Collaborative Research: The 10th International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Science (ISAES X)

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports the Tenth Annual International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Sciences (ISAES) to be held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in August 2007. This conference will be an integrated, multidisciplinary meeting that brings scientists from around the globe together to explore links among the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere under the theme Antarctica: A Keystone in a Changing World. Inaugurating the International Polar Year (IPY), that begins in 2007, the meeting will establish new directions for interdisciplinary Antarctic research in the 21st Century. ISAES has a long history and is the foremost international Antarctic geoscience meeting, convened every four years since 1963. Historically the focus has been on the lithosphere, attracting hundreds of scientists from over thirty countries. An innovation in 2007 will be to organize the symposium around cross-disciplinary themes to engage the glaciology, oceanography, and biology communities with solid Earth scientists. The symposium will feature new and emerging technologies that are changing the scope and pace of scientific discovery on the continent, but which rely on ever-closer international cooperation. In terms of broader impacts, ISAES promotes international collaborations, even between nations with overlapping territorial claims in Antarctica, thereby helping to maintain one of the main tenets of the Antarctic Treaty: peaceful co-existence and cooperative research endeavors. As an inaugural event for IPY, the Symposium will also attract media coverage and raise the public profile of polar science. In addition, the symposium will serve as a point of entry for early career scientists just discovering the importance of Antarctic research.