Workshop Support: Handling, Processing, and Archiving LA-ICPMS U-Th-Pb Geochronologic Data; December 12-13, 2009 in San Francisco, California

该奖项将为一个研讨会提供资金，该研讨会将召集一个由大约40名地球化学家和软件工程师组成的国际小组，以确定和开发处理和存档LA-ICP-MS U-Th-Pb数据问题的解决方案。研讨会的第一天将集中讨论自2008年7月温哥华首次社区讨论以来取得的进展，第二天将集中讨论利用从EARTHTIME和EarthChem计划获得的专业知识来增强现有的数据处理系统，并开发更健壮、更强大、更透明、更用户友好的新工具。研讨会结果将通过美国地球物理联合会的EOS-Transactions和GSA Today进行报告。本次研讨会是LA-ICPMS获取、处理、报告和存档U-Pb地质年代学数据的社区发展标准的关键下一步。开发这些标准，并将其构建到下一代数据处理工具中，将导致U-Pb年龄更强大，更容易与其他类型的数据集成。这将使研究人员、学生、教师和公众能够使用地质年代学来研究广泛的领域，如了解大陆的生长、造山过程、沉积物的时空产生和分布、对我们社会至关重要的矿物和碳氢化合物资源的形成、进化变化的年代学、早期人类进化的时间以及气候和构造之间的联系。

This award will provide funds for a workshop that will bring together an international group of approximately 40 geochemists and software engineers to identify and develop solutions for problems in processing and archiving LA-ICP-MS U-Th-Pb data. The first day of the workshop will focus on progress made since the first community discussion of this topic (Vancouver, July 2008), and the second day will focus on using expertise acquired from the EARTHTIME and EarthChem initiatives to enhance existing data-handling systems and to develop new tools that are more robust, powerful, transparent, and user-friendly. Workshop results will be reported through EOS-Transactions of the American Geophysical Union and GSA Today.This workshop is a crucial next step in the community development of standards for acquiring, processing, reporting, and archiving U-Pb geochronologic data by LA-ICPMS. Developing these standards, and building them into the next generation of datahandling tools, will result in U-Pb ages that are more robust and more easily integrated with other types of data. This will enable researchers, students, teachers, and the general public to use geochronologic in studies of far-ranging fields such as understanding the growth of continents, processes of mountain building, generation and distribution of sediment through space and time, formation of mineral and hydrocarbon resources that are essential to our society, chronology of evolutionary changes, timing of early hominid evolution, and linkages between climate and tectonics.