This award is for support of a planning visit by a team of geologists from Columbia and other US universities, headed by Dr. Garry Karner, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, to Egypt to develop plans for a large, multi-university, proposal on MARGINS to be submitted to NSF. There is evidence that there is a need to have firm Egyptian agreement to support US investigators doing research within Egypt before these investigators may apply for NSF support. The PI and some of his colleagues will meet with Dr. Aly Tealeb, the president of Egypt's National Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics Research (NIARG), to discuss the issues involved and the expected participation by several research institutes in the U.S. and several others in Egypt in the proposed research. The two sides are to clarify terms of US-Egypt collaboration in this major research effort to study the Red Sea rift in which researchers on a research vessel will conduct work in Egyptian territorial waters and on the land along the length of Egypt's coast. The research is expected to shed light on the evolution of the Red Sea basin given the movements of the adjacent continents, and may explain some of the phenomena leading to seismic activities in the countries in the region.
