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

这项奖励将为一个讲习班提供资金，该讲习班将汇集一个由大约40名地球化学家和软件工程师组成的国际小组，以确定和制定解决LA-ICP-MS U-Th-Pb数据处理和归档问题的解决方案。研讨会的第一天将侧重于自社区首次讨论这一主题(2008年7月，温哥华)以来取得的进展，第二天将侧重于利用从EARTHTIME和EarthChem倡议获得的专门知识来改进现有的数据处理系统，并开发更强大、更强大、更透明和更方便用户的新工具。研讨会的结果将通过美国地球物理联合会和GSA TODAY的EOS会刊报告。这次研讨会是LA-ICPMS为获取、处理、报告和归档U-Pb地质年代学数据而制定社区标准的关键下一步。开发这些标准，并将它们构建成下一代数据处理工具，将导致U-Pb年龄更可靠，更容易与其他类型的数据相结合。这将使研究人员、学生、教师和公众能够将地质年代学用于广泛领域的研究，如了解大陆的增长、造山过程、沉积物的产生和在空间和时间上的分布、对我们的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、早期原始人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.