The ad hoc committee listed below is preparing a white paper entitled "Grand Challenges in Geodynamics," available in draft form at:

Grand Challenges in Geodynamics

This report was conceived at the Opportunities and Challenges in Computational Geophysics workshop at Caltech in March 2009. Its purpose is to present major scientific challenges in geodynamics in a broadly accessible way, and discuss new and emerging research opportunities that these challenges present.

The final document will be presented to an ad-hoc committee of the National Research Council tasked with (1) defining new research opportunities in Earth science as they relate to the responsibilities of the National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences; (2) identifying instrumentation and facilities needed to support these new and emerging research opportunities; (3) identifying areas of cooperation with other government agency programs, industry, and internationally; and (4) recommending new ways to better train the next generation of Earth scientists.

We are asking for comments and input from the geodynamics community on this white paper draft. We are particularly interested to get your input, ideas, and suggestions with regard to (2)-(4) above, which we anticipate will constitute the main action items in the NRC report.

You can make comments on the document by clicking the Comments button below (CIG sign-in required; free accounts are available. See Join for details). You can also e-mail your comments directly to Peter Olson.

Sincerely,

Peter Olson (editor)
David Bercovici
Bruce Buffett
Rick Carlson
Lucy Flesch
Jason Phipps Morgan
Mousumi Roy
Diana Valencia