This award was co-funded by the Americas Program (Office of International Science and Engineering), and the Petrology and Geochemistry program (Division of Earth Sciences) in order to provide support to offset the costs for young Latin American and U.S.scientists (including graduate students and postdoctoral fellows) to participate in two Geochemistry meetings in south-central Chile that will address first-order questions bearing on arc magmatism and volcanism: (1) the 2007 State of the Arc (SOTA) meeting, and (2) a Geological Society of America (GSA) Field Forum to the Tatara-San Pedro volcanic complex. Many Latin American countries are located along subduction zones, and are subject both to the hazards and benefits that arise from them. The volcanic and plutonic exposures in these countries have been the focus of intense international research on all aspects of subduction zone processes. It is also known that almost a third of the Quaternary arc volcanoes around the Pacific Rim are located in Mexico, Central America, and South America. The purpose of the 2007 SOTA meeting is to critically examine the state of knowledge regarding arc magmatism and volcanism. The purpose of the GSA Field Forum is to bring together researchers from around the world to visit one of the most spectacularly exposed, yet young (925 ka to the Holocene) volcanic complexes in the world, which has been intensively studied over the last 20 years.
The primary goal of this award will be to enable young Latin American and U.S.scientists (including senior graduate students and postdoctoral fellows) to attend the two meetings, meet with one another, and thus initiate and foster long-term collaborative relationships. Funds to support the participation of U.S. graduate students will ensure that the next generation of researchers will be educated to see the benefit of international scientific cooperation at an early stage in their careers. The small size of the meetings (70-90 for SOTA and 32 for the GSA FF) is especially conducive to substantial and extensive dialogue between different groups, which is critical to the formation of viable, international partnerships in the future.
