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Excursion to Bohemian Paradise and Podkrkonoší 2025

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At the end of the last year, the SGA Student Chapter Prague organised another autumn excursion, this time to the Bohemian Paradise and Podkrkonoší regions. The excursion, led by Jan Bubal, took place from November 14 to 16, 2025, and one of its main purposes was to welcome the first-year geology student members of the Prague Chapter.

The first stop was the cooperative of artistic production Granát Turnov, which has been producing original jewellery with Bohemian garnets since 1953. They not only process garnets, but also mine them in shallow open-pit mines in the České středohoří and Podkrkonoší regions.
Our second stop was a quarry well known for its decorative granite – the Liberec granite. The feldspars vary in colour from pink to green or blue due to changes in their chemical composition. This granite is one of the most iconic and most widely used decorative stones in the Czech Republic.
We ended the first day with a visit to the Bohemian Paradise Museum. We had the opportunity to walk through an exhibition dedicated to the geology and mineral recourses of the region, an exhibition presenting the systematic mineralogical classification, and a particularly interesting exhibition focused on UV-luminescent materials. In addition to minerals, the collection included synthetic crystals (e.g. REE:YAG) and uranium glass, both produced exclusively in the Czech Republic.
During the field trip, we also visited several smaller quarries and old waste dumps – the last remnants of historical ore mining in the region. The mineral recourses we focused on included: chrysocolla, manganese oxide dendrites, olivine rich basalts, melaphyres with various SiO2 infills and UV-active calcite, acicular pectolite in dolerite, Fe ores in gossans, and, last but not least, hydrothermal veins containing fluorite and baryte.

The excursion appealed not only to students interested in economic geology or mineralogy, but also to those focusing on palaeontology. One of our stops was near the town of Jičín, where, in addition to carnelian, mechanoglyphs of waves and raindrops can be observed in Permo-Carboniferous sediments.
This field trip sparked interest among our young student members, further motivating them toward the field of economic geology.

ICYG 2026

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Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to invite you to participate in the XXV International Conference of Young Geologists (ICYG 2026), which will take place from 14 to 17 May 2026 at the Renaissance castle in Kostelec nad Černými lesy, just 40 km east of Prague, Czech Republic. Conference is organized by our SGA Chapter Prague and the Faculty of Science, Charles University.

ICYG is an annual international conference for emerging geoscientists from undergraduate (BSc) students presenting their first scientific results to MSc and PhD candidates and early-career researchers. We welcome contributions from the full spectrum of geoscience topics, and the ones focused on economic geology and mineral deposits will be part of the SGA session at the conference.

Thanks to generous support from Charles University and the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits (SGA), ICYG 2026 will offer financially accessible participation for students, including on-site accommodation and full board with pre-conference ice-breaker in local brewery, and will feature an SGA-sponsored keynote lecture by Prof. Simon M. Jowitt (Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology) as well as SGA travel grants for selected students working in economic geology and mineral deposits.

Key dates
Registration deadline: 15 February 2026
Abstract submission deadline: 28 February 2026

For detailed information on the scientific programme, venue, post-conference excursion, fees, travel grants, and submission guidelines, please visit the conference website: www.icyg.eu.

We kindly ask you to share this invitation and the attached First Circular with your colleagues and students to ensure wide participation and a vibrant exchange of scientific ideas.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Czech Republic for an inspiring and collaborative meeting of young geoscientists!

With best regards,

ICYG 2026 Organising Team
XXV International Conference of Young Geologists
Kostelec nad Černými lesy, Czech Republic

e-mail: jan.kulhanek@natur.cuni.cz (lead organiser)
web: www.icyg.eu
fb: facebook.com/icyg.conference

Christmas Party 2025 – Recap

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On December 9th, we held our annual SGA Christmas party, where members could enjoy great food, drinks (outstanding beer from a local brewery Pivovar Prokopák), music, and a pleasant festive atmosphere. The evening also included a presentation summarizing this year’s activities and introducing plans for the upcoming year. As always, the traditional geological raffle was a highlight. Members had the chance to win interesting mineral specimens from various parts of the world and compete for the grand prize, this year, a beautiful fluorite from Mongolia. A big thank you to 4C Minerals and Sběratel minerálů for their support! We were also delighted to welcome members from SEG Freiberg, who joined us for the evening and made the event even more special. We wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and lots of success in the new year!

SGA Student Chapter Prague – The 20th Anniversary

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Since 2022 is the year of celebrations for the SGA Student Chapter Prague, we have decided to organize the annual SGA Prague Christmas meeting and the 20th Anniversary celebration on 7th December. The event took place at the Faculty of Science, Charles University. On the same day we organized an excursion to the gold mine near Jílové u Prahy took place for those interested.

SGA

The Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits (SGA) is an international scientific society that promotes the science of mineral deposits. The society consists of over 1300 members among researchers, professionals and students from universities, industry and governments interested in economic geology, mineral resources, industrial minerals and environmental aspects related to mineral deposits. SGA regularly organizes conferences, international courses and workshops. The next SGA Biennial Meeting will be held in Zürich, Switzerland between 28th August and 1st September 2023. An integral part of the organization is the long-term support of geoscience students through the SGA Educational Fund.

History of the SGA Student Chapter Prague

This year marks exactly 20 years since several students from Charles and Freiberg Universities founded the first-ever SGA Student Chapter. In 2002, a joint Prague-Freiberg Chapter was established by Dr. Anna Vymazalová and Dr. Alex Otto, both master students at the time. This newly formed Chapter’s first event was an excursion to the Svornost mine in Jáchymov, Czech Republic in April 2003. Subsequently, a division occurred and the independent SGA Student Chapter Prague was established. Despite the difficulties during the years 2020 and 2021 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the SGA Student Chapter Prague has around 70 members.

This year, we celebrate two significant anniversaries simultaneously—the 20th anniversary of the existence of the SGA Student Chapter and the 10th president in office.

SGA Student Chapter Prague Christmas meeting

We are pleased that 83 SGA supporters from the Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Slovakia gathered for the anniversary celebrations. Eleven of them took part in the international field trip. The official program in the Mineralogical lecture room started at 4:30 p.m. with an opening speech by President Jan Kamenský. This was followed by a lecture by Ivan Mateo Espinel Pachon from the University of Geneva on the topic: “Controlling the redox evolution of arc magmas on continental margins: an approach to melt inclusion”. This lecture has followed a presentation by Dr. Anna Vymazalová, one of the founders of the SGA Student Chapter Prague, with her talk on the history of the SGA Student Chapter Prague. Afterwards, representatives of the student associations SEG-SGA Barcelona and SGA Colombia-Bogóta gave a short presentation of their activities and encouraged students to cooperate internationally. After the presentations, we visited the Mineralogical Museum of the Faculty of Science and the Chlupáč Museum. The entire program ended with a meeting in the Malé sbírky lecture room, where we had a unique opportunity to discuss plans for upcoming years.

Fig. 1 – Excursion to the Pepř mine near Jílové u Prahy, author of the photo: Jan Mráček
Fig. 2 – Tour of the Mineralogical Museum at the Faculty of Science, author of the photo: Jan Mráček

We would like to thank our sponsors, without whose help the organization and provision of the program would be very complicated. In particular, we would like to thank the Faculty of Science of Charles University, Řeznictví Jiří Görgl (Butchery Jiří Görgl), Pekařství Kabát (Bakery Kabát) and the Vinařství Cenek (Winery Cenek).