Notes for Commission Chairs

As can be said for any IGU Conference, success at the Kyoto Regional Conference (KRC) depends inevitably on proactive session organization by each Commission. Although IGU Commissions and Task Forces have organized their sessions not only during the main Conferences but also before and after Conferences on their own, we hope not to disperse the places and terms for Commission sessions, but instead to maximize the number of participants in the main Conference.

The Commissions cover a broad variety of subjects, from specific regional geographies to general discussions on current directions in geographical research to the history and politics of the discipline. The Commissions and Task Forces are responsible for choosing the foci of and selecting the speakers for their sessions.

Concentrating participants at the main Conference will create valuable opportunities to promote discussions on the Conference theme of "Traditional Wisdom and Modern Knowledge for the Earth's Future," call upon a great amount of expertise in the IGU, and work out messages to send out to the whole world. If geographers from a variety of sub-fields get together at the main Conference, it will become possible for the 40 IGU Commissions and one Task Force to work together and promote collaborations between human and physical geographers.

The Cologne IGC in August 2012 was a turning point for all of the IGU commissions, since their Steering Committee members were reorganized after the congress. We sent an invitation from the Commissions Committee of the KRC to the 2008–12 commission chairs last year, and we also handed out KRC invitations and session proposal forms to the new IGU Commission chairs (2012–16) at the commission chairs’ business meeting in Cologne. We look forward to soon receiving the session titles and contents of your commission's contributions to the KRC. Soon after the deadline of abstract submission, we will send abstracts to commission chairs and session chairs. We would like you to evaluate the abstracts for your sessions and then send the evaluation results, in order of priority in terms of the proposals you like, to the KRC Commissions Committee within a week.

The Organizing Committee is taking the following measure to support IGU Commissions and Task Force that will be holding sessions at the KRC.

The Commissions and Task Force can post news about their activities associated with the KRC such as pre-/post-conference events on this website (http://www.igu-kyoto2013.org/). If you wish to do this, please send a description (preferably PDF file) of your events to Professor Shigeko Haruyama (haruyama [at] bio.mie-u.ac.jp), Chair, Commissions Committee of the Organizing Committee. The file will be uploaded to the website. However, please keep the number of files to be uploaded to only one, if possible.

In collaboration with all IGU Commissions, we will do our best to ensure a great success in KRC. If you have any opinions and questions regarding KRC, please do not hesitate to contact Professor Haruyama. We look forward to your feedback and meeting you in Kyoto.