This award will provide partial funding for a workshop focus on the interdisciplinary study of tephra to be held at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon on August 4-7, 2014. The discussions at this workshop will have implications for the understanding of geologic hazards, climate change and human origins. The goal is to bring different communities that use tephra in their research to learn from each other's practices and scientific interests. The participants will include volcanologists, tephrochronologists, and archeologists, geochronologists, paleoclimatologists, paleoecologists, paleolimnologists, glaciologists, petrologists, atmospheric scientists, Quaternary scientists, data managers, statisticians, among others. The three objectives of the workshop will include: 1) to discuss modern techniques used in volcanic stratigraphy and sedimentology; 2) to discuss modern advances in tephrochronology; and 3) to begin to develop a model of atmospheric transport and terrestrial, glacial, and submarine distribution of tephra. Materials related to presentations (abstracts and videos) will be made available via the open-access forum Vhub.org. Participants at this workshop will include scientists at different stages of professional careers from different countries, and will be recruited via announcements in listservs for the different scientific communities and invitations to some scientists. One of the outcomes of this workshop will be a resource book for tephra studies. The workshop will start with a field trip to Mount St. Helens, followed up by presentations, group discussions, and hands-on training sessions.
