprinting deformation, magmatism, alteration, and metallogeny. The goal of this session is to provide a forum for discussing ongoing and future research on the Cobequid-Chedabucto Fault Zone and to showcase its potential for critical and base metals. We welcome contributions related to all aspects of the structure, including (but not limited to) structural displacement, relative timing and geochronology, local geology, alteration, mineralization and geo-heritage.

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General sessions

General session(s) will be organized depending on availability of papers or posters and grouped in themes. Contributions are welcome on any topic of interest to AGS members.

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Student Evaluations

If you are a student, here is some guidance on what the judges are considering when evaluating your oral presentation or poster. Please note that posters may be assessed without students present – posters should allow for brief and efficient communication that can be self-contained.

Oral Presentations
• Abstract is well written with good grammar
• Presentation has a logical flow, speaking is clear and confident, and on time
• Slides are clear, sensible graphics, appropriate number
• Scientifically sound, able to answer questions

Poster Presentations
• Abstract is well written with good grammar
• Sections are well-defined with balanced content and space
• Graphics are effective
• Scientifically sound

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Call for Nominations for AGS Awards

The Atlantic Geoscience Society is accepting nominations by 8 January 2025 in the following categories:

AGS Distinguished Scientist Award (Gesner Medal)
AGS Distinguished Service Award (Laing Ferguson Award)
AGS Nelly Koziel Award

The call for nominations contains the criteria for each award and the requirement for each nomination package, details linked HERE. Nominations, supporting letters, and all documentation should be submitted by email to the Vice Chair to allow easy dispersal to award adjudicators.

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Student Travel Grants

The AGS Student Travel Grant enables up to 4 students to attend and present at the AGS Annual Colloquium. Students can apply for up to $400 in funding in the first instance. Priority will be given to students who are travelling more than 500 km to attend the conference, presenting talks or posters and who wish to attend a workshop offered as part of the conference. Students should send their applications directly to Rob Raeside, attaching a single pdf with a short cover letter including a statement indicating their degree program, why they wish to attend the meeting and how they expect to benefit from it, a copy of the abstract as planned to be submitted to the AGS Colloquium and a budget of the costs associated with attendance, including travel, and other sources of funding available. The submission deadline for a travel grant is 8 January 2025 and applicants will be informed of the results soon after to provide time for travel planning and conference registration. Successful applicants will be required to provide receipts after travel (or a travel claim from their institution). The funds will be provided to the student at the Colloquium.

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Accessibility

Accessibility is important for AGS and is a priority for the Colloquium. Accessibility means being able to access information, services, and places without barriers. We have chosen our conference location for its physical accessibility – the entire Colloquium will occur on the main floor with no stairs or obstacles between spaces, and washroom facilities are on the same floor as well. We kindly remind presenters to consider the size and colours of their text and graphics to ensure the information is available for all to learn – 5-10% of the population experience some level of colour perception differences. Accessible colour palettes and accessible font lists are available online with a quick internet search. When registering for the luncheon and/or banquet we have provided options for various food considerations but please contact us or use the blank option in the form if we have overlooked something that would make nutrition more accessible for you. We will also have a few spaces on the floor if you need a less crowded and quieter place. If you have any requests or suggestions on what we can do to increase the accessibility of the Colloquium, please reach out to organizers Carla Skinner (carla.skinner@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca) and Maureen Matthew (Maureen.Matthew@dal.ca).

Disabilities can be visible or invisible, chronic or fluctuate. Respect and science are for everyone.

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Colloquium location

Accommodations at the Delta Hotel in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia are being held in a block for $149 (standard) to $189 (king suite) until 7 January 2025, whereupon they will be released. After this date availability cannot be guaranteed. To receive the conference rate, please indicate when booking that you are part of the Atlantic Geoscience Society event. The hotel is located at 240 Brownlow Avenue, Dartmouth. Reservations can be made using the online link above or by calling 1-902-468-8888.