Insights, Ideas, and Inspiration on Geosciences — Greetings from the EGU25 General Assembly

From 27 April to 2 May 2025, Victor Lion (CAU) and Christine Liang (UFZ) represented the ICEBERG project at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, as part of nearly 21,000 registered attendees—18,646 of whom attended in person from 120 different countries.

EGU (European Geosciences Union) is a forum where geoscientists from all over the world can discuss their work and ideas. The EGU General Assembly 2025 was held in Vienna, Austria, from 27 April to 2 May.

ICEBERG researchers Christine Liang (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ) and Victor Lion (Kiel University, CAU) attended the assembly.

Victor and Christine contributed to the session “Citizen Science and Co-Creating with Communities”, which Christine convened. The session opened with a series of oral presentations, followed by an engaging poster session held in one of the EGU’s large poster halls.

There, Victor presented a poster on “Building Arctic Resilience through Citizen Science and Artificial Intelligence in Marine Pollution Control”, focusing on ICEBERG’s integration of Citizen Science methods. He highlighted the use of time-lapse cameras and drones to automatically detect marine litter with AI and Citizen Science and our community monitoring platform.

The presentation got high attention, with attendees expressing strong interest in the technical methods and co-creation strategies used in the Arctic. Of particular note was a discussion about the possible tracking of trash objects that wash ashore, then return to the sea and end up back on the beach (as already seen in a time-lapse dataset from Iceland).

“The insights and ideas we shared inside the session really showed the importance of community-driven science and how we can work together to create meaningful impact, also leading to new connections and potential future collaborations. The EGU25 was a great platform to share and exchange experiences in marine litter research and Citizen Science with scientists worldwide,” says Christine.

“Beyond the session, EGU25 offered a valuable opportunity to get to know new scientists and their interesting research from all over the globe during talks and poster sessions, foster soft skills during short courses, hear about relevant debates, and meet research partners and friends again in a scientific context,” continues Victor.

As a follow-up, Victor and Christine expressed interest in contributing to a Special Issue of Geoscience Communication, a non-profit journal of geoscience, based on the contributions from their session.

“We are grateful for the platform EGU25 provided and already look forward to continuing our engagement at EGU26 in Vienna,” Victor concludes.