Parallel sessions NWO NAC 2027

Host: Anouk Beniest (VU)

Co-host: Jana Cox (UU), Giorgia Giardina (TUD), Max Gerrevink (WUR)

Short title: EDI from the Ground Up

Session title: EDI from the Ground Up

Description: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) are increasingly recognised as critical to strengthening research quality and, but efforts often remain local, fragmented and insufficiently visible. These initiatives often emerge from the ground up: from communities, staff, students, researchers and networks who identify challenges and develop creative responses in their own contexts. This session highlights grassroots initiatives that are advancing inclusion across the Earth and Environmental Sciences community, from inclusive fieldwork and accessible research environments to mentoring, community building, recruitment practices, and support for underrepresented groups. We also welcome those with ideas for events, new networks or other activities who are seeking support or guidance. Through talks and discussions successes, challenges and lessons learned will be shared. The session aims to create a platform for exchanging practical approaches and fostering cross-institutional collaboration. Together, we will explore how bottom-up initiatives can drive meaningful and lasting change across the research ecosystem.

Host: Layla Loffredo (SURF)

Co-host: Lena Karvovskaya (TDCC-NES), Haili Hu (SURF), Peter Kalverla (eScience Center), Yifat Dziga (eScience Center)"

Short title: Data, Software, Infrastructure in EES

Session title: Data, Software and Infrastructure: the Tech layer of Earth and Environmental Sciences

Description: Earth and Environmental Sciences are increasingly data-intensive, relying on e-infrastructure and research software to turn raw observations and model output into scientific results, often built or adapted by researchers themselves. As FAIR and Open Science requirements grow across Europe, researchers face growing demands to develop new tools, workflows, and skills, often without a dedicated space to discuss them.
This session draws on the experience of Earth and Environmental Sciences researchers who built, adapted, or pushed the limits of the infrastructure, data, and code their science depends on, and the trade-offs they navigated. Through these use cases and community discussion, we'll examine the technical decisions behind data management, research software, workflows, and applications, sharing what worked, what didn't, and what's still open. The session aims to foster dialogue between researchers, data stewards, research software engineers, and infrastructure providers, helping build a more connected ecosystem for EES.

Host: Wim Timmermans (UT)

Co-host: M. van der Meijde

Short title: Dutch Research Infrastructure

Session title: Research Infrastructures for Earth and Environmental Science: Capabilities, Innovation and Collaboration

Description: Large-scale and distributed research infrastructures play a crucial role in advancing earth and environmental science. From long-term observation networks and monitoring systems to experimental facilities, analytical laboratories, high-performance computing environments, and integrated data platforms, these infrastructures enable research that would otherwise be impossible. This session highlights the breadth, capabilities, and scientific impact of research infrastructures available to the Dutch earth and environmental research community. Contributions may present existing facilities, emerging infrastructure developments, innovative applications, and examples of how these resources support cutting-edge research across disciplines and scales. The session provides an opportunity for researchers, infrastructure providers, and research-support organizations to exchange experiences, identify opportunities for collaboration, and explore how shared facilities can address current and future scientific challenges. By bringing together infrastructure operators and users, this session aims to strengthen community awareness, promote broader utilization of available facilities, and foster collaboration within the Dutch earth and environmental sciences landscape.

Host: Prajal Pradhan (RUG)

Co-host: Carole-Anne Senit (UU), Paul Lucas (PBL Netherlands), Anne Warchold (RUG)

Short title: Post-2030 agenda for Sustainable Development

Session title: Roles of Earth and Environmental Science in co-designing a post-2030 agenda for Sustainable Development

Description: Only a few years remain in the timeline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and discussions of their follow-up, a post-2030 agenda for Sustainable Development, have already begun. This session aims to bring Dutch Earth and Environmental Science communities into this discussion. Furthermore, we are currently facing the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, even as the SDGs aim to transform our world toward a more sustainable path. This crisis raises questions about how sustainable development agendas are designed and what needs to change. Thus, we invite presentations that contribute to how to better reflect solutions to this crisis in the follow-up to the SDGs. By bringing together Dutch Earth and Environmental Science communities, this session shares lessons learned from the SDGs to inform discussions on their follow-up, helping make a post-2030 agenda more science-based, inclusive, and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound).

