With the 4^th Workshop MYRES was back in Europe again! And again structures and processes of the Earth's surface - the Critical Zone - were in the focus of the event. In total, 183 votes for this workshop idea were received and a majority of 45 % voted for the proposal of the project team around Annika Badorreck, Thomas Maurer, Anna Schneider, Claudia Zimmermann, Julia Krümmelbein, Thomas Raab as well as Werner Gerwin.

The 4th MYRES Workshop Structures and Processes of Initial Ecosystem Development (September 20-23, 2010) took place at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus, Germany. In total 23 participants from 10 nations worldwide used the opportunity to visit the meeting and to discuss their research with other earth scientists.

Many thanks to all participants for their excellent presentations and discussion contributions and also to the great session chairs who initiated very lively discussions!

We are now looking forward to MYRES 2012!

MYRES 2008 took place on the campus of Tulane University in New Orleans, May 20 to 23, 2008. The workshop was followed by an optional three days of field trips around the Mississippi Delta.

The theme of the workshop was to formulate a hypothesis-driven framework for examining feedbacks between geomorphology and ecology.

The second MYRES took place July 2-6, 2006 at the Hotel Castognola in Verbania, Italy. 119 scientists from 25 countries spanning all continents came to the conference. It was followed by a field trip to the Sesia Valley and the Monte Rosa massif, attended by 32 people.

Composition and evolution of the lithosphere, by Matthias Barth ((Universität Mainz, Germany)
Fault structures, by Cristiano Collettini (Universita di Perugia, Italy)
Laboratory experiments in the brittle regime, by Wenlu Zhu (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA)
Deformation in the ductile field, by Sandra Piazolo (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Physics of earthquakes, by Agnes Helmstetter (Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France)
Transient geodetic signals, by Shinichi Miyazaki (Tokyo University, Japan)
Continent-scale dynamics, by Lucy Flesch (Purdue University, USA)
Modeling of lithosphere deformation, by Jolante van Wijk (Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA)

Tomography: Art or Science?, by Frederik Simons (Princeton University, USA)
Interpreting Geophysical Data for Mantle Dynamics, by Wendy Panero (University of Michigan, USA)
Constraints on Mantle Structure from Surface Observables, by Magali Billen (University of California Davis, USA)
Composition of the Earth and it's Reservoirs: Geochemical Observables, by Cin-Ty Lee (Rice University, USA)
Noble Gas Constraints on Mantle Structure and Convection, by Sujoy Mukhopadhyay (Harvard University, USA)
Heat and Mass Flux: The Role of the Core, by Jie Li (University of Illinois, USA)
Seismic Constraints on Boundary Layers, by Tine Thomas (Liverpool University, UK)
Dynamics of Thermal Boundary Layers and Convective Upwellings, by Shijie Zhong (University of Colorado at Boulder, USA)