GeoRaman

Abstract

was the 14th edition of the international biennial meeting devoted to the application of Raman spectroscopy to mineralogy, geology and earth sciences in broad sense. However, this edition was marked by the COVID19 pandemic. Initially, it should have been held in spring in Weihai (China), but the circumstances, with a worldwide confinement and strong travel restrictions, in what was the first wave of the pandemic focused on Asia, led to the hard decision to be made to move the meeting to Bilbao (Spain) and hold the conference in the fall. Unfortunately, the successive waves of the pandemic and the global uncertainty prevented the formal celebration of said meeting.Far from being discouraged, it was decided to keep the spirit of GeoRaman open a call for abstracts and publish a book of abstracts after the pertinent scrutiny of the scientific committee. The 2020 edition of the conference gathered around 90 research works. GeoRaman 2020 focused on topics, which can be summarized as follows:1. Mineralogy, gemmology and provenance studies 2. Planetary analysis and space exploration 3. Astrobiology and biomineralization 4. Petrology, field and experimental volcanology 5. Geothermobarometry and fluid geochemistry 6. Carbonaceous materials 7. Cultural heritage and archaeometry This special issue of the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy is dedicated to the 14th International GeoRaman Conference and comprises 27 papers covering some of the topics listed above.