Host: Stephan Toby (TUD)

Co-host: Jaap Nienhuis (UU), Anne Baar (TUD), Kieran Dunne (TUD)

Short title: Morphodynamics and their sedimentary deposits

Session title: Morphodynamics and their sedimentary deposits

Description: Quantifying morphodynamic processes in the landscape helps us both evaluating how past landscapes formed, and how modern landscapes will change in response to ongoing climate change and human activity. In this session we aim to bring together researchers working on morphodynamics and sedimentary systems from various perspectives: from grain-scale transport to coastal morphodynamics to basin-scale stratigraphy. We invite studies from a broad range of techniques, including field observations, modelling, laboratory experiments, remote sensing, or data-driven approaches.

Host: Boris Jansen (UvA)

Co-host: William Gosling (UvA)

Short title: Soils: past present and future

Session title: Soils in past, present and future

Description: Soils are central to the achievement of multiple sustainable development goals, the health of soils is critical for sustaining ecosystems and agriculture, and they form key archives of past environmental dynamics and human activity. In this session we welcome soil scientific contributions in the broadest sense. The aim of the session is to bring together a  range of perspectives on soil so that we can facilitate communication between disciplines. So, whether you are a fundamental soil scientist studying pedogenesis, a paleoecologist using paleosols as records of the past, or an environmental scientist focusing on the fate of anthropogenic substances in soils; we warmly invite you to submit your abstracts and help create an exciting forum to discuss soils in all their aspects.

Host: Evy de Nijs (UvA)

Co-host: Emma Polman (UvA)

Short title: Managing soils, reshaping environments

Session title: Managing soils, reshaping environments: soils as drivers of environmental change

Description: Linking human decisions to environmental outcomes. Diverse land management practices, such as tillage, (organic) fertilisation, flooding, sand suppletion and pesticide application, continuously reshape soil physical, chemical and biological properties. These changes often extend beyond the field scale they are occurring on, affecting ecosystem functioning at the landscape scale. Changes in soil chemical composition or physical structure control how pesticides, PFAS and microplastics sorb, persist, and leach into surrounding environments. Degraded soil structure accelerates erosion and particulate transport to water bodies. Depleted carbon inputs and disrupted soil ecosystems can reduce long-term sequestration capacity. This requires that we treat soils as an active actor of environmental change within ecosystems. This session examines soils as the interface between management practices and broader environmental outcomes, covering contaminant fate, carbon dynamics and physical soil degradation. The central question we would like to address is: what are the environmental consequences of how we manage soils?

Host: Alexander Los (IHS)

Co-host: Hok Bing Thio (Erasmus MC), Eveline de Geus (Erasmus MC), Arseniy Doyennel (VU)

Short title: Air Pollution Exposure Assessments

Session title: Combining Outdoor Air Pollution and Medical Data for Health-Critical Exposure Assessments

Description: This session invites contributions that push the methodological boundaries in the field of air pollution in combination with medical research. With presentations about current challenges and opportunities at the interface between air quality modelling, exposure assessment, and health interventions, the session seeks to reduce cross-disciplinary language, organizational, and methodological gaps. Contributions are welcome with a transdisciplinary character, related to spatial and temporal resolution challenges in urban air quality modelling, machine learning approaches for downscaling coarse-resolution air quality data, integration of models and datasets across different spatial scales and resolutions, and in epidemiological and clinical studies relating to air pollution exposure, such as carcinogenesis, prenatal and early-life development, atopic diseases of the lung and skin, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Host: Kobe De Maeyer (UU)

Co-host: Katia Tseliou (UU)

Short title: AMOC: From evidence to impacts

Session title: Approaching a tipping point? Evidence, uncertainties, and potential impacts of AMOC weakening

Description: The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a major system of ocean currents that helps regulate global climate. A growing body of research warns that the AMOC could weaken substantially, or even collapse, under continued climate change. This would have far-reaching consequences for the climate system and for the societies and economies that depend on it worldwide. This session invites contributions that present the latest evidence for AMOC change, critically assess the remaining uncertainties, and explore the biophysical and socio-economic impacts of a weakened circulation. We welcome studies spanning paleoclimate reconstructions, present-day observations, and future projections, using data, models, or theory. Together, we aim to discuss whether the AMOC is approaching a tipping point, and what might follow if it is crossed.

