Announcement: NSF Cascadia Initiative Workshop (October 15-16, 2010)

As part of the 2009 Stimulus or ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) spending, NSF’s Earth Sciences (EAR) and Ocean Sciences (OCE) divisions each received $5M in facility-related investment. The funds are targeted toward Facilities that support EarthScope and MARGINS science objectives, with an initial emphasis on onshore/offshore studies of the Cascadia margin. The ARRA funds are being utilized by UNAVCO, IRIS, and OBSIP to improve seismic and geodetic datasets in the Cascadia region including improvements to real-time GPS capabilities, densification of the onshore seismic networks, and the construction and deployment of an array of ocean-bottom seismometers for offshore community experiments.

A two-day workshop will be held October 15 and 16 in Portland Oregon to discuss the full range of opportunities associated with this new initiative. The primary goal of the workshop is to determine a deployment plan for the fleet of ocean bottom seismometers built with ARRA funds that are to be deployed in a community experiment in Cascadia beginning in the summer of 2011. Complementary objectives of the community-based workshop and resultant report are to:

* Provide updates on the new Facilities that are being constructed with the ARRA funds.
* Define high priority research questions that can be addressed with the offshore-onshore facility.
* Develop recommendations for data products that will maximize the utilization of these new datasets.
* Explore opportunities to develop complementary experiments as well as linkages with Neptune Canada, OOI, and USGS efforts in the region.

The workshop will be held at the Hotel Monaco in downtown Portland. Partial travel support is available for approximately 55 participants. The deadline for registering and applying for travel support is July 15th 2010. Registration, hotel and travel information can be found at:

http://www.certain.com/system/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x9169224b4b

As additional information about the workshop becomes available it will be posted at:

http://www.oceanleadership.org/2010/nsf-cascadia-initiative-workshop.

Conveners: Chris Goldfinger (OSU), Jeff McGuire (WHOI), Susan Schwartz (UCSC), Doug Toomey (Oregon), Kelin Wang (PGC)