Workshop on advancing integrative volcanology with community experiments: Albuquerque, NM, November 28-30, 2018

University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a community workshop in November 2018 to synthesize multidisciplinary perspectives on how community projects can advance integrative volcanology. One of the key challenges identified by recent community reports on research in volcanic systems is enhancing community organization to overcome observational and disciplinary limitations. The proposed workshop would help foster community organization, encourage early career scientists to take an active role in guiding the field, and set the stage for ambitious and innovative near-future projects.Community projects with open data and a framework for coordinating interdisciplinary research on volcanic systems would benefit training and opportunities for the next generation of volcano scientists and maximize outcomes from investment in volcanology beyond what is possible with individual investigator or small group projects. The overarching goal is to advance process-based understanding of the life cycles of volcanic systems that are important hazards to life and infrastructure as well as longterm drivers of geological processes central geothermal energy and concentration of economically valuable elements and minerals. The complex geophysical and geochemical processes and geological history underlying volcanic systems demands extensive observational resources and interdisciplinary engagement to develop models of volcanic processes. Much progress has been made to date primarily using research projects driven by individual investigators or small groups who perform all parts of the project (collection of observation, analysis, interpretation) and may eventually make their data openly available after project completion. There is growing recognition that continued advances could benefit greatly from pooling resources to collect diverse cutting-edge observations, expansion of open-access data and data products, and increasing coordination among observational and theoretical approaches. The proposed workshop will provide an opportunity for well-motivated and focused discussions leading to recommendations for how community volcano experiments could be an increasingly useful mode of operation in the near future. Workshop goals include identifying the key problems suited to community experiments, elements of potential experiment designs and locations, and key aspects of integrative research frameworks to maximize the benefit of community experiments. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.