This project provides funds for meeting costs, childcare, and travel support for students, early-career faculty, and scientists to attend the Heavy Mineral Analysis in Solving Tectonic Problems workshop. The workshop will be held at the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Iowa on November 21-24, 2020. This workshop is important to the community through providing an interactive venue to present focused, cutting-edge research. The workshop will present an opportunity for U.S.-based researchers interested in solving tectonic problems through provenance analysis to gain new skillsets that represent departures from, as well as complementing, traditional provenance approaches, such as detrital zircon geochronology. Workshop themes will include the effects of source rock lithologies, climate, hydraulic sorting, weathering, and lithification on detrital signatures, and future directions of research in this field. The workshop will provide opportunities to discuss ideas and build networks in symposia and during laboratory time in afternoons, and opportunities for interactions during and after conference hours. The workshop will foster development of new research directions in solving tectonic problems through provenance analysis and will contribute to the development of a diverse and globally competitive STEM workforce. Workshop participants will receive funding based on criteria such as membership of underrepresented groups, financial need, diversity of type of institutions, and geographic distribution. Conference organizers will submit a conference report to AGU?s EOS publication and possibly also to GSA Today. The conference program will include topics of broad community relevance, which could be of benefit to society.
This project is co-funded by the Tectonics and Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology programs in the Division of Earth Sciences.
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.
