An ecologist, an environmental geochemists, an environmental biogeochemist, a molecular geochemist, a palynologist, a GIS specialist, an environmental systems scientist, a reclamation specialist and two PhD students walk into a bar....

From left: Ulrich Salzmann, Mike Deary, Dave Cooke, Scott Taylor, Mike Jeffries, Paul Mann, Pete Gilbert, Mike Poremba. Abscent from photo: Geoff Abbott, Bruce Carlisle, Peter Glaves

Little over three years ago I was faced with the challenge of choosing a topic for my MSc dissertation, a truly difficult task to produce something original, interesting, meaningful and of environmental significance. Mike J. has been studying the bio-disparity of a region of ponds and wetlands along Druridge Bay, Northumberland, since the early 1990s (http://pondstimeandplace.blogspot.co.uk/) yet it appeared their true significance was being overlooked. Myself, Mike and Dave decided to conduct an exploratory study of the levels of organic carbon being stored within the sediments of the ponds, and combined with a study the following year by Scott, the results were astonishing. While a study of this kind had never been conducted on such small aquatic systems (<0.5 km²), the results showed that combined, the small ponds of the world have the potential to be sequestering more organic carbon than any other ecosystem.

In October 2012 Scott and myself began PhDs on this very topic and having just completed our first year, have had our first publication accepted into Inland Waters detailing these early findings. Since unveiling our research to the academic community at the British Organic Geochemistry Society (where we were awarded 'best poster presentation' See here) in July the true potential of this research has rocketed with our research group growing from 5 to 15, with the addition of two new PhD students, an MPhil, and a BSc students all joining our family (a warm welcome to Philip, Pippa and Paul respectively)

Realising this research is destined to grow at an uncontrollable rate we called a meeting to discuss the future of our research and the potential for funding applications. Given the obvious difficulties of getting 10 academics free at the same time we took the sensible option of holding the meeting outside of office hours over several beers. This first official meeting of the ACFG proved to be an incredibly insightful and promising meeting, and while there is no real punch line to what can only be described as the longest intro to a 'man walks into a bar' joke, it promises to be an interesting few years ahead of us....