9319799 Kurz This award is for support to convene a workshop on the Pliocene history of the East Antarctic ice sheet. Recent evidence from glacial geologic studies of the Sirius Formation (a deposit of a variety of glacial sediments which is found at high elevations throughout the Transantarctic Mountains) has suggested that the East Antarctic ice sheet may have been significantly smaller during the Pliocene, thus challenging the prevailing view that it has remained stable over long time periods. Understanding the timing and causes of variations in the Antarctic ice sheet is critical to global climate and sea level models. The result of this workshop will be a concise summary of the existing information, a review of glacial geologic models, and identification of the critical data that must be obtained to better constrain the models of the East Antarctic ice sheet. ***
