International Workshop/School on Tracer and Timescale Methods for Understanding Complex Geophysical and Environmental Processes

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

Intellectual Merit: Understanding advective-diffusive transport and production/destruction processes of dissolved constituents in natural fluid flows is an important challenge in Earth and environmental sciences with many diverse applications. Moreover, geophysical and environmental models routinely produce huge amounts of data. To make sense of these data novel diagnostic methods are required. Among these methods an increasingly popular and powerful approach uses real (or hypothetical) passive tracers to tag fluid masses and estimate transport pathways and timescales, such as tracer ages, residence time, and transit time. These timescales lead to insightful diagnoses that are increasingly applied in interdisciplinary environmental studies. The International workshop/school on Tracer and Timescale Methods for Understanding Complex Geophysical and environmental Processes will review and explain what has been achieved so far in this field and suggest new developments. This is one-time event, held in August 2011 in Belgium. All junior scientists (PhD students and post-docs, especially) with interests in environmental tracer theory, modeling and observations are encouraged to participate. Tutorials will be delivered by members of an international scientific committee of experts in tracer techniques. In addition, student oral papers or posters will be presented with model studies, theoretical developments, field measurements ? for model validation or other purposes ? or numerical model studies, be they Eulerian or Lagrangian. The diagnostics may concern air, water, passive/inert tracers, biogeochemical variables, sediment particles, etc. Broader Impacts: The field of tracer timescale methods in environmental flows will be advanced through scholarly discussions at the workshop and collaborations that ensue. The workshop will also contribute to the education of a new generation of young researchers who will be able to use in tracer timescale methods for a broad range of environmental problems.