This is the final Volcanology, Geochemistry and Petrology Section newsletter of 2006. This and all previous newsletters are archived at http://vgp.agu.org.  Please send any feedback to Sarah Fagents at fagents@hawaii.edu.

We wish you happy holidays and a productive 2007! 

 In this issue:

(1)  Message From the VGP President
*        Supporting membership and gifts
*        Union Medals for 2007
*         Fall Meeting
*        AGU honors ceremony

 (2) 2006 Fall Meeting VGP Highlights
*         VGP session
*         Bowen Awards and VGP reception
*         Informal sessions relevant to VGP

 
(1) MESSAGE FROM THE VGP PRESIDENT
Fall AGU is just about on us again and it promises to be a very active and stimulating meeting for VGP members including a lecture by Al Gore. More about that in a moment – first a brief pitch about the VGP Fund and a reminder about Union Medals.

* Supporting Membership and Gifts
Gifts to the VGP Section Fund are used for outstanding student paper awards, VGP events at meetings, particularly the Receptions at Fall Meeting and Joint Assembly, and small grants in support of other VGP-related activities (such as the GIFT workshop for teachers at the 2005 Fall Meeting). I would like to thank those many VGP members who donated to the Fund last year. This is how it’s done: You can renew at the Supporting level with a donation of $100 or more in excess of the basic $20/year dues.  The first $50 of your donation goes to AGU unrestricted funds.  The portion of your donation in excess of $50 can be designated as a gift to a section, committee, special fund, program, or project. See http://www.agu.org/inside/ (click on "Supporting Member Program" for more information via a link to http://www.agu.org/inside/supportmember_top.html).  You can access a list of funds via the link “description of each fund” http://www.agu.org/givingtoagu/?title=Fund_Drive and the sidebar “AGU Funds”. Supporting membership also gives you access to the Donor Circle Lounge at the Fall Meeting and Spring Joint Assembly. 

* Union Medals for 2007
The deadline for nominations for Union Medals for 2007 has recently been put back from October 2006 to March 15 2007. Union Awards are extremely prestigious and VGP members are natural candidates for a number of the Medals (Bowie, Bucher, Hess, Macelwane and Ewing) as evidenced by the 2006 Medalists discussed below. So now is your chance to nominate a deserving colleague. We have VGP committees for helping with nomination packages. The Chairs are:

* Fall Meeting
The December 11-15 Fall Meeting in San Francisco promises to be packed with sessions of interest to VGP members. Of the ~ 13,000 abstracts submitted, almost 1200 were assigned to VGP sessions, making VGP the third largest section represented at the Fall AGU meeting (behind Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences). On behalf of VGP, I want to thank Craig Manning, Terry Plank, and Katie Kelley for all the hard work they have put into organizing the VGP part of the program.

* AGU Honors Ceremony
The AGU Honors Ceremony on Wednesday evening will be a very special one for VGP and we hope many of you will be able to celebrate with us. Three VGP members will receive Union Medals:

Fall AGU is very important for me because, apart from the science, it’s my sole annual opportunity to catch-up with a lot of friends and colleagues. So, I hope to see as many of you as possible, but if I don’t—Happy Holidays!

--- Bernie Wood, VGP President

(2) 2006 FALL MEETING VGP HIGHLIGHTS

* VGP Sessions
This year's volcanology sessions focus on magmatism and volcanism from the microscopic to the massive scales. Topics range from the crystal-scale record of magmatic processes and the role of bubbles in volcanism, to eruption dynamics, tephra dispersal, and the origins of large, explosive super-eruptions. Also, there will be a session focusing on the 2006 Augustine eruption, which provided an opportunity to observe magma accumulation, migration and eruption and related processes, as well as a session on studies using Snake River Plain magmatism as a probe of mantle-lithosphere-climate dynamics. Convergent-margin processes will be a focus of sessions on the subduction of continental crust and recent results from the Izu-Bonin-Mariana and Central American Subduction Factories. A related session will cover the origin, storage, and transport of water in Earth’s mantle. Sessions will also highlight recent advances in the study of geochemical and geophysical processes that operated in the first ~2 billion years of Earth history – papers on Hadean geology, geochemistry and geophysics should be particularly exciting.

Within the VGP community there have always been a few individuals who have had a life-long impact on earth science, in terms of leading their respective fields, fostering collaborative activity and nurturing the next generation of earth scientists. Several sessions at this year’s meeting pay tribute to colleagues who have served in this role, with a focus on new results within the research areas they contributed to for so many years.

* Bowen Lectures and VGP Reception
We are pleased to announce that the 2006 meeting will see the inaugural Bowen Lectures - two 30 minute lectures by 2006 Bowen Awardees Katherine Cashman and Roberta Rudnick, which will take place on Tuesday morning in Moscone West room 3006 beginning at 9 am. These talks will give VGP membership an opportunity to hear Kathy and Roberta discuss recent findings and new directions in their respective fields. Bowen Lecture titles:

The festivities will continue Tuesday evening at the annual VGP reception (time and place to be announced in the program). The 2006 Bowen Awards will be presented to Kathy Cashman and Roberta Rudnick at the Reception. As in the past, FREE BEER will be served. Be there!

 * Informal Sessions Relevant to VGP
A variety of informal workshops, meeting and other sessions are held in conjunction with the AGU Fall Meeting.  Typically these are advertised during formal sessions.  These events include:

--- Craig Manning and Terry Plank, VGP Secretaries