Host: Appy Sluijs (UU)

Co-host: Francien Peterse (UU)

Short title: EMBRACER: Earth-system feedbacks

Session title: Earth System Connections: Linking Feedbacks Across Components, Regions and Timescales

Description: Climate change affects different parts of the Earth system, but these changes are closely connected. Carbon released from thawing permafrost or burning forests affects the atmosphere; changes in ocean circulation influence carbon uptake; melting ice affects both the ocean and sea level; and human interventions can alter water and carbon cycles across entire regions. The NWO project EMBRACER focusses on the feedbacks that connect these processes and on how they change over time. This session brings together research related to EMBRACER, and we invite contributions on atmosphere–land, ocean–biosphere and ice–ocean interactions, as well as on the effects of human activities on these systems. Contributions using observations, geological records, modelling, remote sensing or new data-analysis methods are welcome. We particularly encourage work that connects different parts of the Earth system or bridges timescales.

Host: Cecile Hilgen (UU)

Co-host: Lucia Kranawetter (NIOZ)

Short title: Land-ocean interface interactions

Session title: Where past meets present: insights into carbon cycle processes at the land-ocean interface across European coastal and shelf seas

Description: Coastal and shelf seas play an important role in the global carbon cycle, connecting terrestrial environments with the open ocean through transport and cycling of carbon, nutrients, organic matter, and lithogenic material. This dynamic interface modulates marine carbon uptake, transformation, and sequestration, while responding to both climatic variability and human pressures. European coastal/shelf seas provide a particularly valuable setting for investigating this interface, with relatively high contribution to CO2 uptake and dynamic land-ocean interactions. These interactions operate across timescales ranging from millennia to hours, making both paleorecords and present-day observations crucial for understanding biogeochemical and climatic processes. In this session, we invite researchers that study coastal/shelf sea carbon cycling, its drivers and sedimentary archives from different perspectives, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, and modelling. By bringing together disciplines, approaches, and timescales, we aim to foster cross-, and inter-disciplinary discussion between researchers working on carbon cycling across terrestrial and marine realms.

Host: Youki Sato (NIOZ)

Co-host: Nathalie van der Meer (UU)

Short title: New Approaches in Isotope Biogeochemistry

Session title: New and Developing Approaches in Organic Stable Isotope Geochemistry

Description: Stable isotope analyses of organic molecules are rapidly evolving with advances in technology, providing novel ways to identify the origins and fates of organic molecules in diverse environments. This session will discuss ongoing efforts to develop new stable isotope organic geochemistry techniques for a variety of applications. These applications include paleoclimate/hydrological reconstructions with novel biomarker targets, clumped isotope measurements for tracking biogeochemical processes in an environment, modelling isotopologue distributions in a given pathway, or determining the biotic/abiotic reaction pathways responsible for the synthesis of a molecule using position-specific isotope analysis. To introduce our audience to a wide range of methods, approaches and applications, we invite abstracts from all levels of research progress, both experimental and model-driven, whether it is still conceptual, currently in development, or in the data collection and analysis stages.

Host: Eva de Rijke 

Co-host: Jeroen van der Lubbe (VU)

Short title: Dutch stable isotope community meeting

Session title: Light stable isotope applications across Earth and Environmental Sciences: connecting the Dutch Community

Description: Light stable isotope analyses of C, H, N, O and S are widely applied across Earth and Environmental Sciences and provide powerful tools for investigating processes from the molecular to the Earth system scales. The Netherlands has a strong and diverse community of stable isotope researchers, with important contributions to the development of analytical techniques and their application to both organic and inorganic materials. This session aims to provide an overview of current stable isotope research in the Netherlands and to connect researchers working across various disciplines. We welcome contributions on analytical and methodological developments as well as applications in hydrology, atmospheric sciences, (paleo)climate and -oceanographic research and environmental sciences, alongside forensic, archaeological and other emerging applications. Ultimately, this session will contribute to collaborative initiatives and consortium building within the Netherlands.

