Season’s greetings: looking back on a tough year

This post is part of the GeoConnect³d blog.

We just left a tough year behind us. For this reason, I would like to look back on 2020 with a focus on memorable moments that show the GeoConnectors kept the show going despite all the difficulties.

1- Throughout the year, we brought you a variety of interesting geoscience topics and introduced you to some of our awesome scientists in our blog. And posts from the Meet the Scientist series were the most popular in our blog in 2020, having over 7,000 reads all together!

2- We went through the mid-term review of our project in March, and we found a lot of encouragement in the positive feedback we received. Definitely a proud moment!

3- We also organised webinars in June and November, for Roer-to-Rhine and Pannonian Basin stakeholders respectively, to show what we have been developing with the structural framework & geomanifestations and to get their feedback. We were very satisfied with the results from these interactions, for example through live polls (answers in the clickable figures below). The lessons learnt from the events in June are now available for public consultation.

4- Towards the end of the year, in November, we were proud to be part of the Geo-Energy session of the GeoERA Webinar Series. Access to public and harmonised data and knowledge were mentioned by the panelists and public as key elements for geo-energy R&I and policy support. This confirms the relevance of GeoConnect³d’s structural framework model, which is being built as a geoscience knowledge system.

5- And to end the year well, the first of the peer-reviewed papers foreseen in our project was published in the last week of November: an overview of notable geomanifestations in Belgium, the CO2-rich groundwater springs, and a discussion on how they form (summarised in the figure below).

Image 100000000000081500000495EB530E19ED90257A.jpg
From Barros et al. (2020).


As for the year ahead of us, we all know things might not get easy that soon. 2021 will be the first part of a long period of transition. Also, 2021 will mark the end of GeoERA projects, meaning we have a lot of work to do.

So I leave here my best wishes for all of us, and hope for a happy & healthy new year filled with success & new memorable moments!


Renata Barros
Project Coordinator
GSB – Geological Survey of Belgium







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