This award provides support for the Fourth International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS) Workshop. IPICS originated from discussions held at the National Science Foundation in 2002 as part of a meeting entitled "The Future of U.S. Ice Core Science", which pointed to international collaboration as a key element of future work and identified the nucleus of the current IPICS scientific agenda. As a planning body IPICS formed a steering committee and has held three previous international meetings, the first of which occurred in the U.S. (IPICS 2004, Sterling, VA) and was supported by NSF/OPP. The two most recent meetings IPICS II, held in 2005 Brussels, Belgium and the IPICS steering committee meeting held in 2008 in Vienna, Austria were entirely supported with European funds. Although these previous meetings have been important and have helped to develop the IPICS scientific agenda (i.e. the four large-scale scientific projects and fifth element related to technology development) it is believed necessary to bring together the IPICS community at this point in time in order to enable further progress on the IPICS agenda. The goals of this workshop will be to: 1) synthesize the current state of knowledge in each of the four IPICS topical areas (essentially a scientific progress report); 2) to synthesize and define specific actions that will be needed to further each of the specific research topics/projects and 3) develop timelines for those actions and identify specific people or groups who will be responsible for each project. The workshop will set the stage for review papers on each of the IPICS themes that will represent the state of knowledge in each area providing a state of the art synthesis of scientific and technical results needed to take each IPICS element forward to funding agencies and to best inform further planning efforts. Finally, international groups will be identified who will take on the task of submitting research proposals or committing existing resources to each of the IPICS projects. In summary, the workshop has three major objectives: 1) Summarize the current state of science associated with the four IPICS projects; 2) Develop specific plans for funding and conducting each IPICS project and 3) Discuss the expansion of the IPICS NEEM theme to the broader problem of the history of the last interglacial. The meeting budget includes the cost of renting meeting rooms, AV equipment, food and beverages for breaks, lunches and one conference dinner, and registration and organizational services by Oregon State University Conference Services. A portion of the funds requested for this workshop will support the travel expenses (ground transportation and lodging) for 12 invited participants. The airfare for 6 domestic invitees will also be paid by this workshop funding while the airfare for 6 international invitees will be paid by the European Polar Board (through funding secured by Co-Convenor Eric Wolff). The intent is to support early career scientists and IPICS steering committee members with limited financial resources
