5th CVL Business meeting
Report prepared by Minoru Kusakabe (August 28, 2000).
The following is a resume of the 5th Official Business Meeting of the Commission on Volcanic Lakes (CVL), IAVCEI, which was held at the Nusa Duah Sheraton Hotel on 21st July (Fri) during the IAVCEI General Assembly in Bali, Indonesia.
Attendance was unfortunately poor, for only 20 people showed up for it. M. Kusakabe who led the discussions proposed a four-point agenda, that included:
1. Future of CVL.
2. Newsletter.
3. Elections
4. Other matters.
1. Future of CVL
After a brief introduction dwelling essentially on the history of the CVL by M. Kusakabe, members had to decide whether or not to continue with it. The creation of CVL was a big achievement but management by a steering committee consisting of 8 persons from different regions was problematic, for in reality the committee members rarely met. In addition, it has no financial base, so its activities were rather limited and sometimes programmed to coincide with bigger international conferences. However, the Executive Committee of IAVCEI favorably evaluated the CVL report of activities attached. The favorable evaluation reflects our activities such as publication of the special issues on crater lakes in Geochemical Journal (1994, edited by M. Kusakabe) and in Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (2000, edited by J.C. Varekamp and G.L. Rowe), successful degassing experiments at Lakes Monoun (1992) and Nyos (1995) by M. Halbwachs, fascinating field trips in Kamchatka (1995, S. Fazlullin) and in Indonesia (2000, M. van Bergen and A. Bernard), etc.
2. Newsletter
The CVL Newsletter, "Current Research on Volcanic Lakes", currently edited by S.J. Freeth, was published annually until 1997 and distributed to the registered members numbering close to 100. According to S.J. Freeth, the number of contributions to the Newsletter decreased significantly in recent years, which made regular publication difficult. In addition production costs including mailing were only partially covered by membership dues collected during the 1992 Misasa and 1996 Oregon meetings, the majority of the costs was hidden in the editor's research fund. Furthermore, membership is difficult to define in a strict sense. We considered that all those interested in the study of volcanic lakes are potential CVL members. This implies that membership is no longer fixed. To cut costs and ensure efficiency, communication should be done essentially through the Internet. In this regard, we agreed to create the CVL home page on a web, and any contribution can be seen on the web, in principle, and hard copies made for those without access to the network. However, considering the recent rapidly expanding popularity of the Internet, the problems arising from this factor would become increasingly minor. Considering these initial setbacks and conscious of the fact that the CVL has an important role to play within IAVCEI as well as a scientific mission in volcanology, the participants unanimously agreed that the CVL should stay but under a new structure for both management and Newsletter. The new structure agreed upon has a leader to manage the affairs of CVL instead of a steering committee and a web manager both of who are actively working in the field of volcanic lake studies.
3. Elections
With this new structure in mind, elections of a new leader and web manager were made. Johan C. Varekamp was nominated and unanimously elected as the new leader of CVL. He accepted the position. His contact is: Johan C. Varekamp Dept. Earth & Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan Univ., Middletown, CT 06459-0139, USA, Fax; 1-869-685-3651, Telephone; 1-860-685-2248, E-mail; jvarekamp@wesleyan.edu. Alain Bernard was nominated and also unanimously elected as the web manager of CVL. He accepted the position. He will create the home page of CVL by December 2000. His contact is: Alain Bernard BRUEGEL (Brussels Unit for Environmental, Geochemical and Life Sciences Studies), Universite Libre de Bruxelles 160/02, 50, Ave. Roosevelt, 1050 Brussels, Belgium Telephone; 32-2-6502253 Fax; 32-2-6502243 E-mail: abernard@ulb.ac.be.(This is the CVL Web site Alain prepared, sorry for the delay).
4. Other matters
A. Bernard proposed the intercalibration of chemical analysis of highly acidic lakes in Indonesia. During the pre-conference field trip, samples of Indonesian crater lakes were collected from Telaga Warna (Dieng), Kelut and Kawah Ijen. Those who were interested in participating in the inter-calibration were requested to submit their results with the detailed analytical methods to Boku Takano (cboku@mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp) by December 2000.
Those who have no access to internet yet are requested to notify J.C. Varekamp and A. Bernard so that a hard copy of the Newsletter can be sent to them. M. Kusakabe promised to send this resume to all CVL members by either e-mail or airmail. (He ditributed the resume in August-September 2000 to the members).
Minoru Kusakabe (Secretary of CVL until 21st July 2000)
Université Libre de Bruxelles. Last modification: January 22, 2002
Webmaster: A. Bernard