NSF Workshop Proposal: Towards a Unifying Theory of Critical Zone Structure, Function and Evolution

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This "workshop" proposal requests funding for the "All Hands" National Critical Zone Observatory Program meeting to be held at Biosphere 2 near Tucson, Arizona, May 9-12, 2011.Ongoing discussions between Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) Principal Investigators has identified the need to incorporate a larger cross section of CZO personnel in the annual meeting in order to (i) expose CZO students, postdoctoral scientists, and co-investigators to the activities of other CZOs in the network, (ii) to enhance cross-CZO information exchange and collaboration, and (iii) enable collaborative engagement of CZOs in the task of the development of requisite theory and measurement of critical zone structure, function and evolution. The proposed workshop is intended to meet these objectives.The workshop is intended to broaden community involvement in CZO research and engage young investigators in furthering the development of the cross-CZO science agenda. The workshop will contain a series of six lectures presented by invited (non-CZO-funded) speakers that are conducting research on critical zone processes, in addition to oral and poster presentations by CZO personnel, particularly students and postdoctoral scientists. It will also involve a significant amount of dedicated time for discussions on research disciplinary integration, and a one-day workshop to develop a set of questions, hypotheses, and research approaches/methods for possible network pursuit by the CZO teams that will: (i) make synergistic use of existing commonalities across the CZO data sets, and/or (ii) give rise to novel X-CZO collaborations.