Happy New Year to all our VGP Colleagues,

Here is the first Volcanology, Geochemistry and Petrology Section newsletter of the year. Please send comments and suggestions to Sarah Fagents at fagents@hawaii.edu.

In this issue:

(1) MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
I have several items I would like to mention before we get to the main part of the newsletter. First the saddest.

Jim Luhr: Many of you will already know of the untimely and sudden death of Jim Luhr, a great friend and colleague to many of us. A brief obituary follows in item (2) below.

2007 AGU Fellows: We are pleased to announce that there is a strong showing of VGP members on the list of 2007 AGU Fellows who were recently elected. In item (3) of the newsletter we list those who have affiliation with VGP. Ken Farley (chair) and members of the VGP Fellows Committee (http://vgp.agu.org) must be congratulated for an excellent job of soliciting nominations and sending a strong slate forward to the AGU Fellows Committee. The Executive Committee thanks them for all their work on behalf of the section.

The 2007 Joint Assembly is being held in Acapulco, Mexico from 22-25 May 2007. Abstract deadline is 1st March. Based on the number of special sessions which have been organized (see item 7 below) this meeting promises to be about twice as large as last year’s Joint Assembly in Baltimore and will have a much larger than usual VGP component. This should make it a very attractive meeting. There will be the usual VGP reception, awards to new AGU Fellows and the annual Daly Lecture.  More details can be found at http://www.agu.org/meetings/ja07/.

2007 Daly Lecture:  Named for Reginald Daly (1871-1957) the Daly Lecture is VGP's part of the AGU Bowie lecture series and is traditionally given at the Joint Assembly.  As Section President I have the honor of choosing the Lecturer and I am delighted to announce that the 2007 lecture in Acapulco will be given by Timothy L. Grove of MIT.

I look forward to seeing a strong representation at the VGP reception in Acapulco.

---Bernie Wood , VGP President

(2) JIM LUHR, 1953-2007
It is with deep sadness that we inform you that Jim Luhr, Curator in the Department of Mineral Sciences, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., died peacefully in his sleep from complications of influenza on January 1, 2007 at the age of 53. Jim received his Ph.D. in 1980 from the University of California at Berkeley.  He came to the Smithsonian in 1991 from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.  In 1995 Jim became the director of the Global Volcanism Program.  He was Department Chair from 1999 to 2004, at which point he happily returned to his research on Mexican volcanoes and many other projects.  He served on numerous museum and national committees, and among his many contributions to the museum were his major role in the volcanoes section of the Geology, Gems, and Minerals exhibit hall and as editor of the books, Paricutin: The Volcano Born in a Mexican Cornfield (1993) and Earth (2003).  As curator, scientist, former Department Chair, and recent Director of the Global Volcanism Project, Jim made many important and lasting contributions to the Smithsonian Institution.  His research is widely known and cited from nearly eighty publications on volcanology, petrology of volcanic rocks and mantle xenoliths, and volatile species in magmas.  Jim was an AGU VGP member and regularly contributed presentations at AGU meetings.

An accomplished musician, Jim was a fiddler for an Irish music group, The Greentop Ramblers.  For the past three years, he was president of Adelphi Pool, a community pool in Adelphi, Maryland.  He was an active member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring and regularly helped to feed homeless people at Shepherd's Table in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Jim is survived by his wife, Karen Prestegaard, a geology professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, and daughters Sigrid (17) and Mei-mei (9).

Jim is universally remembered as a kind, thoughtful, and patient gentleman.  His good nature and low-key wit endeared him to friends and colleagues worldwide.

For more on Jim Luhr see http://www.volcano.si.edu/luhr.cfm.

(3) NEW AGU FELLOWS
The number of new AGU Fellows elected in any year is limited to 0.1% of the total membership.  From the nominations submitted to the VGP Fellows Committee by AGU for consideration as either VGP or joint with VGP for 2006, seven were approved by the Union Fellows Committee. Congratulations from the VGP Executive Committee to the following new Fellows of AGU (primary affiliation in parentheses) who were elected in January 2007:

(4) 2007 BOWEN AWARD AND UNION MEDAL NOMINATIONS
Please take note of the deadlines for the Bowen Award (http://vgp.agu.org), May 1, 2007, and for Union Medals, March 15, 2007. This is your opportunity to bring the contributions of deserving colleagues to the attention of the relevant committee.

Union Medal nominations are submitted to AGU headquarters (see: http://www.agu.org/inside/awardnom.html) but the VGP section has two committees to assist with nominations and contact may be made with them before submission:

     Macelwane Medal: Rick Carlson (Chair) Carlson@dtm.ciw.edu
     Union Medals: Bill McDonough (Chair) mcdonoug@geol.umd.edu

(5) AGU FALL MEETING STUDENT PRESENTATION AWARDS
Congratulations to the following students for receiving outstanding presentation awards at the 2006 Fall Meeting.

---Joop Varekamp, Education/Outreach Chair

(6) VGP WEBSITE
VGP maintains a website at http://vgp.agu.org  where a variety of information relevant to VGP members is housed.  This includes listing of the various VGP committees, a searchable meetings calendar, information on VGP and AGU Medals and Awards, and links to numerous sites of interest to VGP. 

(7) 2007 JOINT ASSEMBLY VGP SESSIONS
Abstract submissions are being accepted until March 1, 2007 for the Joint Assembly to be held in Acapulco, Mexico.  Below is a list of the sessions sponsored or cosponsored by the VGP section.   For more information, visit www.agu.org/meetings/ja07/

VGP SPONSORED SESSIONS

COSPONSORED SESSIONS

• CRAFOORD PRIZE- Wallace S. Broecker
  
  The 2006 Crafoord prize for Geosciences has just been awarded to Wally Broecker of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory for his "innovative and pioneering research in explaining how the ocean, atmosphere and biosphere interact with the climate." http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Crafoord-Prize.html
  
  We are sure that all VGP members will join us in congratulating Wally on this great achievement.
  

• Joseph R. Smyth was omitted in the list of AGU Fellows in the email version of this newsletter.