We are happy to launch a new feature on the Speleogenesis website, - Speleogenesis Blog.

You can access it using the above link, but also from the Home menu in the site's main page and from your Member area (when you are logged in under your credentials).

The Speleogenesis Blog is intended to be an informal discussion and information forum for the karst and geospeleology science community.  

It is designed as a "multi-author blog", with posts to be written by any Speleogenesis member. Using simple online editor, you can nicely format your post and insert images and links. Speleogenesis Blog is interactive, allowing members to leave comments. With this interactivity, blogging can be seen as an additional form of professional and social networking, which the Speleogenesis website provides.

Of course, our blog is focused in the karst and geospeleology sciences and related aspects of geosciences. But within this broad scope, you are free to select the category and format of your posts. Here are just several of many potential cases when you might consider using blog posts:

• Wishing to attract attendees to a conference or a session you are organizing? Announce it in more emotional and enriched way than it can be done through Speleogenesis Calendar.
• Impressed by the event you recently attended, or wish to dissiminate the event outcomes? Publish an opinion or a report here.
• Wishing to publicize or promote a publication or a web resource? Post a review and links here.
• Thinking of a new project or effort but need in feedback from colleagues on its feasibility, rationale and organisation?  Present your tentative thoughts in a blog post and gather comments and contributions;
• Need to conduct a quick survey among our community? Try this with the blog.
• Wishing to feature your current project or disseminate its results? Here is the place.
• Found an intriguing feature in your research area or a cave which is difficult to interpret? Or, alternatively, found a feature that illuminates well certain concepts or processes? Post images and description and invite comments from colleagues.   
• Having an idea or seeing a research issue which is worth of wide informal discussion?  You are welcome to start it in Speleogenesis Blog.

We encourage Speleogenesis members to extend this list of reasons for using blog by commenting on this post. Even better – give an example by posting your blog now!  

Here is the link to the Geoblogosphere illustrating rich possibilities of using blogs by various professional groups in various geoscience scientific fields. 

With currently 680 members in the Speleogenesis Network from 77 nations (including members of Karst Commissions of IAH and IGU and of other international groups/projects) and this tool on the site, we can greatly enrich the life of our community and foster a new level of communication and networking.

Sincerely yours,

Alexander Klimchouk,
Alexey Kopchinsky