1. Discuss the scientific achievements your group has made during the past year (including the development on your DDE research, publications, etc)

During the past year, the DDE Working Group 11 (DDE-WG11), paleomagnetism, made the following scientific achievements:

(1) The construction of knowledge system of paleomagnetism was basically completed. That mainly includes 319 terms in the topics of Paleomagnetic directions, Paleointensity, Rock magnetism, magnetostratigraphy, crossing with the terms in the subjects of Paleogeography, Tectonics, Geochronology, and Stratigraphy. The terms are loaded into Geoscience Knowledges System (https://kb.deeptime.earth) in both English and Chinese, which have been partially reviewed.

(2) The book “Ancient Supercontinents and the Paleogeography of Earth” (https://doi.org/10.1016/C2018-0-03855-4) edited by Lauri Pesonen, Johanna Salminen, David Evans and others, was published in October, 2021 by Elsevier. It includes links to updated databases for the Precambrian database PALEOMAGIA and the Global Paleomagnetic Database (GPMDB), and provides multiple paleogeographic maps of the Precambrian cratons based on the high-quality paleomagnetic and geochronologic data and critical geological evidence. Profs. David Evans, Shihong Zhang and Johanna Salminen, the DDE-WG11 leaders, have each authored several chapters of the book.

(3) Participants of the DDE-WG11 have begun to design the paleomagnetic database and magnetostratigraphic database collaborating with experts in the Paleogeographic Working Group and Stratigraphic Working Group. Participants also have begun to build a knowledge system of the Geomagnetic Polarity Time Scale (GPTS) and to collect and integrate the magnetostratigraphic data of sediment cores obtained from the International Ocean Discovery Program, Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, Ocean Drilling Program and Deep Sea Drilling Project to assist OneSediment (an important product of DDE) in establishing the time series of Jurassic-Neogene deep-sea ocean drilling sections.

2. Scientific meeting/activities/symposium/conference your group has attended during the past year (including the inter-group meeting, international activities that your group members attended on behalf of DDE, and activities that DDE hosted or organized)

The leaders, Profs. David Evans, Johanna Salminen and Shihong Zhang, convened a session “GP35D - Progress and Opportunities in Deep-Time Paleomagnetism” at the 2021 AGU Fall Meeting in New Orleans, USA (13-17 December, 2021), where deep time paleomagnetic data from North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia were presented. Most of the working group members attended the session online and made poster presentations on December 15 (https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm21/meetingapp.cgi/Session/121854). The session focused on paleomagnetic investigations in deep time, which presented unique opportunities to chart the evolution of solid Earth, from Geodynamo to plate tectonics, with additional implications for paleoclimatic and biological evolution.  On December 16, the DDE-WG11 organized an online summary session using the SpatialChat software. More than 20 participants gathered together in one chat room and talked about some common themes and directions for deep-time paleomagnetism. Prof. Evans led the participants to summarize the session, introduce the DDE program and discuss the next steps of our working group. Summary discussion file is available at https://wg11dde.wixsite.com/website/news-resources.

A screenshot of the summary session on the SpatialChat platform during the 2021 AGU Fall Meeting

3. Attempt to give publicity to DDE (including mention/publicize DDE in various environment, review article, attempt to absorb new members/fundings)

During the past year, many of the DDE-WG11’s activities were beneficial to give publicity to DDE, including:

(1) Prof. Evans created the web page for the working group in August, 2021 (https://wg11dde.wixsite.com/website). The website was established to introduce the missions of the working group, publicize the main activities to be carried out and attract paleomagnetism colleagues from all over the world to become website members. In the next few years, the website will be gradually improved and widely used for academic discussion and online education.

(2) Both the poster and online summary sessions organized by the DDE-WG11 leaders during the 2021 AGU Fall Meeting helped to publicize DDE.

4. Usage of the 5,000 USD activity funds DDE provided (if any)

The DDE-WG11 planned to use the $5,000 to fund participants from early career stages, under-represented groups, and low-income countries to join the GP35 session of the 2021 AGU Fall Meeting in New Orleans. However, the Delta wave of the COVID-19 epidemic was affecting New Orleans acutely during August-October, and the US border remained closed to many countries at the time of conference registration.  Therefore, we felt compelled to move our AGU activities to be entirely virtual, and incurred no expenses.  As seen in the accompanying document, we plan an ambitious set of activities for WG11 in 2022, and we thus intend to carry over the 2021 funds for that purpose.

5. Others things that you believe is important to DDE

We greatly appreciate the patience of DDE leadership in recognizing that some of our project-related activities, particularly those involving in-person meetings and gatherings, have been delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.