Alexandria, VA – The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) welcomes the Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences (CFES) as the third member of the International Associates Program.
Established in 2010, AGI's International Associates (IA) Program provides professional geoscience organizations based outside of the United States with a way to develop a formal collaborative and informational relationship with the Institute. Previously, AGI had only accepted member societies that resided within the United States or that had a large number of their members within the U.S. The IA Program provides an avenue for continued geoscience cooperation abroad and emphasizes the importance of global collaboration in promoting Earth science. The Youth Earth Science Network (YES Network) and the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf) are also members of AGI's IA Program.
The Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences, founded in 2006, acts as the unified voice for Earth science in Canada, and strives to raise awareness of the importance of geoscience in Canadians' daily lives. The Federation consists of 12 Canadian member societies and two cooperative groups. Their members represent organizations from industry, government and academia, and CFES has a total membership of approximately 20,000 Canadian geoscientists.
This new partnership will greatly enhance both AGI and CFES's abilities to engage new audiences about the importance of geoscience. Currently, AGI and CFES are collaborating to promote CanGeoRef—a bibliographic geoscience database that covers the Canadian geoscience literature from the early 1800s to the present.
The American Geosciences Institute is a nonprofit federation of 50 geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 250,000 geologists, geophysicists and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society's use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.