Host: Samuel Sutanto (WUR)

Co-host: Marleen de Ruiter (VU)

Short title: Compound and multi-hazard risk

Session title: Compound and multi-hazard risk: from interacting drivers to cascading impacts and anticipatory action

Description: Compound and multi-hazard events such as concurrent drought and heat, back-to-back floods, or a disaster striking a community still recovering from the last one, are becoming more frequent, yet risk is still largely assessed one hazard at a time. This session brings together researchers working across the full chain: the physical drivers and statistics of compound and consecutive events; interactions between hazards; dynamic exposure and vulnerability; cascading impacts on ecosystems, infrastructure and society; and multi-hazard early warning, forecasting, and anticipatory action. We welcome contributions using different types of approaches, from observations, statistical, process-based modelling, machine learning, and participatory and qualitative methods at any scale, from local Dutch case studies to global assessments. Work on adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and the (a)synergies between adaptation or risk reduction measures is equally welcome. Early-career researchers are especially encouraged to submit.

Host: Luigi Lombardo (UT)

Co-host: Ashok Dahal (UT), Adriano Barasal Morales (UT)

Short title: Geohazard Monitoring to Warning

Session title: Early Warning Systems for Natural Hazards: Advances in Monitoring, Forecasting, and Decision Support

Description: Early warning systems are essential for reducing the impacts of natural hazards by supporting timely preparedness and response. This session brings together contributions addressing the science, technology, and implementation of early warning systems across a wide range of hazards, including landslides, floods, coastal flooding, glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), wildfires, snow avalanches, and related processes. We welcome studies on monitoring technologies, remote sensing, in-situ observations, forecasting and modelling approaches, multi-hazard frameworks, uncertainty quantification, and risk communication, as long as they are connected to operational warning services. Contributions may focus on methodological advances, case studies, validation efforts, or lessons learned from operational applications. The session aims to foster exchange between researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders working to improve the reliability, usability, and societal impact of warning systems in the face of increasing environmental and climatic pressures.

Host: Elinor Meredith (VU)

Co-host: Benjamin Campforts (VU)

Short title: Geohazards: drivers, processes, and risks

Session title: Geohazards: drivers, processes, and risks

Description: Geohazards, such as landslides, floods, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes, pose growing threats to expanding populations, while climate change is altering the frequency and intensity of some of these hazards. This session aims to bring together research advancing our understanding of the drivers of geohazards (such as extreme rainfall or snowmelt), their mechanisms (such as flow dynamics, slope failure, or sediment transport); and their impacts on communities across spatial and temporal scales. It also includes contributions that translate these processes into improved hazard and risk assessment. We welcome innovative approaches that examine geohazards through remote sensing, field observations, data-driven or physics-based modelling, or other interdisciplinary methodologies that investigate these processes. There is particular interest in innovations that improve forecasting, early-warning, or risk assessment of such hazards. Linking hazard to risk, the session aims to support more effective interdisciplinary approaches to reducing geohazard risk.

Host: Wiebke Jäger (VU)

Co-host: Melinda Galfi (VU)

Short title: Extreme events: processes and impacts

Session title: Extreme events in earth systems: Processes, prediction and impacts

Description: Extreme events are among the most consequential manifestations of variability and change in weather, climate, and geophysical systems, with wide ranging impacts on ecosystems, infrastructure, economies, and society. This session invites research that advances understanding, modeling, and prediction of extremes across the Earth system, including heatwaves, droughts, floods, tropical cyclones, wildfires, landslides, earthquakes, and other high impact events. We aim to foster interdisciplinary exchange among geophysical, environmental, mathematical, and life sciences, as well as statistics, complex systems, and AI. By bridging disciplines, the session seeks deeper insight into the processes, interactions, and feedbacks that generate extreme events and shape their impacts. We particularly encourage contributions to multi risk and resilience research, innovative methodologies, and new insights into extreme event drivers and impacts. Studies across all scales and types of extremes, including compound, cascading, and connected extremes, persistent extremes, unprecedented events, and low likelihood high impact events, are welcome.

