International Geological Congress (IGC) is the global platform for advancement of Earth Science. The first session of IGC assembled in 1878 in France with an aim to provide the global geological community with an opportunity to create an organizational frame work for meeting at regular intervals. It envisaged a spirit of fraternal cooperation that transcends boundaries, languages and has the abili
ty to bring together the geoscientific community across the continents and oceans. Founded as a non-profit scientific and educational organization in 1878, IGC came under the aegis of IUGS in 1961. Since then the meetings of IGC are held in collaboration and under scientific sponsorship of IUGS (http://www.iugs.org). Since the inception of IGC, 33 Congresses have been hosted by 24 countries throughout the world at 3- to 5-year intervals. The 34th Session is being held at Brisbane, Australia during August 2012 (http://www.34igc.org/) and the 35th IGC is scheduled to be held at Cape Town, South Africa in 2016(http://www.35igc.org/). The first IGC had only 41 paper contributions and 312 participants from 22 countries. The 33rd IGC held at Oslo, Norway in 2008 had 6260 participants from 113 countries. This IGC had 4200 oral presentations covering the entire gamut of geosphere- cryosphere-hydrosphere-atmosphere.