Host: Steffen Lohrey (VU)

Co-host: Laura Suarez (WUR)

Short title: Unprecendented extremes: physics and impacts

Session title: Unprecedented and unexpected weather and climate extremes – physics, impacts and responses

Description: An increasing number of unprecedented weather and climate events have recently occurred in many regions, and across hazard types, with a clear role of climate change. Examples are recent heat records that have greatly outpaced previous ones by large margins. Continued warming does not only increase the frequency and intensity of such extremes, it also potentially increases the risk of crossing tipping points and triggering abrupt unprecedented impacts. This is a pressing issue both for physical climate research, and for a societal impact perspective. Developing novel methods, models and process-understanding that capture these hazards and their associated impacts is paramount. This session aims to bring together research quantifying and understanding high-impact events in past, present and future climates, as well as interdisciplinary studies that consider societal and technological impacts and responses to such events. We welcome studies across all spatial and temporal scales, and covering compound, cascading, and connected extremes.

Host: Jeroen Bartol (COVRA)

Co-host: Erika Neeft (COVRA), Hedwig Sleiderink (I&W)

Short title: Disposal Of Radioactive Waste

Session title: Disposal of Dutch Radioactive Waste

Description: In 2024, the Dutch government announced its decision to accelerate the timeline for radioactive waste disposal, setting a target to select both a final disposal method and site by around 2050. This session aims to advance technical insights and address socio-technical challenges in radioactive waste management, covering deep geological disposal in poorly indurated clay or rock salt, as well as near-surface, intermediate-depth, and deep borehole disposal options. We invite studies examining the potential host rock formations in the Netherlands, physical and chemical processes affecting host rocks formations, repository and deep borehole borehole design and engineering, and the socio-technical dimensions of disposal, including insights drawn from other fields.

Host: Jelte Stam (TNO)

Co-host: Andor Lips (TNO), Pim van Geffen (TNO), Frances Versluis (TNO)

Short title: From Minerals to Materials

Session title: From Minerals to Critical Raw Materials: Research across the Value Chain

Description: This session explores the full spectrum of critical raw material (CRM) value chains, from the geological and mineralogical characteristics of ore deposits to the extraction, processing, trade, and strategic role in economic security. Contributions are invited on topics spanning mineral prospectivity mapping and modelling, exploration, ore petrology, resource characterisation, mining, mineral processing, manufacturing, recycling, and circularity, as well as mine-site rehabilitation. The session aims to bring together innovative research initiatives on the geological, technical, environmental, economic, and geopolitical dimensions of CRM value chains, highlighting both challenges and opportunities for strengthening resilience in Europe and the Netherlands. In addition to economic geology, we also welcome studies addressing supply-chain vulnerabilities, resource availability, market dynamics, trade flows, and environmental, social and governance factors that influence the security of supply of CRM.

Host: Juan Sebastián Garzón Alvarado (UU)

Co-host: Hamed Ali Diab Montero (TNO)

Short title: AI for Geological modelling

Session title: Artificial Intelligence for mapping and modelling of the (sub) surface

Description: AI methods are increasingly being tested to complement or replace established workflows used by geological surveys, academia, and industry to map and model the Earth's surface and subsurface. From tasks typically performed by experts (e.g., seismic and borehole interpretations or structural mapping) to tasks involving complex process-based modelling or geostatistical approaches (e.g., interpolation), AI is being explored as a faster and more flexible alternative. However, implementing AI-based methods raises multiple questions about their reliability, interpretability, and reproducibility. 

In this session, we welcome contributions presenting both successful and failed applications of AI-based workflows. Topics of interest include AI-based solutions for geological (sub)surface mapping and modelling, integrating physical constraints or geological knowledge into AI workflows, uncertainty quantification, benchmarking strategies, and explainable AI approaches. We aim to understand the new implementation challenges, how AI-based methods compare with conventional approaches, and what is needed to adopt these methods in practice.

Host: Lyana Curier (OU)

Co-host: Rydin Gorjao, Leonardo (OU, Norwegian University of Life Sciences), Stoorvogel (WUR, OU)

Short title: AI4ES

Session title: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning  in  Environmental Sciences

Description: This session showcases emerging techniques—particularly AI/ML—for advancing environmental sciences. We invite contributions spanning process understanding, modelling and forecasting, source attribution, heterogeneous data fusion and mining, physics-integrated AI, and science-based environmental decision-making.